(by Brian Wilson, started 2/1/2007, through IPO on Nov 11, 2021)
This doc contains a timeline and notes about Backblaze, so that we can reconstruct important dates later..
1/15/07 - given as "first concept" creation date, began thinking and constructing thoughts around backup software.
2/1/07 built IKEA desk in living room, put up whiteboard,
built out machine room by stringing power from kitchen, built out Gigabit home
network with $86 Netgear 8-port switches from Frys. This all took 3 days.
2/5/07 ordered Dell Optiplex 745 to be subversion server, bought MSDN
subscription through Mike Farace, ordered Xcode Apple development environment.
2/9/07 Friday - first Optiplex 745 arrived at 11am. By midnight I had it
running Windows 2003 Server, it was called whistler, had a bowl shared
folder, it was in the new machine room (furnace room) and on the KVM switch, and
was running subversion.
2/12/07 Monday second Optiplex 745 arrived, so did Macintosh Mini. Setup Mac by 3pm, then setup Optiplex as linuxbuild with CentOS (Redhat Clone)
4/3/07 Checked in first Win32 solution file, first BzString.cpp, BzString.h, bztest program.
4/9/07 Monday source tree now building on Linux & Macintosh.
4/12/07 Thursday met with Scott Dettmer and Bennett Yee at their offices, Christina Galindo was also there. They are incorporating Backblaze.
5/12/07 - Saturday - met with Casey Jones, Casey started on logo, website, installer design at this point.
5/16/07 - Wednesday - self extracting installer fully works both with UI (Win32 only, temporary graphics) and "-nogui" on Mac and Linux. Installer produces as part of the default build process on all platforms.
5/17/07 - Thursday - sent off forms to Randy & Cheryl's families, to get 83b signed and stock purchased.
6/4/07 - Monday - Got OpenSSL compiling in the source tree, https queries working for Win32, Mac, Linux. (Then left for a 3 day motorcycle trip to Eureka.)
6/10/07 - Sunday - Met with Gleb for 5 hours to discuss things. First talk of "1 year without salary" and 5 way partnership.
6/11/07 - Monday - Met with Billy Ng and Casey Jones, discussed going 1 year without salary.
6/12/07 - Tuesday - Billy Ng commits, Casey loosely commits, Gleb stresses Brian out by saying we need to launch earlier. :-) Brian sends email to Chad asking if he wants to be full 5th partner.
7/6/07 - Friday - Brian back from 2007 Europe motorcycle trip, Brian orders "main Brian workstation with 30 inch flatpanel".
8/6/07 - Saturday - First Partners meeting with Brian, Gleb, Casey at Brian's apartment, picture below:
The diagram below I created in 2020, but I want to show it here to show where this team came from. Click on the diagram below to see a larger version. It's complicated, but individual PEOPLE are in columns (like Brian Wilson appears in the center column and does not appear in other columns), and the years are shown in the Y-Axis as time goes by. This is how we know each other:
8/27/07 - Monday - Casey Jones starts full time at Backblaze World Wide Headquarters. See Casey assembling his own office furniture below:
8/30/07 - Wednesday - Cubicle walls arrived, see below for picture:
9/5/07 - Wednesday - Gleb submits resignation at SonicWall. His final day at SonicWall will be Sept 30. Casey throws up first Backblaze Logo onto the http://www.backblaze.com homepage.
9/17/07 - Monday - Billy's first day in the office. Below see him sitting on the back porch at the office (425A Forest Ave) smoking a cigar celebrating his first day of no salary at the new startup.
9/25/07 - Tuesday - Squirrel Obstacle Course started in backyard. Click here for Squirrel Obstacle Course pictures.
10/1/07 - Monday - Stock grant date for Casey, Billy, Gleb, Chad.
10/2/07 - Tuesday - Gleb's first day in the office. See him eating lunch with the rest of us in the office (far left).
10/5/07 - Friday - First Backblaze friday beer bash, Gleb, Casey, Billy, and Brian (taking picture). See below. We're still trying to figure out what exactly to build. This is also the first day Chad West started working at Backblaze (remotely from New York where he was visiting his relatives).
10/10/07 - Wednesday - We submitted signed forms to our law firm (Gunderson/Dettmer) that made the following changes official (needed to qualify for health care)- CEO Gleb, CTO Brian, VP Engineering Chad, VP of Design Casey. We all consider Billy to be "King Billy", but he doesn't need health care so he didn't get a VP title. Also at the same time we submitted final signed paperwork to Gunderson of the Gleb, Chad, Casey, and Billy shares that were granted Oct 1st, and they have all submitted their 83b forms already at this time and pre-purchased their shares.
10/12/07 - Friday - Reached consensus we were building "PLAN A": 1) Backup to peer, like two computers in your home (free), 2) Backup to local USB connected external hard drive (free), and 3) Backup to Backblaze Datacenter (paid).
10/18/07 - Thursday - Chad West's first day in the office. Before this he was working remotely from New York.
10/23/07 - Wednesday - A picture of all five partners (camera on timer) figuring out what we want to build. The formulating idea of this day was "online backup, focused around 'pro-sumer' family backup". About here was when we moved to "PLAN B": 1) Backup to Backblaze Datacenter only. No Peer-to-Peer.
10/26/07 - Friday - Backblaze Office Warming party. Click here for pictures.
11/2/07 - Friday - Basic GUI flow diagrams proposal finished for a solution of hosted data, customized installer (per person), with "groups" functionality. Below is a picture of the wall of screenshots (click on picture to see readable version).
11/8/07 - Thursday - at 9pm Brian Wilson came up with the "Use Something" marketing campaign (Gleb Budman was there). The idea is to run adverts saying "Use Something", if people ask how we are better than any competitor we answer "We're good, they are good, just USE SOMETHING and please do backups!"
11/30/07 - Friday - the 5 partners had an all day meeting, because we're down to our last $1,400 in the bank account which will only last one more month and so we'll need more to launch and sustain for the next 6 months. Gleb proposed pricing Chad thinks will lose money on every customer, and it sparked a lot of "animated" conversation around whether online backup was a good idea or not since Mozy is so awesome.
12/6/07 - Thursday - Below is a picture of the "focus group" we brought in to talk about their backup needs.
12/14/07 - Thursday - Billy decides the startup is not right for him, too much risk, too much money commitment. He tells partnership his last day is Friday (12/15/07).
12/27/07 - Thursday - Chad decides the startup is not right for him, too much money commitment, he's not having enough fun to motivate him to hack late into the night. He tells partnership his last day is Monday (12/31/07).
