27 ms·
The Next Backblaze Storage Pod
- jleahy 5y agoI'm surprised Dell don't make they buy hard drives from them at a substantial mark-up, as they allude to vendors doing earlier in the story.
- tpetry 5y agoOr dell forces them to buy their drives but their markup is not as high as their competitors?
- jleahy 5y agoThe default markup is awful, check the Dell website. I'd describe the process of buying a drive from Dell a bit like getting mugged.
- Analemma_ 5y agoI imagine if you're buying sixty pods a month every month you have some leverage with Dell to get better prices, especially if you have a demonstrated ability to just walk away and build your own if you don't like their offer.
- foobarbazetc 5y agoDell (and, really, all server providers apart from Supermicro) have crazy markups on storage. It's where they make most of their margin. And then, most of the time, the drives they sell come on custom sleds that they don't sell separately as a form of DRM/lock in. Then you get a nice little trade on Chinese-made sleds that sort of work, but not for anything recent like hot swap NVMe drives. I'm sure BB were able to negotiate down a lot (Dell usually come down 50% off the list price if you press them hard enough for one off projects), but... yeah. That's how it generally goes.
- gnopgnip 5y agoIf you are buying in bulk the pricing can be a lot better than the list prices. But generally there isn't a problem buying a server without a drive, Dell will still support the server for non disk related warranty issues, you don't need special firmware or disks
- gpm 5y agoDell's not in the best negotiating position here, given that "build our own" is a valid alternative.
- ineedasername 5y agoDell me be very happy to have a high volume customer with very standardized & predictable needs, and so they're happy with modest markups & extra profit on the service agreements, which is a nice benefit for Backblaze since building their own pods doesn't give them any service guarantee/warranty.
- Wassight 5y agoJust a reminder that backblaze uses dark patterns for their account cancellations. You'll never be able to use all of the time you pay for.
- infogulch 5y agoIf low volume is a problem for manufacturers because you don't need that much, the obvious solution is to increase volume by selling them. Of course that would introduce even more problems to solve, but at least volume wouldn't be one of them.
- jleahy 5y agoThey already sell them, but personally I thought they were too expensive, probably they were adding a mark-up on their build price when selling them.
- bluedino 5y agoI don't think Backblaze ever sold them, but 45Drives does. I'm not sure if they assemble them for BB or if they were just using their published design.
- igravious 5y agothey did at one point, fta: “Right after we introduced Storage Pod 1.0 to the world, we had to make a decision as to whether or not to make and sell Storage Pods in addition to our cloud-based services. We did make and sell a few Storage Pods—we needed the money—but we eventually chose software.”
- jleahy 5y agoIndeed, I was thinking of 45Drives.
- igravious 5y agoNot any more they don't, fta: “Right after we introduced Storage Pod 1.0 to the world, we had to make a decision as to whether or not to make and sell Storage Pods in addition to our cloud-based services. We did make and sell a few Storage Pods—we needed the money—but we eventually chose software.”
- igravious 5y agofta: “Right after we introduced Storage Pod 1.0 to the world, we had to make a decision as to whether or not to make and sell Storage Pods in addition to our cloud-based services. We did make and sell a few Storage Pods—we needed the money—but we eventually chose software.”
- andrewtbham 5y agoIt's really amazing they made their own for so long... hardware is a commodity business.
- bluedino 5y agoThe original storage pod was only 1/7th as much as a Dell solution, and that didn't include any labor, software, blah blah blah. They're still only buying the assembled hardware from Dell.
- jasode 5y ago>hardware is a commodity business. The hardware components of the Backblaze Pod are commodities but the entire finished unit is not a commodity. E.g. the rough equivalent from 45drives is not a commodity: https://www.45drives.com/products/storinator-xl60-configurations.php https://www.45drives.com/products/storinator-xl60-configurat...
- ineedasername 5y agoI guess it's kind of like building your own gaming PC: Even paying retail prices for the parts, you can build your own for significantly cheaper than a comparable pre-built system. Since their business model is "extremely cheap unlimited backup storage" they had to go it alone, but now there are more COTS options similar to their needs.
- bluedino 5y agoAny idea what Dell is actually selling them? The DVR's we buy (Avigilon) are white Dell 7x0's with a custom white bezel, but those only fit 18 3.5" drives.
- erikpt-work 5y agoCould be the MD3060e with an R650 server? https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/DellStorage_MD3060e_Dense_JBOD_SS.pdfu https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-shee...
- toomuchtodo 5y agoYour link 404s, I think it's the extra character on the end.
- toomuchtodo 5y agohttps://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/DellStorage_MD3060e_Dense_JBOD_SS.pdf https://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-shee... Working link.
