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Backblaze Bootstraps to Hit One Exabyte

by Phil Marsden
written by Phil Marsden

Reposting Blog from BackBlaze CEO.

Blog Post Title: An Announcement With 18 Zeros

Author: Gleb Budman, CEO and Co-Founder

Since the beginning of Backblaze—back in 2007, when five of us were working out of Brian Wilson’s apartment in Palo Alto—watching the business grow has always been profoundly exciting for me. And I’m not talking about financial growth (that’s nice too, of course).

Our team has grown. From five way back in the Palo Alto days, to 145. Our customer base has grown. Today, we have customers in over 160 countries… it doesn’t seem that long ago when I was excited about having our 160th customer.

More than anything else, the data we manage for our customers has grown.

In 2008, not long after our launch, we had 750 customers and thought ten terabytes was a lot of data. But things progressed quickly, and just two years later we reached 10 petabytes of customer data stored (1000x more). (Good thing we designed for zettabyte-scale cloud architecture!)

By 2014, we were storing 100 petabytes – the equivalent of 11,415 years of HD video.

Years passed, our team grew, the number of customers grew, and—especially after we launched B2 Cloud Storage in 2015—the data grew. At some scale it got harder to contextualize what hundreds and hundreds of petabytes really meant. I like to remember that each byte is part of some individual’s beloved family photos or some organization’s critical data that they’ve entrusted us to protect.

This is a belief that we’ve included in every Backblaze team member’s job description, to remind us of why we do what we do:

“Our customers use our services so they can pursue dreams like curing cancer (genome mapping is data-intensive), archive the work of some of the greatest artists on the planet (learn more about how Austin City Limits uses B2), or simply sleep well at night (anyone that’s spilled a cup of coffee on a laptop knows the relief that comes with complete, secure backups).”

It’s critically important for us that we achieved this growth by staying the same in the most important ways: being open & transparent, building a sustainable business, and caring about being good to our customers, partners, community, and team. Which is why I’m excited to announce a huge milestone today. Our biggest growth number yet.

We’ve reached 1.

Or, by another measurement, we’ve reached 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Yes, today, we’re announcing that we are storing 1 exabyte of customer data.

What does it all mean? Well. If you ask our engineers, not much. They’ve already rocketed past this number mentally and are considering how long it will take to get to a zettabyte (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).

But, while it’s great to keep our eyes on the future, it’s also important to celebrate what milestones mean. Yes, crossing an exabyte of data is another validation of our technology and our sustainably independent business model. But I think it really means that we’re providing value and earning the trust of our customers.

Thank you for putting your trust in us by keeping some of your bytes with us. We have a couple more announcements in the next few weeks that I’m looking forward to sharing with you. But for today, here’s to our biggest 1 yet. And many more to come.

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Running WordPress? Here’s some plugins to keep you safe and secure…

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

wordpress-logoI have been a longtime WordPress user.  I love the platform and how easy it makes maintaining a blog.  Not only is a great blogging platform, but its great for many other types of websites.  I have helped friends who are musicians, who own businesses and who need a simple resume site setup and get running on WordPress.

A couple years ago, I discovered a plugin called Sucuri WordPress Security plug-in.  It is a free plugin that scans your site for malware and alerts you to changes in the core files that run WordPress.  It can alert you to changes in these files which point to a possible hack that has been made on your site.  One great feature of this plugin is that it can alert you to brute force login attempts.  I thought that was a great feature and I turned it on.

A week later, my eyes were opened to how many brute force attempts were being made on my site and to others who I suggested add the plugin.  It was downright scary.  In this case, ignorance was bliss, because once I knew about the attempts, I wanted to do something about it.

So, here’s a quick list of security related plugins that I suggest you run on your WordPress sites.