1/4/08 - Friday - We convince Billy to re-join the effort, but as contractor for "shares/hour". This is Billy's first day back.
1/7/08 - Monday - Chad comes into the office for his last day to pick up some things. Also this day met with Tim Nufire about being a Chad replacement.
1/8/08 - Tuesday - We wanted a video on our home webpage with a spokes model explaining things. So we setup a studio with a "green screen" in our office (425A Forest Ave) and Casey borrowed his brother's DV video camera. Below is Sona Patel (who was visiting us that moment) acting as our spokesmodel example while we worked out some audio/video kinks:
1/9/08 - Wednesday - As a result of the previous day's tests, we decided we needed a "green screen" background that was larger, so Casey hung a white sheet from Target over the back of a PVC pipe frame. Below shows Casey taping the white sheet on the ground.
1/9/08 - Wednesday - same day, this is Brian steaming the sheet to flatten some of the wrinkles. That's the final position of the screen.
1/9/08 - Wednesday - same day, Casey as video director getting ready to shoot video.
1/10/08 - Thursday - Damon Uyeda begins work on bringing up the Macintosh build tree on XCode (instead of just raw Makefiles).
1/15/08 - Tuesday - Tim Nufire agrees to join and put in a matching amount of money with the rest of the partners ($15,000). Tim's first full time day won't be for another 3 weeks, but we move the "datacenter" (Chad West's old desktop machine) into Tim's house almost immediately.
1/16/08 - 1/17/08 - Wed/Thu - We shot the first test videos for our website, the first test spokes "Super Model" was Ali Nufire, pictured below.
And here is the test for the "flame thrower special effect", Gleb is operating a can of WD-40 over a Bic Lighter.
1/29/08 - Tuesday night - Casey and Gleb shot the homepage flash video for the Beta launch. Cara Panebianco (friend) played the spokes model. Below they are setting up the shot.
The movie includes dumping coffee on a laptop, and burning the laptop, and having the laptop stolen. Click the movie below to see it from my angle.
Here they are importing it into iMovie to see the results.
2/01/08 - Friday - Gromit (dog) and owner Tim Nufire come to the office for their first full day. Tim took a day away from his "day job" to come into our office, he didn't officially start at Backblaze until 2/13/08.
2/05/08 - Tuesday - Gleb's laptop dies, on boot he gets blue screen of death, unrecoverable, and therefore he became the FIRST PERSON EVER to restore a completely irrecoverable file "in the field, without any other recovery choice" from the Backblaze online system. It was accidental -> he was backing up to the "corpstage" server, but he recovered his Outlook calendar events from corpstage.
2/13/08 - Wednesday - Tim Nufire's official first day (he put in a full day before in the office, but this is his starting date).
2/15/08 - Friday - 8pm the website went live for the first time. It launched in 11 languages (translated with Google Translate). It had streaming video with a spokes model (Cara Panebianco) streamed in flash with links to more flash clips. The flash clips are:
Here it is in Japanese:
3/18/08 - Tuesday - Super Friends launch - Nilay Patel installed the desktop client among other people external to Backblaze employees.
4/18/08 - Friday - 8pm - Billing finally works in product. We are not releasing for another week because we are rewriting the GUI to a new "Backup Everything, with exclusions" model, and the billing is running against a "trial backend Paypal server" so Visas are not actually billed yet. The ability to restore through the web came up a few days earlier than this.
4/29/08 - Tuesday - 5:30pm - First Revenue comes into Backblaze, Tim Nufire turned on live billing servers (we use PayPal for a backend) and charged to his Visa. Here is a screenshot of the email sent by the automated system to Gleb.
4/30/08 - Wednesday - 10:52am - Backblaze "friends and family beta" starts when Brian sends a beta invite email to Brian Beach. Brian Beach installs and gives feedback about throttling not working (it wasn't implemented yet :-).
5/1/08 - Thursday - Brian Beach bought the product, becoming our first external revenue source.
5/6/08 - Tuesday - version 1.0.0.60 was released which included throttling and was interruptible (pause button) mid-upload. This solid version is considered the first highly stable, fully functioning build and started working well for customers.
5/13/08 - Tuesday - Billy brings online the "stats portal" which reports we have about 50 customers running the product, 4 are "paid", 46 in trial.
5/21/08 - Wednesday - Our datacenter's 20 disk drives show up. Each drive is 1 terabyte. This will support approximately 350 simultaneous, fully uploaded users (data mirrored twice, average user's data is about 30 GB). Here are the drives stacked on the dining room table in the office:
Close up.
5/26/08 - Monday - Backblaze releases 1.0.0.69, which is downloaded by journalists to evaluate our upcoming Launch.
5/28/08 - Wednesday - the above drives now racked in eSata enclosures, powered up and configured in the datacenter machines, still in the living room. Tim Nufire on the left, and Chris Robertson on the right who is helping us out as a favor.
Below is a close up. Each "box" contains 4 drives (each drive is a terabyte). So the stack of 6 boxes contains 24 terabytes of drive configured for about $5k for the enclosures and drives (not including the computers that drive them).
6/2/08 - Monday - LAUNCH! Backblaze launches "public beta" with version 1.0.0.71. This product is feature complete and is launched, the only reason it still says "public beta" is Gleb wants to try to parlay taking the "beta" status off of the product into future press articles. At this point all of the Backblaze expenses add up to $94,122.40 to get to a revenue generating, publically launched software product. The expenses do not include the donated time of the 5 founders for a year, the expenses are all for computers, hard drives, desks, printers, paper, etc, and a FEW small marketing expenses like a press release for $300. Click one of these to read articles about the launch: TechCrunch, ArsTechnica, SimpleHelp, KillerStartups.
6/3/08 - Tuesday - some statistics from our launch. Below is a screenshot of the "stats portal" on 6/3/08. We have 757 clients pinging home.
I put this screenshot together from some interesting Google analytics:
7/6/08 - Sunday - Fido (Katherine's cat) sitting on Casey's keyboard for warmth.
7/16/08 - Wednesday - Billy's partnership paperwork is finalized - he is a full 1/5 partner again! He contributed $15,000 plus the $900 to purchase his shares.
8/12/08 - Tuesday - Gleb and Tim meet with Walt Mossberg who says he doesn't want to write an article about Online Backup. Business trip cost about $1,500 for the two people, plus a couple lost days of productivity and our hurt egos. :-) Gleb & Tim stayed with Gleb's relative (no hotel room).
8/25/08 - Monday - Damon's first full time day in the office as a "associate partner" (no salary, working for chunk of equity). Below is a picture of Damon at work in his cube. Associate partners get smaller cubes. (Not really, we're just out of space. :-) Damon's first day of stock vesting of his shares is given as 9/1/08.
