3 ms·

wonder if Backblaze is buying directly from HDD manufacturers or wholesalers and how much volume discount?

chiph 9y ago
They've talked about this before -- despite orders like this, they're still not a big enough customer to be on the manufacturer's radar. So they're ordering from a middle-man. Back during the hard-drive crisis after the tidal wave that disrupted production ... they were buying from anyone that had drives to sell, including people going into their local big-box store to source drives.
- gist 9y ago
  Yes I think the 'shucking' blog post was the one that caught my attention first.
- dtech 9y ago
  I wonder which customers are big enough if this is the case. I can only think of PC manifacturers (Dell et al., but they are switching to SSD's) and companies with a truly massive amount of datacenters (Google, Microsoft, Amazon). Ipods and similar electronics have switched from HDD's for a while now.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  So only Dell, HP, Apple and the likes have a direct line ? 10K units of the largest models feels huge to my layman self.
- ksec 9y ago
  Still? 100PB of HDD is still not big Enough? So the question would be, In unit of Backblaze, what are the size for Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook?
  - ac29 9y ago
    Curious on that too. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon needs 10,000 drives a day (many of which are probably going to replace dead drives, or upgrade lower capacity ones). Google is probably about the same.
    - brianwski 9y ago
      Early on, we (I work at Backblaze) were told by the large drive manufacturers that to do a "direct order" we had to buy at least 10,000 drives in a single order. If those are 12 TByte Seagates, that's about 120 PBytes? So at this point we are almost there and in fact we sometimes talk directly with the manufacturers, who turn around and send our order through a distributor or reseller. This is probably to prevent "channel conflict" where Seagate or Western Digital is undercutting it's distributors, but that's just a guess.
- niftich 9y ago
  Link to their blog post on mad dashes to Costco after the floods [1]. It's an engaging read. [1] https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/
  - atYevP 9y ago
    Yev here -> it was a pain to drive around the Bay, let me tell you :P

They've talked about this before -- despite orders like this, they're still not a big enough customer to be on the manufacturer's radar. So they're ordering from a middle-man. Back during the hard-drive crisis after the tidal wave that disrupted production ... they were buying from anyone that had drives to sell, including people going into their local big-box store to source drives.

gist 9y ago
Yes I think the 'shucking' blog post was the one that caught my attention first.
dtech 9y ago
I wonder which customers are big enough if this is the case. I can only think of PC manifacturers (Dell et al., but they are switching to SSD's) and companies with a truly massive amount of datacenters (Google, Microsoft, Amazon). Ipods and similar electronics have switched from HDD's for a while now.
agumonkey 9y ago
So only Dell, HP, Apple and the likes have a direct line ? 10K units of the largest models feels huge to my layman self.
ksec 9y ago
Still? 100PB of HDD is still not big Enough? So the question would be, In unit of Backblaze, what are the size for Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook?
- ac29 9y ago
  Curious on that too. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon needs 10,000 drives a day (many of which are probably going to replace dead drives, or upgrade lower capacity ones). Google is probably about the same.
  - brianwski 9y ago
    Early on, we (I work at Backblaze) were told by the large drive manufacturers that to do a "direct order" we had to buy at least 10,000 drives in a single order. If those are 12 TByte Seagates, that's about 120 PBytes? So at this point we are almost there and in fact we sometimes talk directly with the manufacturers, who turn around and send our order through a distributor or reseller. This is probably to prevent "channel conflict" where Seagate or Western Digital is undercutting it's distributors, but that's just a guess.
niftich 9y ago
Link to their blog post on mad dashes to Costco after the floods [1]. It's an engaging read. [1] https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/
- atYevP 9y ago
  Yev here -> it was a pain to drive around the Bay, let me tell you :P