- maxclark 5y agoI’d love to know this as well. Dell doesn’t have anything remotely close to what Backblaze was designing/building themselves. So did they do something custom (unlikely at this volume) or did Backblaze change their hardware approach?
- ineedasername 5y agoNot quite the same, but they do have something like the Pods, but a bit more modular: It's their PowerEdge MX platform, which allows you to slot in different "sleds" for storage/compute etc. as needed. It can take 7 storage sleds for a total of 112 drivers per chasis.
- philjohn 5y ago
- edgeform 5y agoAlways love these articles, look forward to them without knowing it. This one is particularly interesting as they discuss the logistical challenges of their own success in having to build more and more Storage Pods. As always, a super fascinating read worth your time.
- foodstances 5y agoDid the surge in Chia mining affect global hard drive prices at all?
- sliken 5y agoI've been watching drive prices, it's hard to say exactly why, but around mid April disk prices at Newegg and amazon jumped significantly. One drive that had been $300, jumped to $400, $500, and even spiked to $800 for a bit. By Jun 1st had dropped to $550, and only this week has dropped for $400. Still above the original $300, but at least a not terribly painful premium.
- ev1 5y agoChia mining-before-transactions-are-released -> Chia transactions released -> Chia price at a high price -> Chia price halves shortly after, turns out virtually impossible for US users to get on any of the exchanges handling XCH
- that_lurker 5y agoNot yet, but when Chia pools become available the mining will take off and hdd prices will most likely rice
- richwater 5y agoChia is a literal scam. There's a massive amount of premined chia controlled by the "chia strategic reserve". It will take a decade for the amount of mined value to equal the pre-mined value.
- josefresco 5y agoI looked into Chia mining as a hobby and was directed to Burstcoin. I don't know much about either, but Burstcoin advocates claim it's the "better" PoC. Note: I went to double check something on the Burstcoin website and realized today, June 24th they changed their name to Signum - https://www.burst-coin.org/ https://www.burst-coin.org/
- dragontamer 5y agoI have to imagine that by making Storage Pods 1.0 through 6.0, maybe they "encouraged" Dell (and other manufacturers) that this particular 60+ hard drive server was a good idea. And now that multiple "storage pod-like" systems exist in the marketplace (not just Dell, but also Supermicro) selling 60-bay or 90-bay 3.5" Hard drive storage servers in 4U rack form factors, there's not much reason to build their own? At least, that's my assumption. After all, if the server chassis is a commodity now (and it absolutely is), no point making custom small runs to make a hypothetical Storage Pod 7. Economies of scale is too big a benefit (worst case scenario: its now Dell's or Supermicro's problem rather than Backblaze's). EDIT: I admit that I don't really work in IT, I'm just a programmer. So I don't really know how popular 4U / ~60 HDD servers were before Backblaze Storage Pod 1.0
- walrus01 5y ago3U and 4U x86 whitebox servers designed for any standard 12"x13" motherboard, where the entire front panel was hotswap 3.5" HDD bays were already a thing many, many years before backblaze existed. What wasn't really a thing was servers with hotswap HDD trays on both ends (like the supermicros) and things that were designed with vertical hard drives dropped down from a top-opening lid to achieve even higher density.
- briffle 5y agoThe Sun X4500 "thumper" server had 48 drives, if I remember correctly, and came out in 2006ish. It had hot-swap SATA disks (up to 512GB disks initially!) and was actually pretty cool and forward thinking https://web.archive.org/web/20061128164442/http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4500/index.xml https://web.archive.org/web/20061128164442/http://www.sun.co...
- wilhil 5y agoI'm curious what is being used for the drives (and to a lesser extent, memory) - Dell or OEM and how does support work? We sell a lot of Dell and for base models, it is very economical compared to self built. The moment however we add a few high capacity hard drives or memory, all bets are off the table and it's usually 1.75-4x the price of a white box part. I get not supporting the part itself, but, had them not support a raid card error (corrupt memory) after they saw we had a third party drive.... we only buy a handful of servers a month - I can imagine this possibly being a huge problem for Backblaze though...
- wfleming 5y agoBackblaze has usually sourced their own hard drives, and I suspect they still are/will. (The post didn't seem to indicate otherwise.) Every year they post a summary of what models they're working with and how they perform, which is usually good reading. This is last year's: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-fo....
- ineedasername 5y agoThe post didn't seem to indicate otherwise That appeared to depend on whether the vendor imposed massive markups on the drives. However they also mentioned service etc.: If they struck a deal with Dell, then Dell might be perfectly happy to sell the servers at a very modest profit while making their money on the service agreement.
