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> The key flaw in this analysis is that the author is only using consumer grade drives from Amazon ? This is Backblaze, a commercial storage company. They buy

by gwern 9y ago

> The key flaw in this analysis is that the author is only using consumer grade drives from Amazon ? This is Backblaze, a commercial storage company. They buy in bulk in thousands of drives, not from Amazon, and the prices are what they paid. As they say, "The price you might get at Costco or BestBuy, or on Amazon will most likely be higher." It's the trend and comparisons which matter, not so much the absolute price.

tytso 9y ago
In the article the author asserted that BackBlaze was typically only using consumer drives. So that makes them very different from the companies in the "hyper-scale cloud storage" market. And if the trends the author is talking about consumer disk drives, I would argue that's a very incomplete picture. It doesn't include the traditional enterprise users, and it doesn't include hyper-scale storage companies that are using the bigger disks. Or else why else do you think that Seagate is putting 14T and larger drives on their roadmap: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3162084/storage/seagates-roadmap-includes-14tb-16tb-hard-drives-within-18-months.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3162084/storage/seagates-road... This is very different from what the article was asserting, which was that disks weren't getting much bigger, and that they aren't getting cheaper per gigabyte. Even from a trend perspective, it's just not correct. (For example, it's not taking SMR disks into account; but that's because the consumers will probably not be interested in SMR drives.)
- brianwski 9y ago
  > BackBlaze was typically only using consumer drives Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. If anybody is curious, in our blog posts we list the exact serial numbers of all of the drives. See here for an example: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/blog-hd-stats-q1-2017-table.jpg https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/bl... We have been at this for a while, and the distinction between "consumer drive" and "enterprise drive" is not what most people think it is. But in the end it simply doesn't matter -> the differences between failure rates of individual MODELS of drives in one line is larger than any difference in failure rates of "consumer" vs "enterprise".
  - tytso 9y ago
    It's not just "consumer drive" versus "enterprise drive". It's also "consumer drive" versus "hyper-scale cloud storage drive". Google used to use consumer drives (and the latter category didn't used to exist) but the world has moved on, and if you are looking for the lowest storage TCO (again, please see Google's "Disks for Data Centers" paper), I'm going to suggest it's a lot more than just using 4T drives. Hint: you're assuming the only cost is just the raw spindle. You also need to take into account the cost of power, cooling, some portion of the server that the disk is attached to, the cost of the tray, etc., etc., etc. This is all in the "Disks for Data Center" paper, so I'm not giving away any corporate secrets. Disclaimer: I work at Google and I am a co-author (but only in a very small way) of the "Disks for Data Centers" paper. We have also been at this for a while...
    - brianwski 9y ago
      > Hint: you're assuming the only cost is just the raw spindle. Not me, not sure who you are responding to? I was just correcting the record that Backblaze ONLY used "consumer" drives when some of our drive serial numbers are "enterprise" drives, I wasn't commenting on total cost of ownership. Backblaze has our own spreadsheet of total cost of ownership, and we are mostly deploying 8 TByte drives right now because the increased density means renting fewer cabinets and paying less for electricity. I'll just make the point that the spreadsheet takes the inputs of WHICH DATACENTER because different locations pay different amounts for electricity. > I am a co-author of the "Disks for Data Centers" paper. I read it when it came out, it is filled with good ideas, concepts, possibilities, and suggestions. Very worth reading. However, it is all about spinning drives, which may not be the lowest cost and highest performance in "X" number of years. There is a lot of disagreement around this point (even within Backblaze) but I think "X" is "really close" like within two years. Even if the individual SSD costs more per GByte, like you brought up, the savings in electricity (our number one datacenter cost) are really good which might make up for it soon (again, depending on the region they are deployed in). But for at least the next two years (and possibly five?), I think we all know we're deploying spinning drives. :-)
      - 9y ago
wmf 9y ago
But other commercial storage companies like Dropbox are seeing different trends and apparently find that 14TB drives are cheaper per TB than 4TB. Is Backblaze an outlier?
- mmt 9y ago
  I don't think I've seen them publish such a view. Could you point to where they do?
  - wmf 9y ago
    My memory was a little off; they support SMR drives but it's not clear if they deployed them or not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11283970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11283970

