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I find these breakdowns fascinating. As an enthusiast PC builder I occasionally consider running my own data-systems or servers... In the end though I'm glad I

I find these breakdowns fascinating. As an enthusiast PC builder I occasionally consider running my own data-systems or servers... In the end though I'm glad I have guys like you putting these together: clearly an enormous amount of thought going into it. Thanks for the write-up.

atYevP 11y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> You're welcome! We're always pretty stoked to do these, even though it does indeed take a lot of man-power to put together. The nice thing is, it's actually helpful! A lot of organizations, companies, and research labs use them, and that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.
- hahainternet 11y ago
  It looks quite an enjoyable process too. Design iteration is a fantastic time to really question assumptions, and reducing the number of fans for example does just that. The best I have is 9 addressable disks plus a ludicrous CPU and GPU in a Silverstone desktop case, not very exciting but still going against the grain.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I use a Backblaze box as an Archive Team staging environment! Thank you!
  - atYevP 11y ago
    Awesome! <3
  - budmang 11y ago
    Very cool. I remember an article I read about a veteran music journalist who applied for a job and was told he had no experience. Turned out every magazine he worked for over 10+ years had shut down and there was not a single online reference of his articles. Love that you're fighting the good fight (along with the Internet Archive) to keep a history of the Internet.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - greedo 11y ago
      From 2000 through 2006 I freelanced for a middle tier publisher of computer magazines. Wrote 4-5 articles a month, probably 1/2 million words. The publisher had a paywall for their online versions of the print magazines, but really didn't put much effort into promoting it since print had been so lucrative. Over the last three years they shuttered the majority of the print magazines (and their corresponding online editions), and now it's all gone. The wayback machine/Internet Archive only has a limited number of pages available. Sad to realize that a lot of the work we do (whether it's writing or creating systems) is ephemeral...
- mikeash 11y ago
  Do you find any internal benefits from this stuff as well? For example, having it be better documented, or finding areas of improvement as you go through the write-up, or things like that? Not that you need it to be directly helpful, warm and fuzzy can certainly be enough....
  - atYevP 11y ago
    Good question! As part of the process for developing these we spend months and months using AGILE/SCRUM to iterate and come up with a "final answer" (though we're constantly still iterating). So it's not so much that we gain anything from writing the posts, the posts are more of a culmination of months of effort. We do end up talking about the pods more closely when we're writing the posts and as part of that some minor changes do happen, but not that many. The sinister benefit is that the more folks read the posts, the more it gets shared (presumably) and we hope that can lead to some new folks finding out about our online backup service, and therefore signing up. Which would make our finance department feel warm and fuzzy too!
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I imagine the marketing angle must be pretty big. Not only making people aware of your service, but convincing people to use it. A big question when selecting any online backup service is, "are these people I'm trusting with my data complete idiots?" Your posts should really help convince a lot of people that you are, in fact, not complete idiots. For what it's worth, I've been a happy customer for years and try to spread the love whenever I can. My mantra is: data that's not backed up doesn't exist, and data that's not backed up off-site is not backed up. Thanks for providing a great service for cheap.
      - atYevP 11y ago
        You'd think it would be HUGE but it's not, just a side-benefit. We'd love for it to be bigger, but, it's kind of up to the people. If you're a happy Backblaze customer though...might I refer you to our handy dandy referral program: https://www.backblaze.com/refer.html https://www.backblaze.com/refer.html /MarketingOff *Edit -> man, we have to optimize that page for our new design layout... /yells at design team.

atYevP 11y ago

Yev from Backblaze here -> You're welcome! We're always pretty stoked to do these, even though it does indeed take a lot of man-power to put together. The nice thing is, it's actually helpful! A lot of organizations, companies, and research labs use them, and that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

hahainternet 11y ago
It looks quite an enjoyable process too. Design iteration is a fantastic time to really question assumptions, and reducing the number of fans for example does just that. The best I have is 9 addressable disks plus a ludicrous CPU and GPU in a Silverstone desktop case, not very exciting but still going against the grain.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
I use a Backblaze box as an Archive Team staging environment! Thank you!
- atYevP 11y ago
  Awesome! <3
- budmang 11y ago
  Very cool. I remember an article I read about a veteran music journalist who applied for a job and was told he had no experience. Turned out every magazine he worked for over 10+ years had shut down and there was not a single online reference of his articles. Love that you're fighting the good fight (along with the Internet Archive) to keep a history of the Internet.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - greedo 11y ago
    From 2000 through 2006 I freelanced for a middle tier publisher of computer magazines. Wrote 4-5 articles a month, probably 1/2 million words. The publisher had a paywall for their online versions of the print magazines, but really didn't put much effort into promoting it since print had been so lucrative. Over the last three years they shuttered the majority of the print magazines (and their corresponding online editions), and now it's all gone. The wayback machine/Internet Archive only has a limited number of pages available. Sad to realize that a lot of the work we do (whether it's writing or creating systems) is ephemeral...
mikeash 11y ago
Do you find any internal benefits from this stuff as well? For example, having it be better documented, or finding areas of improvement as you go through the write-up, or things like that? Not that you need it to be directly helpful, warm and fuzzy can certainly be enough....
- atYevP 11y ago
  Good question! As part of the process for developing these we spend months and months using AGILE/SCRUM to iterate and come up with a "final answer" (though we're constantly still iterating). So it's not so much that we gain anything from writing the posts, the posts are more of a culmination of months of effort. We do end up talking about the pods more closely when we're writing the posts and as part of that some minor changes do happen, but not that many. The sinister benefit is that the more folks read the posts, the more it gets shared (presumably) and we hope that can lead to some new folks finding out about our online backup service, and therefore signing up. Which would make our finance department feel warm and fuzzy too!
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I imagine the marketing angle must be pretty big. Not only making people aware of your service, but convincing people to use it. A big question when selecting any online backup service is, "are these people I'm trusting with my data complete idiots?" Your posts should really help convince a lot of people that you are, in fact, not complete idiots. For what it's worth, I've been a happy customer for years and try to spread the love whenever I can. My mantra is: data that's not backed up doesn't exist, and data that's not backed up off-site is not backed up. Thanks for providing a great service for cheap.
    - atYevP 11y ago
      You'd think it would be HUGE but it's not, just a side-benefit. We'd love for it to be bigger, but, it's kind of up to the people. If you're a happy Backblaze customer though...might I refer you to our handy dandy referral program: https://www.backblaze.com/refer.html https://www.backblaze.com/refer.html /MarketingOff *Edit -> man, we have to optimize that page for our new design layout... /yells at design team.