8/26/08 - Tuesday - We powered up the first pod design based on plywood in the datacenter, seen below a shot inside from the top:
Below is the front of the plywood pod now racked:
Below is the back of the plywood pod.
9/2/08 - Tuesday - client version 1.0.0.83 was released that migrated all bz_done lines up to "version 4" bz_done lines. The migration code was removed from the client by version 1.0.0.16 released around 12/1/08 before the Mac beta launch on 12/9/08 (no Macintosh ever had anything but line version 4 lines in their bz_done_ files).
9/15/08 - Monday - the day before the 1.0 Launch, the Backblaze lifetime customer revenue (from 5/1/08 - 9/15/08) is about $5,000. This is all for "beta software".
9/16/08 - Tuesday - Backblaze launches 1.0!! Client was version 1.0.0.86. "Launch 1.0" means we took the invite code off the website (allowing anybody to sign up for the first time). We also declared the product "1.0" and took off the word "beta" declaring we are ready for full real customers. We got about 200 installs this day. Here are some articles:
Below is a snapshot from Google Analytics of the launch day:
This is the homepage at 1.0 launch (click on it to see full size image):
9/18/08 - Thursday - Backblaze holds the Backblaze 1.0 Launch Party. Click here for pictures of who showed up!
9/30/08 - Tuesday - End of Q3. This quarter's revenue was $9,000. The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $11,000.
10/1/08 - Wednesday - version 1.0.0.88 client ships into the field (plus associated back end changes) which includes support for "BillingPartnerId" (Affiliate support that is bound at account creation to give that affiliate partner 15 percent of the client revenue forever).
10/6/08 - Monday - version 1.0.0.89 client ships into field. Main featureis fix to prevent and heal any chained duplicates. This includes the rewrite of installer to also support Mac.
10/10/08 - Friday - Tim brings up 45 one terabyte drives all attached to a single CPU using eSata and port multiplier cards. This will be the basis of our future "best pod" design. We got around 44 Mbytes/sec read and write under full load in this config which is running Debian Linux and software RAID 6 on the JFS file system. The CPU is a Intel core-2 duo 2.53 GHz. The 45 drives are organized into 3 RAID groups of 15 drives each. The 15 drives are configured with RAID 6 where they can lose any 2 drives and not lose data in that RAID group. In the prototype (pictured below) we are still using external drive cabinets, but the technology is all the same as will fit into a 4U rack slot in a datacenter.
10/15/08 - Wed - released client version 1.0.0.90 with the following main
improvements:
a. Full self healing - ability to remove an individual bzfileid from an
individual user's machine (causing file retransmit).
b. Corrupt bz_done_ healing - ability to remove an entire bz_done_ file from a
user's machine (for healing purposes)
c. Encourage Update Dialog - if auto-update is not working, we can now nag a
user to manually update their version
d. Self-Destruct - we can ask an individual host to completely uninstall itself
-> one way trip, never contact datacenter again.
e. Fix for memory leak that causes massive memory bloat (multiple Gigabytes of
RAM) in a large files dedup situation.
f. Japanese Localization tune up from Ashmeet and Yuko.
g. Allow users to edit the backup types list to ENABLE backing up ISO and DMG
disk images.
10/16/08 - Thu - Chou Chou asleep on Damon's desk. You can see more about Chou Chou (like his video) here.
10/26/08 - Sunday - released Win32 client version 1.0.0.104 with the following main
improvements:
a. Mirror File Deletion Illusion - a user deletes a file, within one hour it
appears gone from their most recent "Web Restore" list.
b. Datacenter file eXpiring - after 30 days, files gone from the user's "Web
Restore" list are then deleted from the datacenter forever.
c. Old file version eXpiring - if we have many versions of the same file, after
30 days we delete the older versions from datacenter.
d. Massive Install "Initial Index" speedup - by skipping index of "C:\Program
Files" if it is not being backed up (the default).
e. Memory Footprint Reduction - now while steadily transmitting (the first 3
weeks) bztransmit is 30 MB (reduced by 20 MB)
f. General Code Cleanup & Speedup - bztransmit now produces faster "bz_todo_"
lists and the code is more supportable
g. All changes to support Mac release (see below) now being run by all Windows
customers
10/28/08 - Tuesday - first release of Mac client version 1.0.0.107 to ten "super-friends" (have to enter a beta code to download). Only supports OS X 10.5 on Intel processors. Includes all code in 1.0.0.104 for Win32. Installer based on "pkg" standard Mac installer.
10/28/08 - (Same Date As Above) - Gleb uses a Macintosh for the very first time! He is one of the ten "super-friends" now running the Backblaze backup product on the Macintosh. This is so he can show the Mac version to press in the upcoming several days. See below for a picture to prove Gleb has used a Mac. :-)
10/29/08 - Wednesday - Tim Nufire's cube is picture below. Tim's 45 terabyte drive experiment (see 10/10/08 above) has now removed the external drive enclosures but KEPT their power supplies.
10/31/08 - Friday - second release of Mac client version 1.0.0.110 to 50 "friends and family". Still only supports OS X 10.5 on Intel processors, but moved over to the new installer based on DMG "disk image" technology instead of the macintosh ".pkg" package manager installer.
10/31/08 - Friday - End of month. This month's revenue was $2,700. The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $13,700. We added 79 paid licenses this month bringing it to a total of 407 licenses (232 are yearly and 165 are monthly). We have 1.35 clients per account on average. Since the beginning of time on 4/29/08, we have created 1,734 accounts and installed 1,919 clients.
11/2/08 - Sunday - Given as Nilay's first day of stock vesting. Nilay is putting in some hours remotely as of this point from London, but first day in Palo Alto office is 11/20/08.
11/3/08 - Monday - Tim's 45 terabyte drive experiment (see 10/29/08 and 10/10/08 above) has now removed the external drive enclosures AND removed their power supplies. So now all 45 drives plus the CPU and the fans are all powered off a single 700 Watt power supply (the important part is this power supply has a 5V "rail" that can supply 50 Amps spread among all the drives). If this exact design can be put into a single 4U tall cabinet with proper cooling we have a basic pod design which mounts 45 drives (each is one terabyte).
11/17/08 - Monday - third release of Mac client version 1.0.0.112, now opened up
to a few people we don't know. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Mac OS 10.4 - now backward compatible to an older Mac OS release
b. Uninstaller - in /Library/Backblaze/UninstallBackblaze.zip
c. Mac Resource Fork support - we were losing data before on certain things like
bookmarks
d.
