Backblaze has made a new release available and all users are scheduled to be automatically upgraded over the next two weeks. Below are the enhancements in this release:

Release Date: 3/1/10
Version: 1.0.6
Auto-Update: All Users

Performance Improvements
* Reduces network traffic between client and Backblaze data center.

Improved install & error checking robustness (Mac)
* Clearer messaging during installation if Backblaze data center cannot be reached.
* Clear notification when two Backblaze computers are running with the same ID.
* Many miscellaneous small fixes.

Happy New Year! One year ago we said goodbye to 2008 - we couldn’t have even imagined what 2009 would bring. So, again, we’ll take a look back at 2009 and pull out our crystal ball to take the slightest look ahead to 2010.

Mac Love
We entered 2009 with a private beta of our online backup for the Mac, an attempt to Bring Back Steve Jobs, and a few months later launched the Mac online backup service to an incredible welcome.

While the launch of Apple Time Machine initially made us think Mac users would skip using Backblaze - it turned out to be exactly the opposite as Apple educated everyone that backup was important. In just a few months Backblaze had more Mac customers than Windows ones - and it continues to be the case today. This especially warms the hearts of some our founders who started their careers at Apple and warranted us creating a blog category: Mac Love.

Features & Releases
Feedback flowed in and we attempted to add features while maintaining simplicity. This resulted in 15 individual software releases for both the Windows and Mac versions. Major items included adding robust support for external drives, moving the Mac to 64-bit, fully supporting Mac Snow Leopard and Windows 7 operating systems, and a ton of smaller enhancements to improve the performance and usability of the service.

Published the Backblaze Storage Pod Design
This was our single biggest surprise of the year. Out of necessity, we designed our own cloud storage pod hardware when we started because the options in the market were too costly. Since we consider ourselves to be a software company - and believe that is where the magic resides - we gave away the design for the storage pod to the community.

What happened next was amazing: about a hundred articles were published about it; 500,000 people read the blog post; DIGG, Reddit, Slashdot, Hacker News, StumbleUpon users pushed the post to the top; hundreds of companies contacted us to learn how to build the bods or to buy them (despite them not being for sale.)

Cloud Storage Scaling
Photos, music, videos, documents…it turns out if you store all of people’s data, you need a lot of storage. A year ago we were adding less than 50 terabytes per month. Now we add 500 terabytes every month just to keep up with demand and have over 4 petabytes (that’s 4,000 terabytes!) Looking at this wild growth, we moved to a datacenter space with room to add about another 40 petabytes!

Backblaze for Business Launched
Companies had been signing up since the first day the Backblaze service was available…but this required putting a credit card on each individual account and provided no central billing or management. Launching Backblaze for Business enabled companies to backup all their employees’ laptops and desktops with central billing and reporting - for the same $50/year/computer price with unlimited storage. Since then a host of companies, schools, and organizations have signed up to protect their data.

Affiliate Program Grows
While our affiliate program became available at the end of 2008, it really hit it strides in 2009, with over 400 affiliates signing up - and some earning thousands of dollars for simply helping other people not lose their data.

Awards, Reviews, Recommendations, and Kudos
We were thrilled with the response to the Mac launch and the publishing of the storage pod design. However, along the way we were also touched all the photographer love: Photojojo telling its readers “Backblaze is the best online backup tool we’ve ever used,” Ron Brinkmann writing up a detailed explanation called “my offsite backup strategy“, Stuck in Customs’ Trey Ratcliff recommending us a “great backup system,” all the guys at TWIP who numerous times mentioned us in their podcast, and so many others. In the process, of course, we saved many photographers’ pictures.

Most recently we were chosen as a finalist for the Crunchies “Best Technology Achievement of 2009” award. Previously, MacUser chose Backblaze the winner in a labs review, Nerd Stalker selected the company as one of the Best of 2009, Steve Sande at TUAW called Backblaze his “personal favorite,” Ted Landau at MacObserver said “Backblaze does exactly what it promised to do and what I was hoping it could do. I couldn’t ask for more,” and many others told us how much they enjoyed the service. We work hard to make the service great - and are thrilled when people love it.

