4 ms·

Is there any information what lead to Backblaze to stop making their own hardware and going with COTS?

mbrameld 3y ago
> Over the last few years, we began using storage servers from Dell and, more recently, Supermicro, as they have proven to be economically and operationally viable in our environment. Sounds like it was money.
wannacboatmovie 3y ago
Yes, building your own shit is expensive. Tale as old as time. Before someone uses Google's servers as an example, I would say that strapping together consumer grade components with zip ties and no case isn't what I'd consider a 'server'; rather, a loose collection of parts.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Google has 3 orders of magnitude more servers than I’ll ever need. With that sort of difference it’s not only a change of solution but also a change of rules. We simply do not witness the same bottlenecks.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  IIRC, parts for some of the garage servers were found from literally dumpster diving. However, it does cause you to write some very fault tolerant code.
Analemma_ 3y ago
They may have just reached a scale where it was viable, where it wasn't before. The bigger you are, the bigger discounts you can negotiate. They also certainly have the leverage to walk away from a deal, since they have proof "hey, we'll just build our own if we don't like your offer."
ericbarrett 3y ago
My sense is that storage server prices have had to come down to compete with both cloud (like S3 archival tiers) and roll-your-own solutions. The former are relatively recent and the latter have become more feasible as companies—Backblaze among them—have open sourced well-engineered designs. Storage server margin used to be insane, over 80% after COGS back in the 00s and only slightly less last decade, and there's still room to compete.
- hinkley 3y ago
  I hope history will eventually read something like this: In the aftermath of the Dot Com Bust, manufacturers became conservative, and lost their ability to dream big. Into this power vacuum stepped the so called Cloud Providers, who in some cases made their own hardware and tools to solve their problems. Over time manufacturing caught up, missing tools were written, and the Cloud providers went back to solving the main problem nearly none of their customers of suppliers could ever solve: the speed of light (locality).
zdw 3y ago
I would imagine that in the early days there was nothing that met the requirements. Early on very few systems had the drive density needed - products like Sun's Thumper with 48 drives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Fire_X4500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Fire_X4500) were few and far between. Today there are lots of high storage density devices, so no point to build your own if you can get it already engineered and with a warranty from somewhere else.
louis-paul 3y ago
Here is another post by the same author: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovation-to-commodity/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovat...
metadaddy 3y ago
Full disclosure - I am Chief Technical Evangelist at Backblaze. Yep - we explained it all here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovation-to-commodity/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovat...

> Over the last few years, we began using storage servers from Dell and, more recently, Supermicro, as they have proven to be economically and operationally viable in our environment. Sounds like it was money.

wannacboatmovie 3y ago

Yes, building your own shit is expensive. Tale as old as time. Before someone uses Google's servers as an example, I would say that strapping together consumer grade components with zip ties and no case isn't what I'd consider a 'server'; rather, a loose collection of parts.

hinkley 3y ago
Google has 3 orders of magnitude more servers than I’ll ever need. With that sort of difference it’s not only a change of solution but also a change of rules. We simply do not witness the same bottlenecks.
lesuorac 3y ago
IIRC, parts for some of the garage servers were found from literally dumpster diving. However, it does cause you to write some very fault tolerant code.

Analemma_ 3y ago

They may have just reached a scale where it was viable, where it wasn't before. The bigger you are, the bigger discounts you can negotiate. They also certainly have the leverage to walk away from a deal, since they have proof "hey, we'll just build our own if we don't like your offer."

ericbarrett 3y ago

My sense is that storage server prices have had to come down to compete with both cloud (like S3 archival tiers) and roll-your-own solutions. The former are relatively recent and the latter have become more feasible as companies—Backblaze among them—have open sourced well-engineered designs. Storage server margin used to be insane, over 80% after COGS back in the 00s and only slightly less last decade, and there's still room to compete.

hinkley 3y ago
I hope history will eventually read something like this: In the aftermath of the Dot Com Bust, manufacturers became conservative, and lost their ability to dream big. Into this power vacuum stepped the so called Cloud Providers, who in some cases made their own hardware and tools to solve their problems. Over time manufacturing caught up, missing tools were written, and the Cloud providers went back to solving the main problem nearly none of their customers of suppliers could ever solve: the speed of light (locality).

zdw 3y ago

I would imagine that in the early days there was nothing that met the requirements. Early on very few systems had the drive density needed - products like Sun's Thumper with 48 drives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Fire_X4500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Fire_X4500) were few and far between. Today there are lots of high storage density devices, so no point to build your own if you can get it already engineered and with a warranty from somewhere else.

louis-paul 3y ago

Here is another post by the same author: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovation-to-commodity/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovat...

metadaddy 3y ago

Full disclosure - I am Chief Technical Evangelist at Backblaze. Yep - we explained it all here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovation-to-commodity/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-storage-pod-story-innovat...