Reports Rewrite - the reports were rewritten to look better (and so they run on
OS 10.4)
e. Misc
small text fixes and cleanup
11/20/08 - Thursday - the FM radio station "Energy 92.7" started running Backblaze audio ads as an affiliate. Click here to hear the Backblaze radio ad. Backblaze doesn't pay for anything unless we get an install from it.
11/21/08 - Friday - fourth release of Mac client version 1.0.0.115. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Editable Volumes List - now users can edit which volumes are backed up and
not backed up
b. Mac volume names - in volumes list we say "Macintosh HD" instead of "/".
c. Affiliate/UserId support - credited to correct affiliate and reseller, etc
d. Spotlight Suppression - we ask the Mac search engine to please ignore
/Library/Backblaze for performance reasons
e.
Notification Dialog Fixes - include all notification dialogs from the Win32
version, also fixed bug that caused a negative day countdown to appear
f.
Put in final animated green arrow from Casey
g. Misc
other small fixes
11/30/08 - Sunday - End of month. This month's revenue was $2,000. The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $15,700. We added about 50 paid licenses this month bringing it to a total of 440 licenses.
12/1/08 - Monday - Nilay Patel's first day in the office as VP of Sales! Below is a picture of Nilay hard at work in his cube:
12/6/08 - Saturday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.118. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Better localization for German, Italian, and Portuguese
b. Underlying self healing code fixes allowing for chunks of large files to be
healed properly
c. Misc
other small fixes
ALSO - fifth release of Mac client version 1.0.0.119
on same codebase as above. Contains the following main improvements:
a. UI tweaks and fixes
b. Better localization for German, Italian, and Portuguese
c. Underlying self healing code fixes allowing for chunks of large files to be
healed properly
d. Misc other small fixes
12/7/08 - Sunday - below is a graphic showing some of Backblaze's international statistics as of this point. Of visitors to our website, almost half come from outside the USA (including a lot of English speaking foreign countries like England). A little more interesting is that about 10 percent of the desktop clients are being actively run in a non-English language!
12/9/08 - Tuesday, 6am - Press Launch of Macintosh Private Beta (requires invite). The Mac client was version 1.0.0.119 on this day (released earlier). We got about 630 installs this day and had to shut off all new customers (windows and Mac) by noon. We continued to accept email addresses to be added later, and collected an amazing 2035 email addresses asking for access to the Mac beta in the next 24 hours (6am - 6am). Over lifetime since we launched the Windows client on 6/2/08 we received about 3,500 people giving us their email addresses and begging for a Mac version. The next morning our stats portal reported that our 1738 hosts pinging home were 760 Mac (43 percent) and 978 Windows (56 percent). Here are some of the press articles:
Below is a snapshot from Google Analytics of the launch day:
This is what the homepage looked like (click on it to zoom to native resolution). Click Here to watch the Cara video lighting a laptop on fire.
12/11/08 - Thursday - The stats portal reports Backblaze has 2009 active customers for the first time. Also, below shows Tim Nufire and Nilay Patel having an outdoor meeting because the outside is the only spare location:
12/14/08 - Sunday - The stats portal reports Backblaze has 2223 users, of which 52 percent are Macintosh. So Apple Macintosh makes up more than half the Backblaze business as of now.
12/15/08 - Monday - Backblaze's first DVD restore for $99 mailed out this day!! (A Thailand criminal tried to order a USB drive with a stolen credit card earlier, but this was the first legit order.)
12/17/08 - Wednesday - The Mac launch success took us all by surprise, and we're filling up our available "pods" in the datacenter too fast! So we start Calling our suppliers all over the world and asking to FedEx parts to us for new storage pods. Below is Tim standing by shipments of raw storage pod components that have been arriving all day, including hard drives (see the open box nearest Tim for terabyte drives).
12/20/08 - Saturday - the first "Red Pod" is racked (no customer data lands on it yet). Click here for More Info on the Backblaze 45 Terabyte Storage Pod. These are custom red metal cases manufactured exclusively for Backblaze made in Canada. We put a single motherboard, one power supply, and 45 "one terabyte" drives in it. Below are pictures of it:
| Front of the Red Pod Racked in Backblaze Datacenter:
|
Back of the Red Pod in the rack. Two pods are
racked in this picture. The round blue power button in the very
upper right corner of each pod is "drilled by hand" because we forgot to
include a hole for it in the original case design.
|
| Top down view of the Red Pod without any drives:
|
Perspective view of the Red Pod with a Mac laptop for size:
|
Below is a picture of a totally empty red pod case (below is a more accurate color reproduction, the "orange" tint above is from lower quality cell phone cameras. There is an example circuit board in the picture to show how each board must be screwed into the stand-offs.
Tim opening up a red pod power button hole on one of the first three pods that has the flawed design.
12/22/08 - Monday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.120. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Fixed
"Declare Victory Early" bug.
b. Added stats portal aalicense_state to be one of the mutually exclusive:
active_trial, expired_trial, licensed_current, licensed_problem
c. Client understanding of whether it was ever "LicensedOnce" to treat trials
separate from paid customers (stats portal bzlicensed_once="true")
d. Better messaging and less often popup of "Local Disk Space Is Low"
e. Misc
other small fixes
ALSO - fifth release of Mac client version 1.0.0.121
on same codebase as above. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Localization change to one ".xib" (from 11 separate for each
language) resulting in download size
reduction plus code maintainability
b. all the above fixes listed for Windows also
c. Misc other small fixes
12/24/08 - Wednesday - shortly after midnight the first red pod (see pictures from 12/20/08) has synchronized all drives, passes enough load tests, and is brought online with customer data being written to it. It has 45 drives configured into 5 volumes with 9 drives each, and it's name is ul005.backblaze.com reachable from anywhere on the planet.
12/24/08 - Wednesday (same as above) - Billy prepares the very VERY first $99 DVD restore for customer Piera (pierad@gmail.com). Below Billy is seen with the restore in a FedEx box.
12/26/08 - Friday - the stats portal reports more than 3,009 customers using the product (breaking the 3K mark for the first time this day!) Broken down into: active_trial: (mac: 779, win32: 162), expired_trial: (mac:234, win32: 141), licensed_current: (mac: 297, win32: 469), unknown (mac: 466, win32: 451). The "unknown" is clients not upgraded to the latest form of tracking that can break it down into detail like this.
12/30/08 - Tuesday - the stats portal reports that more than 1,000 customers are fully (and simultaneously) licensed for the first time!
12/31/08 - Wednesday - End of month, end of 2008. This month's revenue was $23,363.36 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $39,063.36. We added about 620 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 1058 licenses (494 Mac and 564 Windows). See below for a chart of 2008 revenues.
