4 ms·

5tb?! They may not want your business ;)

by pcurve 7y ago

gmanley 7y ago
I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I can't imagine what would happen if everyone started downloading all the media they watch, though. Hopefully streaming continues to be realistic in the near future.
- brianwski 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I work on the backup client, and I like larger customers for the reason that if the client works for the larger customers today, then it will work really really well for average size customers for several years to come. Larger customers help stretch and test the datastructures for me. :-) We politely ask the larger customers to recommend Backblaze to their friends and family with less data. We live on the averages, so as long as that works out, we're happy to free customers from worrying about exactly how much they store.
  - teach 7y ago
    So if you need a beta tester for a Linux client, you know who to ask! And I just double-checked and it looks like I'm only backing up a little less than 2TB in Crashplan after all.
    - prirun 7y ago
      I think Crashplan Business is $120/yr. B2 costs $5/TB/mo or $120 yr. You could switch to B2 for the same price as Crashplan and avoid the Crashplan pain. (Although you may be in a transition period at Crashplan where it isn't yet costing you $120/yr).
Ajedi32 7y ago
Yep, I suspect that's probably exactly why they don't have a Linux client for their "Unlimited" backup system. (You can do it with B2, but B2 doesn't have an "unlimited" plan.)
scarface74 7y ago
Why not? The 5TB of storage is a one time cost for BlackBlaze (ignoring disk failures). If they backup 5TB one time and keep paying $6/month, eventually they will be profitable customer.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Ignoring disk failures and server operating costs. That said, 5TB isn't a huge number. It could be as low as $200 of hardware cost. With them paying $60 a year, they may or may not end up being a drain on the company's resources. Though they're definitely not paying a full share of the fixed costs the company has. Edit: Though the full scenario is paying for three clients, so $180 for that much data, and that should easily be profitable.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    We don’t know how much their servers cost, but we can extrapolate how much storage costs to store 5TB over time since they report both how redundantly they store files, their hard drive failure rate and I believe the cost per hard drive.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      > We don’t know how much their servers cost Their blog posts say it's about $3500 without drives. I didn't pull $200 out of nowhere. If you stuff a $3500 chassis with 60 $325 12TB drives (current amazon price) and you're getting 80% storage efficiency, that's exactly $40 per usable TB. Add an extra 25% for safety, and then add a big $400 per month for power/data/space and replacing the one-ish drive per year that fails. Assume you throw the entire thing in the garbage after five years. These are pretty pessimistic numbers, but it's still only $92 per TB per 5 years. With three accounts that's $460 dollars of direct costs on a revenue of $900. To be profitable on 5TB in one account is much trickier. It depends on the hosting costs far more than the hardware costs, and those are hard to guess. If they're over $150, it might be impossible to break even on direct costs, even given more than five years.

5tb?! They may not want your business ;)

by pcurve 7y ago

5tb?! They may not want your business ;)

I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I can't imagine what would happen if everyone started downloading all the media they watch, though. Hopefully streaming continues to be realistic in the near future.

brianwski 7y ago
Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I work on the backup client, and I like larger customers for the reason that if the client works for the larger customers today, then it will work really really well for average size customers for several years to come. Larger customers help stretch and test the datastructures for me. :-) We politely ask the larger customers to recommend Backblaze to their friends and family with less data. We live on the averages, so as long as that works out, we're happy to free customers from worrying about exactly how much they store.
- teach 7y ago
  So if you need a beta tester for a Linux client, you know who to ask! And I just double-checked and it looks like I'm only backing up a little less than 2TB in Crashplan after all.
  - prirun 7y ago
    I think Crashplan Business is $120/yr. B2 costs $5/TB/mo or $120 yr. You could switch to B2 for the same price as Crashplan and avoid the Crashplan pain. (Although you may be in a transition period at Crashplan where it isn't yet costing you $120/yr).

Ajedi32 7y ago

Yep, I suspect that's probably exactly why they don't have a Linux client for their "Unlimited" backup system. (You can do it with B2, but B2 doesn't have an "unlimited" plan.)

scarface74 7y ago

Why not? The 5TB of storage is a one time cost for BlackBlaze (ignoring disk failures). If they backup 5TB one time and keep paying $6/month, eventually they will be profitable customer.

Dylan16807 7y ago
Ignoring disk failures and server operating costs. That said, 5TB isn't a huge number. It could be as low as $200 of hardware cost. With them paying $60 a year, they may or may not end up being a drain on the company's resources. Though they're definitely not paying a full share of the fixed costs the company has. Edit: Though the full scenario is paying for three clients, so $180 for that much data, and that should easily be profitable.
- scarface74 7y ago
  We don’t know how much their servers cost, but we can extrapolate how much storage costs to store 5TB over time since they report both how redundantly they store files, their hard drive failure rate and I believe the cost per hard drive.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    > We don’t know how much their servers cost Their blog posts say it's about $3500 without drives. I didn't pull $200 out of nowhere. If you stuff a $3500 chassis with 60 $325 12TB drives (current amazon price) and you're getting 80% storage efficiency, that's exactly $40 per usable TB. Add an extra 25% for safety, and then add a big $400 per month for power/data/space and replacing the one-ish drive per year that fails. Assume you throw the entire thing in the garbage after five years. These are pretty pessimistic numbers, but it's still only $92 per TB per 5 years. With three accounts that's $460 dollars of direct costs on a revenue of $900. To be profitable on 5TB in one account is much trickier. It depends on the hosting costs far more than the hardware costs, and those are hard to guess. If they're over $150, it might be impossible to break even on direct costs, even given more than five years.