  1. Akismet – Comment Spam is the probably the most prevalent problem with WordPress that most users will face.  Many hackers have devised way to automatically submit hundreds or thousands of comments with links to malicous sites and content to hook and trick users into compromising their system.  If you run a WordPress site, I think its your duty to try and prevent this type of comment spam and proliferation of malicious site links across your site.  Akismet is a must have.  It is made by Automattic, the same company who is responsible for WordPress.  This service was formerly free for personal sites, but now works on a donation based system to give you a site key which you can use to active the plugin.
  2. Sucuri WordPress Security – The mother of all WordPress security plugins, Sucuri has several functions.  It scans your site for changes to the core files that make WordPress run.  These alerts will show when plugin files or core WordPress files change contents, whether you’ve updated the plugin or a hacker has made a malicous change.  Sucuri Security provides a scanner to look for best practices and automatically remediate any problems it finds – like writable directories or showing the WordPress version in the underlying code of your site.  It also has a Post-Hack remediation toolkit to help you get back to a healthy state after an attack.  Another great feature of this free plugin is the ability to send email notifications when files are uploaded, posts are posted or updated and when pages are posted or updated.  This keeps informed when changes occur on the site so you know when someone malicious made a change ‘for’ you.
  3. JetPack – made by Automattic, the same company that makes WordPress, JetPack is a collection of add-ons to WordPress to increase functionality.  One of the add-ons is called Protect.  Added earlier in 2015, Protect will help to stop brute force attempts by blocking an IP that has too many failed login attempts in an amount of time.  It also leverages a cloud service to block known offending IP’s from accessing your site.  There are plenty of other great enhancement in JetPack, all the more reason to run it.
  4. WP-DBManager – While not specifically security software, WP-DBManager is a great tool to help you create automatic database backups of your WordPress site.  As much as it may be possible to cleanup after an attack, capturing a good and clean backup of your database is sometimes critical to fixing the problems created by an attacker.

For the people who want to go a step further, you can consider placing your WordPress site behind a web application firewall.  Sucuri, the same company who makes the plugin, offers this service for $9.99 per month and it blocks brute force login attempts, blocks all access to wp-admin except for a specific whitelist of IP addresses, and provide reports and analytics of the types of attacked attempted and blocked by the service.  The WAF service also caches your site to make it faster for your audience.

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Endless possibilities for a MicroServer

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

ReviewMicroserver

Lots and lots of Possibilities

This weekend, I was able to get the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 setup and powered on in my lab.  Its currently burning in and I’m doing some testing with it.  What do I think?  Well, you’ll have to wait until I have had more time with it before I share my impressions.  But that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about use cases.

Use Case – Creating a Lab environment

Beyond the stylish exterior, the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 can fit into a lot of possible environments and use cases.  The first one that comes to mind is my own – the home lab.  As an IT professional, its become imperative that I have a lab environment at home where I can test software and solutions. I have gotten lots of offers for trials and software from blogging and for solving my problems at work.

Many of my peers build their own whitebox systems and I have attempted recently, too.  I hadn’t built a computer in close to a decade. And my first experience trying to build a whitebox has been bumpy.  I’ll admit, I have enjoyed using a soldering iron again, but it can be frustrating trying to piece together a compatible solution.  I’d prefer to buy something ready made and that makes the MicroServer Gen8 really compelling to me.  Time is valuable, so the time I’ve spent tinkering could have been more productive if I just bought a ready-made system.

Use Case – Networked Storage

With four drive bays, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is capable of up to 12TB of storage on board with 3TB drives in each bay.  That makes it a viable candidate as a NAS solution for home or business.  There are so many implementations like FreeNAS and Openfiler to turn the MicroServer into a NAS appliance.

In addition to just file sharing, these software storage solutions have lots of add-on functionality to take basic file storage and make it useful in the home for being your media repository of movies, TV shows and music and being the source for streaming to your TV-connected box, your Android or iPhone or even some home stereo systems.  Add-on a VPN solution and it becomes your personal media cloud when you’re away from home, too.   FreeNAS can also serve as a destination for TimeMachine or other backup software solutions, so now not only primary storage but backup of your PCs and Macs.