1/8/09 - Thursday - Paid Macintosh users bypass paid Windows users in the stats portal. As of 9am, there are 650 paid Mac users and only 649 paid Windows.users.
1/9/09 - Friday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.122. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Tend to
prevent computers from sleeping during initial upload and trial (allows better
impression, lower support)
b. Allow backup of DMG images (allow user to remove it from exclusions list)
c. At synchostinfo time (to get a valid pod id) do not allow client to back up
unless client GMT clock is within 4 days of server clock
d. Removed "negative pod affinity" - now clients are willing to back up to same pod after getting a pod upload failure.
e. Fix bug to allow large files to be uploaded over multiple days (previous had
to complete on one GMT 24 hour period)
f. Added "previous_bzstorageid" hint when asking central authority for a pod, this will allow future "positive pod affinity" to occur if we want.
g. If trial expires mid-transmission-session, stop transmitting.
Previously allowed to run for many extra days if computer not rebooted.
h. Copyright notice in "About" dialog moved over to say "2009".
i. Added stats portal arg "hguidcreated" which gives the date of this HOST's
original install in human readable form.
j.
Rolled in new translations (German and some Italian)
k. Misc
other small fixes
ALSO - sixth release of Mac client version 1.0.0.123
on same codebase as above. Contains the following main improvements:
a. All fixes seen above in Windows
b. Fixed bug that prevented embedded "\" (backslash) characters from being in
filenames, which the Mac allows.
c. Fixed bug where no "trial expiring" or any other notifications occurred if
users chose to "Hide" the flame icon in menu bar.
d. Exclude a bunch more useless Mac directories that Nilay and also customers
reported get backed up too often.
e. Fixed bug where newly added excluded file paths on Mac were not terminated in
"/" which meant they matched too many directories
f. Fixed bug where default excluded directories on external hard drives were
missing some embedded slashes so they were incorrect.
g. Moved over resource fork parsing from "/rsrc" to be "/..namedfork/rsrc" which
eliminates a system log file from saying "deprecated in 10.4"
h. Misc other small fixes
1/10/09 - Saturday - The following is the front and back of the very first datacenter cabinet Backblaze filled with customer data. This was in 365 Main, San Francisco. This was a few weeks before moving entirely into the new datacenter in Oakland where there was more room to grow. Notice the wooden pod at the very top of the cabinet.
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1/11/09 - Swiss cheese pod - Brian Wilson and Casey Jones drilled 19 large circular holes in a red storage pod chassis to allow us to QUICKLY rewire the pod in many different ways. This was an attempt to debug why drives were failing and see if different power wiring configurations helped. In the end this ruled out power as the issue. We figured out it was vibration of the drives which "rattled" back and forth when the drive heads "seeked". The solution was a piece of foam from "House of Foam" in Palo Alto that provided a little downward pressure and held the drives from swaying back and forth in the chassis. You can see more pictures by clicking here.
1/15/09 - Thursday - The first time Backblaze ever owed an Affiliate a check. The newsletter / website Photojojo recommended Backblaze at 6am this day, and by 8:30am it resulted in 34 buys for $1,225.00 (we owed the Photojojo affiliate $123.00 at this point). Below is a graph of the traffic on the Backblaze website related to Photojojo. What we saw from both the Mac launch and Photojojo event was that about 8,500 people showed up at the website, about 650 installed (so 8 percent), and the conversion rate after install ends up being a little higher than 30 percent. Calculated all the way through, we get 2.5 percent of website visitors become customers right now (0.025 * visitors = paid customers). Drive 100,000 users to the website and it results in 2,500 paid customers.
1/16/09 - Friday - the stats portal reports more than 4,039 customers using the product (breaking the 4K mark for the first time this day!) Broken down into: active_trial: (mac: 816, win32: 524), expired_trial: (mac: 685, win32: 231), licensed_current: (mac: 783, win32: 777), unknown (mac: 111, win32: 94). The "unknown" is clients not upgraded to the latest form of tracking that can break it down into detail like this.
1/19/09 - Monday - we crossed over 100,000 unique visitors to the Backblaze website during the lifetime of the site. At this point we have about 1,722 paid subscriptions (871 Mac, 851 Windows).
1/26/09 - Monday - we crossed over 2,000 paid customers as reported by the stats portal (2,010 at 11am).
1/27/08 - Tuesday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.125. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Better
Operating System detection, defeats Windows 2003 installs, identifies Windows
2008 and Windows 7.
b. New message when trying to install on Windows 2003 "We want your desktops,
but no servers."
c. New friendly message explaining "bad bzmagicpattern on download" and how to
fix the problem.
d. Rolled in complete new update for libCURL and libSSH2 for security and
performance and bug fixes
e. Added more uncompressed image types (DNG, PEF) to make reports more accurate
f. Added arguments to file uploads on pods of license_state and "initial_upload"
for bandwidth calculations
g. Added file compression internal to bzff files for "light room catalog" files
h. Misc translations fixes (French and others)
i. New 5 chars of SHA1 checksum on renamed installers
j. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - sixth release of Mac client version 1.0.0.126
on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes seen above in Windows
b. Better Operating System detection, now identifies "OS X Server" OSes and
reports to stats portal.
c. Deduplication of files containing Resource Forks! (This allows DNG
images on external drives to work.)
d. New install DMG that includes the *UNinstaller* as part of it.
e. Exclude more directories by default such as "/opt"
f. Misc other small fixes
1/31/09 - Saturday - End of month, January 2009. This month's revenue was $45,186.64 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $84,250.00. We added about 1,340 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 2398 licenses (1,173 Mac and 1,225 Windows). See below for a monthly revenue chart:
2/1/09 - Sunday - below is a picture of 6 red pods in one datacenter rack, picture taken at 2:30am as work was finished by Nilay and Tim. With 45 one terabyte drives in each red pod, that's 270 terabytes of disk in that rack.
2/5/09 - Thursday - we crossed over 2,500 paid customers as reported by the stats portal (2,504 at 9am).
2/13/09 - Friday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.127. Contains the following main improvements:
a. When user
visits website and deletes their client, now client pops up very specific dialog
saying that.
b.
When user visits website and deletes their client, on re-install it detects this
situation and warns with dialog
c. New Notification popups around trials, new icons, new messaging, new times
they are shown.
d. Centralized Notification logic making greater sharing between Windows and
Mac.
e.
Seriously lowered number of Notification dialogs around "Low Disk Space", like
they never show in trials.
f. Now the client and server are more aggressive around grabbing unused licenses
to prevent double-billing
g. Exclude a whole slew of Adobe Lightroom temporary files that are enormous.