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoEspecially flash storage goes through the roof at enterprise purchasing. I've bought the drive trays and used consumer SSDs in servers more than a few times with no real ill effects where SATA is acceptable. If you need SAS, you just need to accept the pain that is about to come when you order.
- amelius 5y agoTitle is misleading as there is no next Backblaze storage pod, and there never will be, according to the article.
- ceejayoz 5y ago"The Next Backblaze Storage Pod" is commercially available storage from Dell. It's a little clickbaity, but it's both a) the title of the article, which HN encourages using and b) accurate.
- wtallis 5y ago> and there never will be, according to the article. The article doesn't say that. It says: > So the question is: Will there ever be a Storage Pod 7.0 and beyond? We want to say yes. We’re still control freaks at heart, meaning we’ll want to make sure we can make our own storage servers so we are not at the mercy of “Big Server Inc.” In addition, we do see ourselves continuing to invest in the platform so we can take advantage of and potentially create new, yet practical ideas in the space (Storage Pod X anyone?). So, no, we don’t think Storage Pods are dead, they’ll just have a diverse group of storage server friends to work with.
- encryptluks2 5y agoI can't say that I'm surprised, and honestly anyone can open source the architecture for a storage array of comparable use. I think the only unique thing here really is the chassis, but there are plenty of whitebox vendors that sell storage chassis. You may not get as many drives in one, but usually the other components in these things are usually pretty cheap minus the storage. I don't really see this being a loss in the community at all, and maybe someone else will get creative and build something better.
- d33lio 5y agoBut can it farm Chia? Always cool to get insights into the business and technical challenges at Backblaze!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ajaimk 5y agoIt’s actually interesting to me that backblaze has actually reached a size where global logistics plays a bigger part in costs than the actual servers. (And the servers got cheaper). Also, Dell and Supermicro have storage servers inspired by the BB Pods. Glad to see this scrappy company hit this amount of scale; a long way from schucking Hard Drives
- choppaface 5y ago> That’s a trivial number of parts and vendors for a hardware company, but stating the obvious, Backblaze is a software company. Stating the obvious: Backblaze wants investors to value them like a SaaS company. This blog post suggests they’re more of a logistics and product company— huge capex and depreciating assets on hand. As a customer, I like their product, but they’re no Dropbox. If they would allow personal NAS then I could see them being a software company.
- ahmedalsudani 5y agoIt's easy to buy a bunch of hard drives and connect in a data center. Managing petabytes per user for thousands of users is the hard part, and it's a software problem. BackBlaze is definitely a SaaS company... though the quality of their offering certainly lags behind Dropbox, both in terms of feature set and user experience. They're also in a very competitive industry. Storage/backup is basically a commodity nowadays.
- kag0 5y ago> BackBlaze is definitely a SaaS company agreed, but I think s3 is the more realistic comparison than dropbox
- ahmedalsudani 5y ago100%. It’s why their margins are way leaner.
- wmf 5y agoDropbox owns more hardware than Backblaze.
- ricardobeat 5y agoI sync my NAS to Backblaze B2 without any issues, and pricing is great.
- choppaface 5y ago
- Aeolun 5y agoMay just be me, but I feel like it’s probably a bad idea to outsource one of your core competencies. Backblaze is quite literally built on their storage pods. It’s like outsourcing the EU telecommunications, which we’ve seen a bunch of articles about recently.
- nightfly 5y agoThey're building out in a new location where doing it themselves was cost-prohibitive.
- Aeolun 5y agoThat’s always the reasoning. I’m sure doing your own telecommunications is also cost-prohibitive.
- lostlogin 5y agoBy my reading of the article, making up chassis and building out servers was outsourced already and was a pita because it wasn’t a core competency. At least that was my take.
- jpgvm 5y agoBoxes full of disks used to be special, in a past time there was only the glorious Thumper. BB pods and hyperscaler servers built by Quanta and Supermicro have pushed "boxes full or disks" into race to the bottom territory. Software is now the only thing that separates services like BB, Dropbox, et al. Don't cry for BB pods, they did their job and now you can get a higher quality chassis at a similar cost basis from Dell as a result.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoBackblaze, if you’re reading this… I used to work in a data centre doing infrastructure; I’m a metal fabricator by trade and now run and operate a laser cutter full time; I’ve done plenty of industrial spray painting; and heaps of press operating; plenty of CAD / CAM experience. With trainee under me, I could have built these for you in-house and been useful the rest of the month when fabrication and painting etc was done. That would have been fun!
- aimatt 5y agoWell that post gave me some serious blue balls