Even again in a home lab situation, NAS distributions support iSCSI and NFS, making the MicroServer a viable storage target for VMware and other virtualization in a lab environment.   The NAS proposition has uses in so many ways.  In a lot of ways, this use case of a Proliant MicroServer offers a better performing and possibly lower cost alternative to a Synology or Drobo NAS device.  And if your needs change, you can alway repurpose or hand-me-down this server, where the others are only ever capable of being a NAS.

Use Case – Virtual Host

Running a hypervisor on the MicroServer should just be reserved for the lab – its capable of prime time.  A lot of small businesses don’t have space or need for racks, rackmount hardware or even pedestal servers.  In many cases, these small businesses run on three to five physical servers anyways, so consolidating these aging physical servers to two or three MicroServers would allow the business to save power and footprint.

The Proliant MicroServer Gen8 has a remarkably small footprint, low power consumption and small heat output.    It can easily sit on a desktop or a shelf and is not nearly as obtrusive as a tower, pedestal or rackmount server.  While not as condensed as a blade, it could serve a similar purpose in a small business environment.

Use Case – Microbusiness

There are a lot of one and two person businesses and the number of micro businesses seems to have exploded in recent years.  Perhaps its a combination of the Internet lowering the barriers of entry and the terrible economy pushing people out of traditional jobs.  These businesses still have traditional needs and while many use the cloud, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 offers a compelling self hosted solution at a price point that is competative to many cloud solutions.  A micro business may need to file or print share, have a VPN or prehaps run Remote Desktop to host a local accounting or line of business application.  And a MicroServer hosted onsite provides those features – along with the ability to access a Remote Desktop session from a mobile device on the road.

Use Case – App Server

A lot of small businesses who have either outgrown or need more tailored solutions than Quickbooks and those accounting packages usually require databases and other shared access.  This server is more than capable of running SQL Express or full Microsoft SQL and an application on bare metal along with the application.   Then there are all the customized line of business applications – from hotels, to legal, to doctor’s offices, restaurants and even mechanics.  While a lot of these have cloud solutions, many companies still rely on installed, local software to run their business and a MicroServer fits nicely.  Specifically thinking about point of sale in restaurants as a use case – having deployed several of those in my time – a compact server like this would be a welcome platform – especially at the price of these boxes.

Use Case – Policy, Accounts and Security in the Small Business

Then, there is always the business whose growing beyond the two or three person mark and needs to begin thinking about accounts, security and enforcing policy and automating some management.  The Proliant MicroServer is great for a basic AD implementation, too.  With a domain controller deployed, accounts and policy becomes possible, file shares can be more tightly secured and controlled and systems can be tied down to accounts that offer access from multiple devices.  I implemented so many of these small office when I was a consultant.  Managers or owners needed to lock down systems or ensure that only certain employees had access to some resources and AD makes that all possible.  Add solutions like WSUS and patch management becomes streamlined and managed.

The biggest competition for MicroServer

But the biggest competition for the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is cloud, possibly more than the bigger Proliants in the portfolio.  Cloud adoption may be least resistant in the small business where the MicroServer aims for adoption.  There are certainly a lot of businesses who are abandoning their client-server applications in favor of cloud solutions, but its not for everyone.  But the days of client-server are far from over.

Disclaimer: HP provided me with both the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 for review at no charge.  The opinions and views of the hardware written here are entirely my own and have not been influenced or outlined by HP.  The hardware came with no strings attached.    

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Introducing the mystery product – an HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

ReviewMicroserver

I teased you earlier that I had a special product coming to review and, today, I’m glad to announce that my HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 has arrived.  Since I had other things going on yesterday evening, I didn’t even get to unbox it, but it will be soon. So, you may be wondering – what is the Proliant MicroServer?

HP introduced the Proliant MicroServer line in 2010 as a general computing server platform aimed squarely at the micro to small business and home office markets.  In June, the company released the Gen8 model which features a nice facelift and changes under the hood.