Also "Flock" web browser.
h. Fixed bug that was preventing podcasts from being excluded.
i. On Uninstall, client now pops up a dialog warning users they will
remove all their files (like on Mac).
j. added "bzstorageid" to posts to the pods to allow for stats collecting
k. track all external hard drives in stats portal, including whether or not
selected for backup.
l. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - seventh release of Mac client version 1.0.0.128
on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes seen above in Windows
b. Exclude more files and file types, especially around Adobe Lightroom
c. Moved over to new internationalized system
d. Misc other small fixes
2/23/09 - Monday - Backblaze crossed over $100,000.00 in income from customer revenue.
2/25/09 - Wednesday - Backblaze crossed over 3,000 paid customers as reported by the stats portal (3,009 at 9am). Also on this day, Backblaze hits position 6 in Google for the search term "Online Backup". See below (click on the image for the full search results):
2/28/09 - Saturday - End of month, February 2009. This month's revenue was $30,000.00 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $114,250.00. We added about 803 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 3,201 licenses (1,814 Mac and 1,387 Windows). See below for a monthly revenue chart:
3/2/09 - Monday - Backblaze ships it's first international hard drive restore (to Belgium). Below is Billy holding the restore before it is sent.
3/12/09 - Thursday - Backblaze gets its first "Visa Charge Back" where a customer stopped payment through Visa. The customer was totally in the wrong, he used our monthly backup system for several months then told Visa to not pay out the $5 monthly charge even though he had gotten great service and good tech support.
3/13/09 - Friday - we crossed over 3,500 paid customers as reported by the stats portal (3,503 at 8am).
3/23/09 - Monday - The back deck "Pod Shed" is brought online. The storage pods spend several days in the office while being built and having their drives synchronize, and they produce a lot of noise and heat. So Brian strung two new circuits of power plus ethernet through holes in the outside wall into this plastic shed on the back deck. (An electrician added the two new circuits of power to the apartment for $350.) We cut a few holes for airflow, and installed a fan. Below the first picture shows the shed closed (the pods run this way most of the time):
Below the shed's top is raised so we can put in pods and pull them out.
Here the shed has 3 full pods (135 drives are below, each is 1 terabyte). One more pod can fit at the very bottom. Each pod is 4U tall which is 7 inches.
3/23/09 - Monday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.133. Contains the following main improvements:
a. New checkbox
based "Select Hard Drives to Backup" GUI (displays "Unplugged")
b. Don't allow user to unselect main system drive (lower support costs)
c. Standardized Mac and Windows to have both <CONTROL> and <OPTION> click
backdoors.
d.
stats portal - Fixed external hard drive tracking in to stop double-report
drives
e. stats
portal - cleaned up display by grouping all "file sizes" such as "MB of
Pictures" together with "zz_" labels
f. stats portal - track locale language more accurately (previously it was
tracking "Admin's locale" not user
g. stats portal - post "rotating host guid" to allow future detection of any
duplicate primary hguids in the field
h. maintain "bzstat_lastfile_transmitted.xml", post to stats portal, also
helps suppress "Not Backed up" dialog
i. bzserv - added heartbeat, then we monitor bzserv's heartbeat with bzbui
for greater reliability
j. log continuous list of all files transmitted, plus throttle setting, plus
kbits/sec achieved
k. exclude more types of cruft files like IE's "thumbcache_sr.db" files
l. slow fequency of posting of bz_done_ files to datacenter to lighten
load on central authority
m. added "numbytes_bzindex" to self heal posting for better and lighter load
self healing
n.
fix bug where bzstorageid does not match between URL arg and bzfileid (affects
load balancing)
o. added "numbytes_bzindex" to self heal posting for better and lighter load
self healing
p.
added "numbytes_bzindex" to self heal posting for better and lighter load self
healing
q. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - eight release of Mac client version 1.0.0.134
on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes seen above in Windows
b. Misc other small fixes
3/29/09 - Sunday - Crossed over the10,000 installs milestone. A little over 10,000 clients have been installed since we launched the very first beta on 4/29/08, and about 3,900 of them are paid subscribers at this point. About 1,568 of them pay $5 / month (40 percent).
3/30/09 - Monday - below is a nice shot of the first clean rack Backblaze ever deployed with 100 percent red storage pods, below you see 6 of them.
3/31/09 - Tuesday - End of month, March 2009. This month's revenue was $26,000.00 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $140,750.00. We added about 770 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 3,971 licenses (2,345 Mac and 1,626 Windows). See below for a monthly revenue chart:
4/2/09 - Thursday - Backblaze runs it's first payroll! Employees get paid for the first time! Each of the 5 partners and 2 demi-partners at this point draw $2,500.00 / month in salary, which is $30,000.00 / year salary. The "Gross Pay" of 7 people is (7 * $2,500.00 = $17,500.00) which costs Backblaze $19,623.75 / month once you include Backblaze's additional matching taxes, fees, etc.
4/8/09 - Wednesday - Backblaze closes it's Series 1 financing round of $300,000. On this day going forward Backblaze has $230,322.78 left in the checking account because we accepted the investor's money and then immediately after we paid off some credit cards and purchased new equipment. Here are the investors and amounts (in addition to all these numbers, later Howard Chartock and Vlad Bolshokav both came in with $25k):
Here is a breakdown of Backblaze's lifetime expenses up until this point which is a little more than 2 years (1/15/07 - 4/8/09). We have run exactly one payroll (see 4/2/09):
The datacenter at this point has 802 one terabyte drives in it.
4/10/09 - Friday - we crossed over 4,000 paid customers as reported by the stats portal (4,003 at 8am).
4/13/09 - Monday - Day before Macintosh 1.0 launch. At this point we had 5,736 clients running in the field pinging home in the last 30 days (4077 licensed paid customers). The datacenter looked like this: 18 racked red pods with 45 'one terabyte' drives each, which yields a total of 586 useable terabytes. On this day we had 208 TB free in anticipation of the Mac 1.0 launch. The bandwidth into the datacenter was a steady 650 Mbits/sec which in our client/server circumstance is about 1,372 concurrent HTTPS connections, and we had 2 Gbits/sec available.