Profitable and Cash Flow Positive
When we set out to build Backblaze, one of our goals was to grow it responsibly - focusing on efficiency rather than throwing money at problems. It required a fair amount of blood, sweat, and tears (you know, bloody fingertips from all the computer typing)…but this year the company turned both profitable and cash flow positive - a fantastic feeling!

So…where do we go in 2010?
Well, as we learned in 2009…it’s little more than a guess at this point. We have numerous plans for the online backup service itself - intending to add features such as the ability to migrate backups from one computer to another, a number of performance enhancements, the ability to grant gifts, and more. Fleshing out enhancements to Backblaze for Business and launching a reseller portal are also on the list. It isn’t a guess that we’ll continue to add loads of cloud storage capacity - and almost certainly upgrade to using 2 TB drives making each of our storage pods capable of holding 90 TB…perhaps even 2.5 TB drives that would put nearly 113 TB in one pod. Beyond that…we’ll need to wait as 2010 unfolds.

Thank you for entrusting us with your data and Happy New Year!

GigaOm, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch have gotten together again to put on the Academy Awards of the tech industry - the Crunchies. Backblaze is honored to have been named a finalist in the category: Best Technology Achievement of 2009.

Not sure if you have heard of the other finalists…one is a little startup called Google and the other some company named Microsoft.

Voting for the Crunchies ends this Wednesday Jan 6, 2010 at midnight and we would love to have your vote. (It takes just a click to vote - no personal info or sign-ups.)

How did we get selected to be a finalist?
Nominations from you and selection by the Crunchies Committee.

What is the technology achievement?
A combination of the unlimited, unthrottled, backup-all-data online backup service itself and the uber-inexpensive cloud storage hardware design we gave away.

So, what now?
Vote for us! We promise to still be your friend after we’re famous.

You may not be familiar with the name Crispin Porter + Bogusky, but you’re probably familiar with their work. The firm, which was named U.S. Agency of the Year by Adweek last year, created “The King” and “Whopper Freakout” campaigns for Burger King; the Windows Mojave, Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates and I’m a PC campaigns for Microsoft; as well as ads for Guitar Hero, Old Navy, Best Buy, Coke Zero, and others.

For the previous four years they have also been the official U.S. agency for Volkswagen and have created a lot of media during that time. So, when it came time to archive all of that media somewhere…they decided to build their own Backblaze Storage Pod.

Ryan Banham, Windows Evangelist at Crispin Porter + Bogusky took on the task:

Just as everyone is settling down for a big turkey dinner our first
Backblaze storage pod will be preparing to feast on terabytes of data.

He customized the Backblaze storage pod reference design with a different motherboard, more memory, Samsung instead of Seagate drives, a single power supply, and used Windows Server 2008 as the operating system. It’s great to see people making the design suit their particular purpose. Once he hones in on the final design for their purpose, he plans to deploy several racks of mirrored archive servers to support their storage needs.

Some of the feedback Ryan provided to us on his customized version included:
* The pod is uber-cool: Even under full load the drives stay under 72 F, so he also swapped our fans for quieter and lower power intake fans.
* No trampolines for the pod: Moving the pod around requires the RAID cards to be reseated (possibly because the bottoms of the RAID cards stick out of the case.)
* $20 gets you far. A pod running 50% - 75% of the month costs just $20 in electricity.

Ryan says:

Thanks for sharing the build and giving me something fun and
interesting to do over the last few weeks! I learned a lot.

Glad it was interesting and useful and thank you for sharing your learnings!

Photos Ryan sent us of his pod:

Backblaze has made a new release available and all users are scheduled to be automatically upgraded over the next two weeks. Below are the enhancements in this release:

Release Date: 12/4/09
Version: 1.0.4
Auto-Update: All Users

All binaries are signed (Win)
The installers Windows and Mac installers has always been signed and all Mac binaries have been signed since the Snow Leopard release. Now all binaries on Windows are signed as well per request by Symantec to reduce old versions of Norton anti-virus from misidentifying Backblaze as a virus.