Like all of the Proliant Gen8 hardware, the MicroServer got a little bling treatment with an aluminum grille/door – making it a very sleek-looking unit.  While the previous version looked like a generic half-sized tower, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is almost a perfect 9″ cube.  It is equipped with either a Celeron G1610T or Pentium G2020T processor and can scale up to 12TB of storage and 16GB of RAM.  Preconfigured models come with 2GB of RAM.

The Proliant Microserver Gen8 features a tool-less chassis, four cold-swap drive bays, a DVD drive, several USB ports inside, on the front and on the back of the server.  Even though the form factor deviates from the norm, the inside of the Microserver is still very serviceable, upgradable and accessible.

And one of my favorite things with the MicroServer is, just like all other Proliant servers, it includes iLO – or Integrated Lights Out management for those who may not be as familiar with HP.  iLO is HP’s flavor of an IP management interface (IPMI) and its a solid implementation for remote management for a server.

I’m very curious how this little guy compares to the ML, DL and BL Proliant models that I run in the datacenter.  I’m curious to know if the iLO is as robust or scaled back, how the unit performs and how easily I will be able to integrate this into my ESX home lab.

A picture’s worth a thousand words…

I got my first look and feel at HP Discover earlier this year and I’ve posted a few photos below that I took of the show floor to whet your appetite.  Don’t forget, one of these could be yours, too.  More to come…

Disclaimer: HP provided me with the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 and also sponsored my trip to HP Discover this year.  The opinions and views of the hardware written here are entirely my own and have not been influenced or outlined by HP. While they provided me with opportunities, those opportunities came with no strings attached.  

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A mystery product is on its way to review…

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

ReviewTime

That’s right readers.  I’m expecting something to be delivered any day now for me to review.  I’m incredibly excited to get my hands on this particular hardware and I have been admiring it since it was released this summer.  I’ll give you a clue – I work with this particular hardware’s big brothers every day in the datacenter, but this particular item is built for the small office or home office.  I imagine there are lots of inventive ways this thing can be put to use.  And best of all, not only do I get a review unit, but you’ll have a chance to win one, as well.  Stay tuned…

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DatacenterStorageVirtualization

I’ll remember VMworld 2012 for the community

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

VMware is a lucky technology company.  Few companies, short of Apple, seem to have as fierce and vibrant a community as the one that surrounds VMware.  VMworld 2012 was a remarkable time to spend with members of that community, in the realm of influencers and evangelists.  No question, I was around a lot of very smart people.  And it is fun to pick their brain and listen to their opinions about trends and directions of our industry. There is a fertile growth of tech bloggers and Twitterazzi that follow VMware and the virtualization community.  I realize that many of these folks don’t exclusively focus on VMware, but on the trends of technology in general, but virtualization has become extremely large part of that community and a bulk of the talk.

One of my highlights of the week was attending the VMware User Group (VMUG) leaders lunch on Tuesday.  This was another exceptional cross-section of the community, all of whom have rallied behind local user groups, learning opportunities, and devoted themselves to evangelizing the platform.  But it was a fairly small group of people, around 100 or so.  The highlight was hearing directly from CEO Paul Martiz, incoming CEO Pat Gelsinger and CTO Steve Herrod during the luncheon.  All three took an opportunity to talk with the relatively small group about where we’ve come, where we’re going and then all three fielded questions from the leaders.  Unscripted and completely off-the-cuff, these guys are impressive.  Each one is a technologist in their own right and they challenged the group to continue to call them out if their business decisions don’t make sense in the community.

I attended my first VMworld in 2009, I believe, and I was largely oblivious to the community, although it was already growing.  And it has exploded since that year. Not only are there formal events hosted by large, corporate sponsors during the week, the same blogging and Twitter community organizes their own unofficial events – like the VMunderground, #vodgeball tournament and others that even benefit charities with any proceeds raised.