4/14/08 - Tuesday, 6am - Press Launch of Macintosh 1.0 Launch (publically available without any invites for the first time). The Mac client was version 1.0.0.134 on this day (released earlier). We got about 982 installs this day. The next morning our stats portal reported that our 6718 hosts pinging home were 4,444 Mac (66 percent) and 2,274 Windows (34 percent). Gleb compiled some stats for the first two days of Total Visits: 12,800 and New Visitors: 9,200. Of the new visitors, 70% from TUAW, TechCrunch, MacWorld and direct/referrals. Of new visitors 95% from the top 10% of our sources (20 of 242). Of new visitors, 70 % USA, 20 % Europe, 10 % Asia. About half as many visitors showed up the second day as the first day. Chinese was second only to English as the most used browser language, but it was only 3 percent of users. Here are some of the press articles:
Macsimum News - Backblaze announces Mac Online Backup - by Dennis Sellers
Macworld - Backblaze online backup debuts for Mac - by Peter Cohen
Below is a chart of Backblaze twitter followers that skyrocketed this day:
Below is a snapshot from Google Analytics of the Mac 1.0 launch day:
Below are some notes from Tim Nufire about bandwidth after the launch:
4/17/09 - Friday - First Backblaze 90 Terabyte Storage Pod 2.0 is hand built in the office - instead of 1 power supply this has 2 smaller power supplies that are cheaper and higher efficiency, and the 45 hard drives are 'two terabyte' each. Below is the picture of the front, which now has the "Backblaze" name and logo burned in.
4/30/09 - Thursday - we crossed over 5,000 paid customers as
reported by the stats portal (5,001 at 9am). At this point Backblaze
spends $12,600 / month on a 4 cabinet co-location setup AFTER we buy all the
servers, broken down as:
$4,500 - 1.5 Gbits/sec (upstream) bandwidth at $3/Mbit billed at 95th % (we're
actually sitting at 1.2 GBits/sec on this day)
$3,800 - rental of space - 24 square feet at $158/sqfoot (includes 3 cross
connects) Note that office rental is $1/sqfoot.
$2,300 - electricity (12 kW for 720 hours at 27cents/kWh). Note that
office electricity is 14cents/kWh.
$2,000 - installation "prep" of cabinets - 1 cabinet each month
-------------
$12,600 total monthly fees for 4 cabinets
In addition, below is Tim's math for what a $5 / month customer costs Backblaze if the average is 150 GB / customer:
$0.33 / month for power
$0.43 / month for colo rent
$1.19 / month for capital costs (amortized over 2 years)
$0.19 / month to upload 450 GB (amortized over 2 years)
$0.41 / month credit card charges (our fees for accepting Visa cards)
------
$2.55 / month total cost (49% margin)
4/30/09 - Thursday - End of month, April 2009. This month's revenue was $50,500.00 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $191,250.00. We added about 1,146 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 5,117 licenses (3,298 Mac and 1,819 Windows). After paying all our bills we have $263,000 left in checking. See below for a monthly revenue chart:
5/5/09 - Tuesday - the 3rd datacenter rack is now totally full (picture below) with 10 storage pods.
5/12/09 - Tuesday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.137. Contains the following main improvements:
a. BzVolumeGuid
support creating ".bzvol" directory at top level of every drive
b. above includes new per-Volume-Guid filelist technology so files don't deleted
from datacenter when unplug external hard drive
c. above includes tracking drive total sizes and drive used statistics in stats
portal
d. above
includes popping up notification dialogs if user renames their hard drive (which
has ALWAYS disabled the backup!)
e. above includes migration from old system that reports home to stats portal bzvolumeid_prob="C:\" string
f. includes new command line restore downloader for ZIP file restores built into
bztransmit
g. exclude more temporary cruft files from being backed up (Vista thumbcache.db files, SecondLife game cache)
h. excluded more VMware type image files: vmwarevm, hdd, vdi,
i. improved logging around external drives coming and going to detect
future bugs
j. now when bzfileids.dat reaches 1 GB, we STOP backing up and popup Notify
dialogs to ask them to contact support
k. reduce
redundant HTTPS posting of bz_done_ files to offload central authority disk
drives (successful -dropped 50 percent)
l. One tab in the "Settings..." pane was not localized, now it is.
m. fixed hex vs decimal bug where GUI display seemed to get stuck
displaying one filename (backup always ran correctly)
n. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - eight release of Mac client version 1.0.0.138 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. BzVolumeGuid (like above in Windows)
b. GUI restore downloader (better than Windows command line downloader)
c. More hard-core exclusion of TimeMachine Volumes to help eliminate
bzfileids.dat growth problem
d. Misc other small fixes
5/20/09 - Wednesday - **HALF** release (http://files.backblaze.com) of Win32 client version 1.0.0.139
and Mac version 1.0.0.140 (and follow on 1.0.0.141 for Win and 1.0.0.142 for
Mac). Contains the following main improvements:
a. Cloned Drive
support for suppressing the warning for duplicate bzvolumeids (and better
notification dialogs)
b. In very final version (141 and 142) fixed bug where two volumes without
volume ids caused false notify dialogs of "duplicate"
c. Mac version includes "Check for Updates..." menu item
d. couple other small fixes
5/22/09 - Friday - we crossed over 6,000 paid customers as reported by the stats portal (6,005 at 11am).
5/31/09 - Sunday - End of month, May 2009. This month's revenue was $47,000.00 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $238,250.00. We added about 1,112 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 6,229 licenses (4,092 Mac and 2,137 Windows). After paying all our bills we have $211,000 left in checking. See below for a monthly revenue chart:
6/2/09 - Tuesday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.143. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Cloned Drive
support - identify "Clone Drive" situation of duplicated BzVolumeGuid in
notification with "Learn More"
b. Cloned Drive support - ability to suppress warning dialog (this is the first
time in "real" release, formerly on files.backblaze.com)
c. Cloned Drive support - do not Notify user about any problems if the "/" is
the cloned drive -> because it is not a problem!
d. "Check for Updates" - is a new menu item in system tray (this was requested
by users in support a lot)
e. Fixed bug where two drives without ANY bzvolumeid "matched" causing false
positive error Notification of cloned drives
f. added a HUGE amount of logging around the mysterious state of blue icon
seen on Tim and Nilay's mac
g. Excluded a few more temporary files (TechTool 45 GB cache directory)
h. Feature to popup Notification Dialog asking any one specific customer to
telephone us at Backblaze (because email bounces)
i. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.0.0.144 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, especially around Cloned Drive support (see "c. do
not Notify user if "/" is cloned drive)
b. Exclusion fix - items now sort better
c. Misc other small fixes
6/5/09 - Friday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.0.149. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Cloned Drive
support - fixed a bug where some users were unable to select their primary drive
to back up (mostly Mac users)
b. Added a ton of more debug logging around selecting drives for backup to chase
other bugs in field
c. Healing for ul009, volume 0043 (remove all references if found in bz_done_
files causing repush of those files)
d. Minor file locking fix in corner case that could stop backups for an hour
once per day
e. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.0.0.150 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes
6/10/09 - Wednesday - Backblaze passes $250,000.00 in lifetime customer revenue.