Renewal notification enhancements
* Added notifications to alert customers if their renewal did not succeed.

Added temporary file exclusions
* Excluded DropBox, MobileMe, and Safari cache files since they are temporary and automatically rebuilt.

UI enhancements
* Touched up German and French text to be more accurate and fit better.
* Updated “Vault” icon in Backblaze Preference Pane. (Mac)
* Clicking “Backblaze Preference…” from the icon in the top-bar shows the pane even if it was minimized to the dock. (Mac)
* Stopped printing unnecessary status messages to stdout log. (Mac)

Backup enhancements
* Added iPhone backups to be backed up (for iPhones that are synched with iTunes to the desktop or laptop.)
* Added Mozilla Firefox shortcuts to backup. (Mac)
* Avoid backing up bogus “.” and “..” files found in /Users/Shared/ folders.

Improved install & auto-update robustness (Mac)
* Unpack new installer into uniquely named folder to avoid conflicts.
* Pre-check for Backblaze system files running during auto-update.
* Pre-check for certain esoteric system items to enhance install success.

What do Google providing search, Coca-Cola operating its systems to track inventory, and Backblaze backing up your data have in common? The computers that handle all of this live in data centers. And those data centers use power - lots of it.

In the U.S. alone there are over 20,000 data centers - each of which houses thousands or tens of thousands of servers. Combined, these data centers make up 3% of all U.S. energy consumption (not just electricity) - more than the entire domestic air fleet.

So when I went to an event on Wednesday called:
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE DATA CENTER:
CLOUD, COLOCATION, & DATA CENTER REAL ESTATE
it should be no surprise that the focus was on power, power, power.

And lest you think this is people getting wrapped up in the green movement or just jumping on a marketing trend - let me dissuade you. Datacenters in the U.S. spend $23 billion a year on electricity according to KC Mares of MegaWatt Consulting. In fact, electricity can often cost over 50% of the purchase price of a server over it’s lifetime. Minor improvements can have massive implications not only on global warming but also company bottom lines.

KC provided a fascinating overview of innovations and experiments that operators of data centers and the companies building out large server deployments are pursuing. Some examples:

* VFDs - variable frequency drives to adjust the speed of blower fans that adjust to need rather than spinning at a constant rate.
* Natural cooling - using outside air and fans rather than air-conditioning to keep data centers cool; it turns out most servers are perfectly happy running at temperatures much higher than what data centers attempt to keep them at.
* Shorter cooling regions - having air flow almost directly around a server in the process of cooling it rather than through the entire building; shorter distances mean less air friction and less energy spent moving it around.
* Eliminating UPS systems - getting rid of the backup power systems and assuming servers will go down…and having backup servers or data centers instead.
* Using 480 volts - higher voltage means lower amperage and thus less heat loss and higher efficiency. More of today’s server systems are capable of handling this voltage.
* Higher efficiency power supplies - switching to 90% efficient power supplies on servers rather than using 70% or 80% ones; these are more expensive upfront but can still pay off fairly quickly.

A number of these items pay for themselves in a couple months and then generate savings ongoing from then on. KC has a variety of information on his site and blog.

Are you in San Francisco for Salesforce’s Dreamforce event?

3 days, 15,000 people, booming sounds booths, light shows, and lots of clouds - both the real and virtual type. Salesforce provides you plenty of guidance about what to do at Dreamforce.

But what should you do when you are outside of Dreamforce?

You could go to the standard nearby corporate locations: Chevy’s, the W Hotel bar, Thirsty Bear, or Starbucks. But…the Backblaze team lives here and we like a little variety. So, shhhh…we’ll share with you a few of our favorite spots that are walking distance from Dreamforce, but provide a little local color.

Samovar - Directly above Moscone center, in the upper terrace on Yerba Buena Gardens but ironically REALLY hard to find. Quite possibly the best tea in San Francisco. Their Chai is mindblowing.

Metreon Farmers Market - Yes, it is an indoor farmer’s market. Great spot for a quick eat during the busy conference. Our favorites include the gyros, indian wraps …and of course, red velvet mini cupcakes. Also, as an appetizer, definitely try some of the afghani bread; if you stand at their booth long enough, you might not need lunch. (Metreon building - entrance at the corner of Mission St and 4th St.)