And speaking of growth – the VMworld conference itself has grown to over 20,000 attendees.  VMUG reported over 3,000 new members in the past year and I cannot count the number of new people who I follow both their blog and Twitter for news and tips about VMware.  And its that community that I find myself a part of now – as a tech blogger.  I still consider my contribution relatively small, but I’m inspired by what I see others doing for the benefit of the whole group.

In formal recognition of the contribution of many of these people, VMware introduced a designation a few years back – the vExpert – meant to honor those who have made a signifiant contribution to the community either evangelizing or contributing knowledge, time and wisdom to others in their circle of influence.  I have met many of the vExperts and these are individuals who are passionate about technology, but down-to-earth enough to have a conversation with.  Many of them ask me where we are in the virtualization story and what my stories are from the trenches.  Some of these folks have helped significantly through the blog posts they have written with advice or best practices or with the gotchas they found before me.  Its really quite remarkable to meet and get to talk to them.

But what would this post be without highlighting some of the most influential in these circles.  These are the guys to follow in Twitter, the blogs to bookmark or subscribe and the influencers to listen to.  I was lucky enough to meet many of these guys last week, either in passing or to talk with.  Look them up.  (The list is in no particular order…)

And, I have to have an honorable mention for Crystal Lowe and the Spousetivities program.  My wife attended VMworld 2009 with me and met Crystal for the first round of Spousetivities.  From there, Spousetitives grew into a much larger and corporately sponsored program for tech spouses who come with their signifiant other to conferences like VMworld.  Crystal coordinates activities, tours and social events for spouses to do while their techie is away geeking it up.  If you attend tech conferences, you need to look up @Spousetivies and visit the website at http://www.spousetivities.com for your spouse.

For those I missed on this list – VERY sorry.  There are too many people in this community and I’m sure I’ve missed a few.  Comment or tweet me and I’ll add you to the list.  And most of all, thanks to all of these folks for their contributions to our community!

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CloudVirtualization

On the ground at VMworld 2012

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I’m on the ground now in San Francisco for VMworld 2012.  This will be an extremely busy week packed with sessions, meetings, keynotes and social meet-ups.  This year seems a little different already than years past that I have attended.  There is a lot less official pre-event news but a lot more rumors and speculation.  That causes me to believe that VMware has some pretty big news to share early this week.  The Solutions Exchange is back in full force this year after a couple of years of very scaled back

The week has already started out well, with an unexpected meet-up on my first flight of the morning that offered a chance to catch up with another techie I hadn’t seen in several years.  And it didn’t take long once I arrived in the city to find more of the friends I’ve made during the past several years.  It is great to catch up and see what they are doing, congratulate them on promotions and job changes and of course, talk tech.

But, I am coming to the event with a couple specific agendas — one is to nail down a short list of patch management solutions as I’m searching for a replacement for VMware Update Manager for guest OS patching.  I’m also looking to see what’s new in management software for vSphere and any new enhancements for the upcoming vSphere 5.1 release.  And last, I’m looking for good vendors solutions tailored for a smaller service provider.

I was fortunate to even be attending this year but thanks to free pass to the conference from a local friend and HP’s continued support in the way of accommodations and flights, I’m able to attend.  And, I’m going to capitalize on that luck for as much as I possibly can.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with medium confidence
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CloudComputeDatacenterHome TechProjectsSoftwareStorage

Returning from HP Cloud Tech Day

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I am currently sitting in Atlanta airport waiting on my flight to return to Myrtle Beach.  I am returning from Houston, TX, where I have been on-site at HP’s facility to learn more about cloud and HP’s CloudSystem in particular.  Although cloud was our primary focus, we also spent some time looking at other innovations like the EcoPOD and Pod Modular Data Centers.  For me, the EcoPOD was an highlight of my past couple days and I have lots to tell my wife about what HP is doing to condense and improve efficiencies of data centers to make them green.

We spent the week diving deep into the HP CloudSystem solution – viewing the workflows and automation that make it tick, learning about the products included and how they are used, and learning about directions for networking and storage for cloud.  Coming out of the event, I have a stronger understanding of how we could transition our organization towards a cloud and a better idea of the tangible benefits it would enable, something I have struggled to understand thus far.