by gwern 9y ago

tytso 9y ago

In the article the author asserted that BackBlaze was typically only using consumer drives. So that makes them very different from the companies in the "hyper-scale cloud storage" market. And if the trends the author is talking about consumer disk drives, I would argue that's a very incomplete picture. It doesn't include the traditional enterprise users, and it doesn't include hyper-scale storage companies that are using the bigger disks. Or else why else do you think that Seagate is putting 14T and larger drives on their roadmap: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3162084/storage/seagates-roadmap-includes-14tb-16tb-hard-drives-within-18-months.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3162084/storage/seagates-road... This is very different from what the article was asserting, which was that disks weren't getting much bigger, and that they aren't getting cheaper per gigabyte. Even from a trend perspective, it's just not correct. (For example, it's not taking SMR disks into account; but that's because the consumers will probably not be interested in SMR drives.)

brianwski 9y ago
> BackBlaze was typically only using consumer drives Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. If anybody is curious, in our blog posts we list the exact serial numbers of all of the drives. See here for an example: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/blog-hd-stats-q1-2017-table.jpg https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/bl... We have been at this for a while, and the distinction between "consumer drive" and "enterprise drive" is not what most people think it is. But in the end it simply doesn't matter -> the differences between failure rates of individual MODELS of drives in one line is larger than any difference in failure rates of "consumer" vs "enterprise".
- tytso 9y ago
  It's not just "consumer drive" versus "enterprise drive". It's also "consumer drive" versus "hyper-scale cloud storage drive". Google used to use consumer drives (and the latter category didn't used to exist) but the world has moved on, and if you are looking for the lowest storage TCO (again, please see Google's "Disks for Data Centers" paper), I'm going to suggest it's a lot more than just using 4T drives. Hint: you're assuming the only cost is just the raw spindle. You also need to take into account the cost of power, cooling, some portion of the server that the disk is attached to, the cost of the tray, etc., etc., etc. This is all in the "Disks for Data Center" paper, so I'm not giving away any corporate secrets. Disclaimer: I work at Google and I am a co-author (but only in a very small way) of the "Disks for Data Centers" paper. We have also been at this for a while...
  - brianwski 9y ago
    > Hint: you're assuming the only cost is just the raw spindle. Not me, not sure who you are responding to? I was just correcting the record that Backblaze ONLY used "consumer" drives when some of our drive serial numbers are "enterprise" drives, I wasn't commenting on total cost of ownership. Backblaze has our own spreadsheet of total cost of ownership, and we are mostly deploying 8 TByte drives right now because the increased density means renting fewer cabinets and paying less for electricity. I'll just make the point that the spreadsheet takes the inputs of WHICH DATACENTER because different locations pay different amounts for electricity. > I am a co-author of the "Disks for Data Centers" paper. I read it when it came out, it is filled with good ideas, concepts, possibilities, and suggestions. Very worth reading. However, it is all about spinning drives, which may not be the lowest cost and highest performance in "X" number of years. There is a lot of disagreement around this point (even within Backblaze) but I think "X" is "really close" like within two years. Even if the individual SSD costs more per GByte, like you brought up, the savings in electricity (our number one datacenter cost) are really good which might make up for it soon (again, depending on the region they are deployed in). But for at least the next two years (and possibly five?), I think we all know we're deploying spinning drives. :-)
    - 9y ago

wmf 9y ago

But other commercial storage companies like Dropbox are seeing different trends and apparently find that 14TB drives are cheaper per TB than 4TB. Is Backblaze an outlier?

mmt 9y ago
I don't think I've seen them publish such a view. Could you point to where they do?
- wmf 9y ago
  My memory was a little off; they support SMR drives but it's not clear if they deployed them or not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11283970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11283970