Pazzia - Great local Italian place. Italian style pizzas served by Italians. Go ahead, practice your Italian on the waiters and waitresses… They love it! (337 3rd St between Folsom and Harrison)

Epicenter - Good coffee, good sandwiches, free wifi. A Backblaze favorite. (764 Harrison St between 3rd and 4th)

Blue Bottle Coffee - These guys are serious about a cup of coffee. Everything they do, from selecting the beans, to assembling the blends, to roasting is painstakingly detailed. Then, each cup is brewed at the time you order it, one at a time. Once you have Blue Bottle, you won’t want anything else. (66 Mint Street at Mission St.)

Butler & Chef - This lovely French bistro has the best croque monsieur and crepes in the city. Great spot for a breakfast meeting. (155A South Park St near 3rd St and Bryant St in South Park.)

farmerbrown’s little skillet - The closest you will get to southern cooking in San Francisco. Needless to say, whenever you are presented a menu with waffles and fried chicken, what could go wrong? (360 Ritch, between Brannan St and Townsend St.)

BrainWash - Get your laundry done while sipping a nice coffee. Or if you have brought enough clothes for the week, just enjoy the soothing sounds and smells of laundry machines and clean clothes. (A bit of a walk. 1122 Folsom between 7th St and 8th St.)

What about for a drink in the evening?

B Bar - The $1 oysters during happy hour are fantastic… and as long as the weather is sunny and warm, the outdoor patio rocks. (Directly above Moscone center, near Samovar, in the upper terrace on Yerba Buena Gardens but ironically REALLY hard to find.)

Mr. Smiths - A hipster bar in a dive bar area. Happy hour goes till 8pm. (34 7th St between Market St and Mission St.)

111 Minna - An art gallery with a drinking problem. (Surprisingly located at 111 Minna St, just off 2nd St between Mission St and Howard St.)

Chieftain - Relax with a Guinness at this Irish pub that’s just a block away from Dreamforce. (198 5th St at Howard St.)

Bourbon and Branch - San Francisco’s very own speakeasy. You don’t need a reservation at the library, but you might need the password. (Locals know it’s, “Books” … Ssshhh, don’t tell anyone.)

And just for fun, you can stop by Central Computer - the place we started out buying hard drives by the pallet to fill our Backblaze Storage Pods so we could help backup all those sales laptops (837 Howard Street between 4th St and 5th St.)

CrunchGear published that the National Security Agency (NSA) is forecasting it may need yottabytes of storage to keep all of its surveillance data by 2015.

What is a yottabyte?
1000 GB = 1 Terabyte (TB)
1000 TB = 1 Petabyte (PB)
1000 PB = 1 Exabyte (EB)
1000 EB = 1 Zettabyte (ZB)
1000 ZB = 1 Yottabyte (YB)
In other words, a Yottabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000 GB.

How much will this cost by 2015
On the one hand, what makes this even tougher is that typical storage systems cost 10x the price of the raw hard drives. Thus, the likely actual cost of storage for the NSA:
* $1,000 trillion for a complete storage system

The NSA may need to partner with NASA to see if it can spin off about 15 more planet Earth’s so their combined GDP could pay for its storage requirements.

On the other hand, this is based on prices and storage technology in 2009. But the cost per GB has dropped consistently 4% per month for the last 30 years. Assume the trend continues for the next 5 years, by when the NSA needs their yottabyte of storage. The costs in 2015 then would be:
* $8 trillion for the raw drives
*$80 trillion for a storage system

Well, that’s getting closer - a bit less than today’s global GDP.

How much space will this take by 2015?
Per historical metrics, a drive should hold 10 TB by 2015. The NSA would require:
* 100 billion hard drives
* 2 billion Backblaze storage pods

And of course, they would probably want this data backed up.
That might really test our offer of $5 for unlimited storage.