I was fortunate to be with a diverse and intelligent group of bloggers for the event.  Each of us came from a different background and represented a large cross section of the customers HP services, from small business to enterprise and government resellers.  It left for lots of great conversations and debate about products, offerings, use cases and other details for the businesses we represented.  I’ll encourge you to follow these folks below and their blogs:

Patrick Pushor
http://cloudchronicle.com
@CloudChronicle

Christopher White
http://www.neowin.net
@Fezmid

Phillip Jaenke
http://rootwyrm.us.to
@rootwyrm

Matt Vogt
http://mattvogt.posterous.com
@mattvogt

Bob Stein
http://www.activewin.com
@ActiveWin
John Obeto
http://absolutelywindows.com
@JohnObeto

Chris Wahl
http://www.wahlnetwork.com
@chriswahl

Frank Owen
http://techvirtuoso.com
@fowen

Michael Letschin
http://thesolutionsarchitect.net
@mletschin

Ofir Nachmani
http://www.iamondemand.com
@iamondemand
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General

Integrity and standards for the new world

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Blogging is fantastic for a number of reasons.  It provides anyone, regardless of affiliation, with the ability to voice what they feel, observe and believe.  The growth of blogs or citizen journalism has provided writers with the ability to disseminate their work without the need for a vehicle like traditional newspapers and magazines.  At the same time that it has leveled the playing field, it has also made it easy for people without good intentions to disseminate hatred and misinformation with the express purpose of hurting rivals or anyone who does not agree.

It is the shady side that hurts the legitimacy of all bloggers.  With traditional journalists, there is a code of ethics and standards and anyone who does not abide by those standards is black-balled and fired.  In the blogging world, the journalistic standards are not enforced and the sensational, tabloid world, where dirt and all-out lies sell issues, has made it over into the blogosphere.  Even worse, people pose as someone they are not in order to persuade and influence decisions of readers.

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General

My best blogging experience so far, the Bloggers Reality Contest

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

The past month has been one of the most fun and challenging things since I started blogging.  I have been participating with Thomas Jones’ Bloggers Reality Contest.  We posted our third and final posts of the contest last week and each of us has been patiently waiting for the final results this week at VMworld.

On Monday, we all took part in an interview on VMware Community TV, which you can watch on-demand at the bottom of this post.  The interview was fun and included our sponsors, the contestants and our judges.  From the sounds of the interview, we all grew and learned out of this experience.

Last night, we had a fantastic wrap dinner with everyone involved and our sponsors and our winners and prizes were awarded.  Congrats to Luigi Danakos (@Nerdblurt), the winner of the Gold bracket, and to Michael Letschin (@mletschin), the winner of the Silver bracket.  Both of these guys did a tremendous job during the contest and I think we have all learned from each other on how we approach our posts and tips and tricks we have learned along the way.  You can see a full recap from Thomas on his site, NikeTown588.

And, as a recap, I wanted to provide some of the highlights I found in the competition:

1) Professional Judges Feedback – Quite possibly, this is the biggest, long-term benefit of the competition.

2) Discovery  – I have ‘met’ a lot of people online thanks to this competition.  A good thing about participating is what I’d call cross pollination between your own readers and the others in the competition.  This years contestants did a good job of promoting each other to their Twitter followers, readers and the community.  It is win-win for everyone.

3) Learning Opportunities – I personally enjoy learning and getting exposed to new tech ideas and products.  Its what gets me up in the morning.  So, getting to see new things is exciting to me.  Knowledge is something no one else can take away…  Even though it was a competition, the other contestant shared freely with the group.

I urge any bloggers to jump at the chance to participate in this contest in the future.  It is great for personal growth and for learning. I can’t wait to see what Thomas and the sponsors have in store for 2012.

BRC2K11 Community TV Interviews

Watch live streaming video from vmwarecommunitytv at livestream.com
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