Yev here -> that info should be in the SMART stats, so if you see a dip, checking there will give you a lot more context (though we'd likely call that out in our blog).
Yev from Backblaze here -> we do! Though granted this post was general and not based on our own horde of SSDs (which we haven't deployed) - but the topic was interesting!
Yev here as prophesied! Interesting subject! I'll have to toss it to the group. My assumption is that it would a bit tough for us to write since we aren't necessarily experts in SSDs (yet) - but might be something to consider for the future!
No this feature requites the data to already have been sent to Backblaze via the Backblaze computer backup application - so it's not quite a 1st party app for B2 (still requires the subscription to get the data uploaded). We vet all the integrations listed on our site and there's some really simple ones that do a good job of sending the data over to B2.
Yev from Backblaze here ->
We look forward to you hosting GCS in B2 :P
Seriously though - it IS something we've done if a customer had legitimate concerns but having it be more streamlined will be a much cleaner process!
Yev from Backblaze here -> That's awesome to hear! I'm glad you're with us! That's one of the nice side-benefits of this blog and one of the reasons we adopted an "open" policy with the Storage Pods. The first time we published that post it was because folks didn't believe we could store data so inexpensively - so it's nice to hear that we're building some trust along the way!
Yev from Backblaze here -> Not sure if you'd get that metric from that data. We use Reed-Solomon erasure coding (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/reed-solomon/) to make sure that data is "rebuilt" should we lose drives (which happens all the time).
Yev from Backblaze here -> Yea, it really is just about seeing what works well for our environment and our use-case. We certainly COULD go out and buy enterprise-grade power supplies, but the system is designed for failure, so the added expense often is not worth it!
Yev from Backblaze -> Glad you like it!
*Edit -> I was just at SpiceWorld in Austin and a lot of the sys admins who were there enjoyed it quiet a bit! I'm headed to JNUC in Minneapolis next week and last year we talked a lot about hard drive stats as well!
The operator of course. They are definitely useful (at least on our end). We've found that making it easy to share the blogs increases the odds that folks actually boink the button and add a personalized message. Plus the share counting works as "social proof" for posts. If you read a blog post that 3 other people have shared you might abandon it before finishing. If 300 people have shared it, you'll likely be more prone to finish searching for why they thought it was so interesting.
That can be gamed though, but we keep ours "natural".
Heh, "medium dickbars", hell of a title, and I think that's EXACTLY what the social bar manufacturers are thinking. Unfortunately though, they're super useful :-/
Hahahaha! Social sharing is great! Do not fear the share bar! Seriously though, sorry about that - not sure if we can do anything on our end as that's the way that widget works :( We might be able to add a "print" button so you can just print the post out, would that help?
Yev from Backblaze here -> of course I'm around :D
Good questions! We recycle the drives that get removed from service. As for future shortages, that's one of the reasons we took a small round back in 2012 (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-raises-5-million-wh...). The majority of it was to spend on marketing experiments, but a little portion was to be used for buffer if an event like that ever happened again and hard drive prices spiked 300%. We're a lot larger now and do a pretty good job with forecasting and having rainy day funds, but we've also gotten to the point where we are now a bit less price sensitive, so we'd be able to handle the fluctuation. That said, if everything goes horribly wrong...https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/
Yev from Backblaze here -> We don't typically post the cost of the drives, but one thing you can be sure of, is that we go for as good of a price-to-density ratio as we can! So if they were much more expensive than their counterparts we would likely avoid them until they came down enough for us to test them out!
Our Online Backup service is primarily for backing up computers, but Backblaze B2 is used for a wide variety of things including origin-stores, and those use-cases are pretty in-line with what folks use Azure and GCS for - so should be pretty similar - unless I misunderstood!