To be fair, the original analysis states that the need for yottabytes of information may not be accurate because it assumes that data is collected in a way similar to today. Instead, it purports they may only need hundreds of petabytes of data storage by 2015; significant, but completely manageable. Hard drives are also the assumed technology - which has been a good assumption for 30 years and may continue to be a good one for the next 5 years. SSD and other technologies may provide some interesting options, but in the near term, the price and density winner will likely continue to be spinning platters.

Regardless of how much data the NSA ends up needing to store, could we perhaps recommend a storage design?

Ever since Backblaze launched, providing incredibly easy, unlimited online backup, for individual users…companies have said, “Hey, but we have laptops and desktops that need to be backed up too!”

To help these companies, this week we launched Backblaze for Business, making available the same $50 per year per computer unlimited backup.

What is Backblaze for Business?
It is an online backup service that automatically and continuously backs up all data from laptops and desktops over the Internet. The data is de-duplicated, compressed, encrypted, and broken up into small pieces before being uploaded so that it can sent incrementally. If the computer dies, individual employees can restore their data by downloading it or having Backblaze FedEx the data on DVDs or a USB hard drive.

How much does it cost?
Just $50 per computer per year for unlimited storage.

Wait, this sounds just like the consumer service?
Yes, why change a good thing?! What Backblaze for Business adds is:
* Central Billing - a company can pay for all of its accounts centrally and can choose to pay via credit card or be invoiced for the service.
* Central Reporting - the person in charge of the backup service can get automated reports about which computers are licensed, when their last backup was, how far into the backup they are, etc.

Who should use Backblaze for Business?
The service is available for companies with at least 5 employees. Have less than 5? Just have each user sign-up for the regular Backblaze service. Have 10, 100, 1000, or more? Get started on the Backblaze for Business page.

How does this compare to my other options?
There are various ways to backup employee laptops and desktops. You could:
* Buy each user an external hard drive - which will cost you about two years of Backblaze service; you still need a way for them to backup to the drive; there is no central management; and the chances that the hard drive is in the same place as the laptop? Well, you get the point.
* Use a central tape drive system - and sign up to rotate and manage tapes continuously? Deal with the stat that over half of the time tapes fail when you need to restore data? Oh, and how do you deal with users being remote with their laptops?
* Tell users to save important files to a shared drive - seriously, you know this does not actually happen, right?
* Don’t backup laptops and desktops - even though 60% of corporate data is on those employee computers and 70% of companies die after a significant data loss?

What about other online backup solutions?
There are other certainly other options available. We heard 3 requests from companies:
1. Make it easy to deploy. All other solutions required IT to figure out what to backup. Unfortunately, without going to every employee’s computer, that was impossible to figure out, so they would either just backup “My Documents” or pick common filetypes; knowing that other data was going to get lost.
=> Backblaze automatically backs up all data.

2. Make the pricing predictable. Companies need to budget, especially in the current economy. Having unpredictable expenses that grow with the amount of data backed up it challenging.
=> Backblaze charges one fixed price for unlimited storage.

2. Make the pricing affordable. Companies really want to backup their data, but paying $0.50 - $2.00 per GB per month adds up very quickly to hundreds or thousands of dollars per computer per year. A laptop with just 100 GB on it would cost $600 - $2400 per year to backup. Most companies just cannot afford this.
=> Backblaze charges just $50 per computer per year.

How do I get started?
Just visit Backblaze for Business and stop worrying.

Microsoft has been asking people to throw house parties for the launch of Windows 7. We threw our own…but rather than bags of Doritos we racked stacks of hard drives.

For those of you that did throw a Windows 7 house party, or just bought or upgraded to Windows 7, Backblaze fully supports the new OS. In fact, about 6% of Backblaze customers are already using Windows 7 and backing up their data.

Planning to upgrade an existing computer?
* Windows Vista to Windows 7: Use the “In-Place Upgrade” option if available. This keeps your data and Backblaze will continue to operate seamlessly. If the option is not available and you need to do do a “Custom Install”, please carefully follow the steps in FAQ #18 so as to not require re-backing up data. (Find out if you are able to do an In-Place Upgrade to Windows 7 on the Microsoft upgrade chart.)

