Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2022(backblaze.com) |
Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2022(backblaze.com) |
Seven years is indeed a lot of revolutions if they're constantly at 5,000 RPM or more.
Are those drives really live for all that time?
I'd expect that Backblaze's business model requires lots of storage and not a lot of access/transfer - lots of write once/read never data. Their storage pods have dual 10Gb network ports, but with 60 drives in a box, each capable of 6 Gb transfer speeds, you can only full use about 4 drives at a time. Are the other 56 drives spinning at full speed all the time, or parked?
I know it’s a little different, but AWS Glacier doesn’t keep all data “hot”.
Over the years, 45drives has put an extreme premium on their systems compared to supermicro. We have a half dozen or so of the storinator chassis and we've switched back to supermicro high density storage systems, including some of their top load 90 bay jbods. It's been more cost effective for us, i'm wondering if that's the same for Backblaze.
I've been a backblaze customer for around 10 years, it's been great for home systems. Always love this transparency in their reports.
They don't state exactly what they're using, only that they're "Dell Servers" which honestly aren't the densest things in the world. I would've thought they'd go for something like the PowerVaults which can fit 84 drives into 5U, which is a little bit denser than their current storage pod configuration (60 drives in 4U).
I did recently do a comparison with our low end servers compared to a JBOD array with the same amount of storage and the uplift for the server configuration was about 10%, give or take. That was limited to a total of 24 drives in 2U however, so not sure how that'd compare to the larger PowerVault arrays or JBODs.
I've been a customer of Backblaze as well for about 6 years now and agree, it's been brilliant for backing up my home network! The reports helped me choose the right drives numerous times over, love their work.
I assumed publishing the stats would actually work to BackBlaze's advantage, because it means no HDD supplier is going to skimp on quality control on the order going to BackBlaze.
Since they're always trialing other disks on small scale, this can only really benefit both them and humanity as a whole!
Also I think they know this and still post it for the community benefit. What people store in the cloud is important and drive failure is their business because they are storing that data.
Moving to any particular drive probably indicates bulk purchasing availability at reasonable prices more than anything else.
Separately, my nas running RAID 10 worked as it was supposed to: I hot swapped the drives one at a time over several weeks, and went from 7tb storage to something like 24tb with no downtime or hassle. The device has been sitting in my basement for years, and it was cool to see the raid technology work as intended after all this time.
HDDs will continue to be used for big storage. They are cheaper per GB and power usage is not that much worse on average (only spinups are energy demanding). Looking forward to 100TB HDD drives.
One thing to note about Synology, is that they dont update their Linux Kernel over the life time of its product. I am thinking if they are making changes considering there are products being sold not long ago with very outdated kennel.
And considering the amount of polish and fixes inside BTRFS, you might want to look into it if it could be a problem for your use cases.
Generally speaking it is good enough for most consumers.
What I like about synology is the operating system/software. You can connect to it with a web browser, and it has something akin to a traditional operating system interface that lets you control all its functions.
I have found it very good as a file server for business/home office use, and as a backup target for multiple mac computers using time-machine. It also has very good online support, both from synology itself, and lots of freelance youtube/web help.
The other thing I personally really like is its "hyper backup" feature, which replicates all your NAS files (or those you choose) to the cloud, so they can be restored later.
I have also found it to be totally trouble free. I just installed the drives (they have a list of compatible ones), choose my RAID, and it has worked seamlessly for many years (I have a DS218+ as well that has worked well). It sends me emails reporting drive health, confirming backup completion, etc.
The While pricier the DS18xx range are the most common I've seen (depending on your budget). If you plan on getting one used off ebay, look out for the 1815+ and others in the xx15 generation, they had faulty intel atom chips that ended up hosing the systems sadly.
I've got a couple DS1817 's with the DX517 expansion chassis added on (total of 18 drives). They've been great for storing movies / media but unfortunately they're a bit low powered for transcoding.
I wirelessly back up my Macs and then use Backblaze B2 for offsite backups of that. I've found by combining this with the snapshot features of btrfs that this has been reliable.
My Synology is wired to my home cat 6, and the only thing stopping me from getting 10GbE to the devices that need it most is the stubbornly high prices of 10GBASE-T switches (I keep hearing it has something to do with heat (?)).
If you choose to mirror your drives, you can achieve some really good read speeds, which is nice.
