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Wondering if data centres typically power down a drive after some period of no accesses? Seems like you could save a lot of power and gain some HD life that way

by redcalx 10y ago

Wondering if data centres typically power down a drive after some period of no accesses? Seems like you could save a lot of power and gain some HD life that way - so long as a drive isn't frequently spinning up and down. Seems like the data access patterns could be monitored and less frequently data moved to a 'low access frequency' HD bank(?)

atYevP 10y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> For us the drives are constantly spinning, we don't power them down. One of the reasons is we never know when a customer will want a restore, so we have the data available 24/7. That said with our Vaults (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architecture/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect...) it's theoretically possible to power down entire cabinets and still have the data available, but we don't currently see a need to do that.
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  Maybe energy is too cheap. I use BB and I'm kind of sad to hear that juice is wasted on my stuff I haven't restored for years.
  - redcalx 10y ago
    I would suggest that you consider 'voting with your feet' so to speak. You are, after all, ultimately paying for that wasted energy with you backblaze fee.
- redcalx 10y ago
  See the other comment: there is a lot of data that isn't accessed for years at a time, so you're essentially spinning disks for years to save a few seconds of spin up time. I think he's right - energy is too cheap for this to be a commercially relevant factor to you, but if the true cost of energy was factored in (climate change, the human cost s of the relatively dangerous mining and oil drilling industries, local pollution, etc) then I think that would tip the balance. Oh well. OK, final suggestion, maybe do it and spin it as a public relations win? :)
  - atYevP 10y ago
    With Backblaze B2 the data has to be available at all times, so powering them down isn't really feasible. For personal backup it might have been, though the manpower it would have taken might have also knocked it out of whack a bit.

by redcalx 10y ago

atYevP 10y ago

Yev from Backblaze here -> For us the drives are constantly spinning, we don't power them down. One of the reasons is we never know when a customer will want a restore, so we have the data available 24/7. That said with our Vaults (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architecture/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect...) it's theoretically possible to power down entire cabinets and still have the data available, but we don't currently see a need to do that.

robotresearcher 10y ago
Maybe energy is too cheap. I use BB and I'm kind of sad to hear that juice is wasted on my stuff I haven't restored for years.
- redcalx 10y ago
  I would suggest that you consider 'voting with your feet' so to speak. You are, after all, ultimately paying for that wasted energy with you backblaze fee.
redcalx 10y ago
See the other comment: there is a lot of data that isn't accessed for years at a time, so you're essentially spinning disks for years to save a few seconds of spin up time. I think he's right - energy is too cheap for this to be a commercially relevant factor to you, but if the true cost of energy was factored in (climate change, the human cost s of the relatively dangerous mining and oil drilling industries, local pollution, etc) then I think that would tip the balance. Oh well. OK, final suggestion, maybe do it and spin it as a public relations win? :)
- atYevP 10y ago
  With Backblaze B2 the data has to be available at all times, so powering them down isn't really feasible. For personal backup it might have been, though the manpower it would have taken might have also knocked it out of whack a bit.