* Windows XP to Windows 7: Microsoft does not provide a migration path and requires you to delete all data and applications prior to upgrading. Thus, in order to continue with your backup where you left off without needing to re-backup your data, carefully follow the steps in FAQ #18.

Buying a new computer?
Did you get a new computer for the house?
Have friends, family, or co-workers that picked up a new Windows 7 system?
Make sure those new laptops and desktops are also backed up for just $5/month.

Don Honabach has the honor of being the first person to successfully build his own Backblaze storage pod. (At least the first we know about.)

With four servers running at home for media storage, Don, was using a fair bit of power (and probably generating a lot of heat and noise and taking up space.) For five years he was working to come up with an “Extreme Media Server” and after reading about the Backblaze storage pod, he decided this may be the way to go.

Having expertise in the space, Don customized a variety of items in the pod including:
* The operating system (switching to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2)
* Power supplies
* Motherboard
* and more…

In just a couple weeks Don had completed his “Extreme Media Server”. Combining all four servers into one, Don is saving 500 watts of power, and can run 16 independent movie streams across two monitors from a single storage pod.

Don created a blog that describes his experiences building his Extreme Media Server.

Congratulations Don and good luck watching all those movies at the same time!

Have you upgraded to Snow Leopard? Users on Apple’s forums are reporting a bug that deletes all user data if someone mistakenly logs into the “Guest” account. This issue was originally reported about a month ago on Cnet’s MacFixIt but today is being mentioned across the web as more people are being bitten by the bug.

While not completely reproducible, it is happening frequently enough to take a basic action: turn off the guest account.

eHow explains how to turn off the guest account - it’s quick and takes just a minute.

Of course, you should also make sure your data is backed up, but I assume you already use Backblaze to do this.

Last month’s blog post about building our Backblaze storage pods generated a ton of interest and many people are building their own pods! Our post also generated a ton of questions so below we answer the common ones and provides more detail about where to get components.
Continue reading…

Backblaze has made a new release available and all users are scheduled to be automatically upgraded over the next two weeks. Below are the enhancements in this release:

Release Date: 6/8/09
Windows Version: 1.0.3.209
Mac Version: 1.0.3.210
Auto-Update: All Users

Enhanced Bandwidth Utilization
Streamlined metadata uploads to reduce bandwidth usage and enhance backup speed.

Enhanced Update Checking
“Check for Updates” menu item now takes users to a dedicated update page if a new update is available. (Note: software autoupdates, so checking for updates is optional.)

UI Enhancements
* Updated new graphics elements including “Vault” and “Computer.”
* Updated certain dialogs with the Vista “white” look and feel. (Win)

Added Exclusions
* Excluded WER (Windows Error Reporting) folder. (Win)
* Excluded Mac mail “Envelope Index” since it constantly changes and is then recreated automatically. (Mac)

Minor Bug Fixes
* Increased height of several pull down menus that became too short after adding support for blind users.
* Updated installer to handle certain permission restrictions. (Mac)
* Updated installer to fix ’standard’ user install regression. (Mac)
* Updated installer to handle spaces in temporary folder names or the lack of an existing temporary folder altogether. (Mac)

Three weeks ago we published how to build a Backblaze Storage Pod, the cloud storage hardware we use for our unlimited online backup service, and gave away the design to anyone who wished to build their own. We thought a few people might find it interesting. Perhaps some might even want to try to build one. We never expected would happen next.

Om Malik wrote about it at GigaOm, as did Robin Harris at StorageMojo, and Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. Soon after, CrunchGear, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Mashable, TUAW, Electronista, MacWorld, Vator.tv, NetworkComputing, On-Storage, PSFK, Enterprise Storage Forum, eWeek and dozens of others picked it up. After digging in, SmallNetBuilder did a thorough breakdown for its DIY audience.
Continue reading…

At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867.

In this post, we’ll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you’re welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze.

Below is a video that shows a 3-D model of the Backblaze Storage Pod. Continue reading to learn the exact details of the design.

You can download the full 3-D model of the Backblaze Storage Pod here.

Continue reading…