To create a volume, fdisk is first used to create one partition per drive. Backblaze found that some other free open source OSes are more entry-level options into paid offerings. Debian was chosen because "it is truly free". The Pod boots 64-bit Debian 4 Linux using the JFS file system, with all access to and from the Pod via HTTPS (Figure 5).įigure 5: Backblaze Pod software architectureīackblaze went with JFS because they needed something that would support large TB volumes, run on Debian and have a good support community. They noted that with 25 MB/s throughput, 2 TB of data can be written in a day and a Pod filled within a month. But with an overall throughput of 25 MB/s, the Addionics card was still fast enough for Backblaze’s needs. I asked whether there was a performance hit from using the PCI-based card and Backblaze confirmed that the PCI-based card did yield lower performance than the PCIe cards. The port multiplier backplanes use a Silicon Image SiI3726, the SYBA cards use a SiI3132, and the Addonics card has a Silicon Image SiI3124. In Backblaze’s view, Silicon Image pioneered port multiplier technology, and Backblaze feels that their chips work best together. The card and backplane choices were limited to products using Silicon Image devices. Each of nine SATA cables connect to a Chyang Fun Industry (CFI Group) CFI-B53PM 5 Port SATA backplane. Speaking of SATA, Figure 4 shows the SATA subsystem, which is composed three two-port Syba SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II controller cards and one Addonics ADSA4R5 4-Port SATA II PCI controller card. But after pondering the comparison chart in Figure 1, they decided that they could recoup the cost of designing and building their own storage pretty quickly. They first looked at commercial solutions. So they need a lot of storage, multiple petabytes (1 PB = 1,000 TB) worth, in fact. Backblaze provides "cloud" based unlimited backup for $5 per month per Mac OS or Windows computer, including multiple versions. Of course, we all realize that companies are in business to make a profit, so they aren’t going to be giving the fruits of their labor away.īut sometimes, the difference between what you can build yourself and what you have to pay for what you can buy is big enough to make you take the plunge into building your own NAS.Ĭloud backup company Backblaze had the same idea when they looked at the cost of buying "big iron" storage. Here is a youtube video showing the design of one storage pod.Many SmallNetBuilder readers realize that the prices that companies like NETGEAR, QNAP, Synology, Thecus and others charge for their high-end "business class" NASes are significantly more than the cost of equivalent NASes that they could build themselves. The nine SATA cables run from the cards to nine port multiplier backplanes that each have five hard drives plugged directly into them (45 hard drives in total).” “one pod contains one Intel Motherboard with four SATA cards plugged into it. To quote their site, the storage pods contain the following hardware: I think this design is great and if I had the space / resources I would defintely attempt one of these as a project for myself. Each storage pod can be looked at as one building block of a much larger storage solution. In their post, they show how using this method they manage to save tons of money that would have been otherwise spent on Amazon S3 storage, EMC / Dell or Sun solutions. They detail how they build these custom “storage pods” that get rack mounted in their datacenter for online storage. I know this is old now, but a while back I came across this blog post by the company Backblaze.
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