6/30/09 - Tuesday - Closed final Series 1 with James Fleishman, Howard Chartock, and Vlad Bolshakov coming in. This completes $370k of funding.
6/30/09 - Tuesday - End of month (and quarter), June 2009. This month's revenue was $43,000.00 which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $281,250.00. We added about 772 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 7,001 licenses (4,649 Mac and 2,352 Windows). After paying all our bills we have $151,000 left in checking. See below for a monthly revenue chart, but the trend here is Q4'08 we made $28k, Q1'09 we made $102k, and Q2'09 we made $141k:
Some fun stats:
- The datacenter at this point has about 1,224 terabytes
of drives in it (1,060 TB of useable space after accounting for RAID6).
- Each 1.5 TB drive pod is currently costing $9,180.00 after all tax and
delivery charges, and has 67 TB of drive, but only 54 TB useable after RAID6 and
file system initialization.
-
Customers use up about 150 TB of space per month (with 1.5TB x 45 drive pods, we
need 2.8 Pods Per Month, which is $26,000 in pod costs / month)
- This coming quarter (3 months) Backblaze's
checking account is expected to drop by $100k as we make $50k / month and spend
$81k / month.
7/2/09 - Thursday - deploying pods in the datacenter, here is a half full rack of 6 data pods with Tim Nufire standing in back. The picture on the left is the front of the pods (draws air in and has all the hard drives) and the picture on the right is the back of the pods (expels air, power supplies and motherboards).
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7/5/09 - Sunday - noticed pod fans (Kamikaze) were failing at alarming rates (6 fans replaced this day), totally seizing up, planned for all pods to cycle fans out.
7/8/09 - Wednesday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.1.161. Contains the following main improvements:
a. Fix for when
"Offline" message still displayed with blue icon even though backup continued
b. Make "Quit" menu item work again (Windows client only)
c. Misc small fixes around getting hard drives selected for backup (prev not
allowed to unselect "unplugged" primary drive)
d. New notifications if things are wrong: d1) missing/incorrect bzvol_id, d2) computer
clock 2 days off, d3) pub/priv keys mismatch with datacenter
e. Added "-explainfile" command line option to diagnose push problems
f. Changed log file names from "01.log" to "bztransmit01.log" so Mac Spotlight
can find them uniquely
g. Misc cloned drive fixes around selecting and unselecting cloned drives
h. Added client auto-check and auto-healing for duplicate fileid problems seen
in field
i. Fix
crash in bzfilelist in corner case which prevented new files from being indexed
j. Made rotating bzhostids (for detection of corrupted clients) more robust for
corner cases seen in stats portal
k. Fixed GUI ZIP restore downloader to go directly to correct download host to
increase performance
l. Fixed command line ZIP restore downloader which parsed command line options
incorrectly in some cases
m. Enforce password compliance (no embedded control characters, no embedded
<CR>, etc)
n.
Touched up uninstall message to explain to user "This will not cancel your
billing"
o.
Added process id to a temporary file which preserves greater uniqueness,
prevents collisions
p. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.0.1.162 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Made atomic lock more atomic through using umask instead of two instructions
c. Prep work which will result in fat "32 bit / 64 bit binaries" in upcoming
performance release
d. Sign Macintosh Code for improved security and better compatibility with Mac
OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
e. Misc other small fixes
7/15/09 - Wednesday - 11:10pm - Brian emails partners making the original suggestion that Backblaze write the Backblaze Storage Pod blog post. Click here for a screenshot of that email.
7/31/09 - Friday - End of month, July 2009. This month's revenue was $52,250.00 (out of that $15,148 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $331,500.00. We added about 916 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 7,917 licenses (5,306 Mac and 2,611 Windows). After paying all our bills we have $123,000 left in checking. Below is a Google Analytics revenue map for where our new business came from in the world in July:
8/4/09 - Tuesday - Tim spent the day teaching company "Sonic Manufacturing Technologies" (http://www.sonicmfg.com/) in Fremont how to build (manufacture) the Backblaze pods. All 31 pods in production so far have been built mostly by Tim with a very small amount of help from others at Backblaze. Below is a picture:
8/10/09 - Monday - Tim took a few pictures while on a visit to the datacenter. Below is one we didn't use anywhere else (like in the blog post on pods).
8/27/09 - Thursday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.1.189 (just before
Apple Snow Leopard Release). Contains the following main improvements:
a. On full new
Windows Visual Studio 2008 so all new DLLs and most recent build environment
b. Exclude more temporary files found by customers
c. Exclude EMC "retrospect" ".rdb" files from being backed up
d. Fix
issues surrounding chunks of large files - if a file was an exact multiple (down
to the last byte) of 10MB it would report 1 too many chunks.
e
Expanded out "-explainfile" functionality which helps diagnose why a file is or
is not being backed up (for customers, they run it on their machine)
f. Fixed locking problems where too many bzfilelist processes would get
running at the same time which cascaded into serious issues
g. Fixed keyboard navigation in Backblaze Control Panel (on Windows only)
to support Blind users (and fast typers)
h. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.0.1.190 on same codebase as above. (Just
before Apple Snow Leopard Release.) Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Now on Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) Backblaze is 64-bit for higher performance
c. Backblaze Preference Pane no longer restarts System Preferences Panel
d. Totally rewrote Mac installer (has new bzinstall_mate) to support Snow
Leopard security model
e. Fixed bug where Status Item (little flame in top menu bar) sometimes would
not appear even when checkbox checked
f. Fixed code signing on Snow Leopard to now generate warnings in logs
g. Exclude from backup 2 GB "sleep image" (RAM snapshot the last time laptop
went to sleep)
h. Exclude certain Parallels files (these are a competitor to VMware)
i. Sped up bzfilelist by no longer indexing "/Network" on the Mac which was
wasting time (we still didn't back it up)
j. Made Macintosh reports more accurate by adding new file types (webloc is a
web bookmark type)
k. Fixed bugs where Popup Notifications on Mac could be "hidden" causing
confusion as to what has the focus
l. Fixed sorting bug when you add a folder to the Exclusions list on the Mac
m. Now exclude all "dot" folders in /Users/ such as /Users/.damon/ which should
not be backed up
n. Better (more accurate for each locale) Internationalized Numbers and
Internationalized Dates.
o. Misc other small fixes
8/30/09 - Sunday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.1.191. This is identical to above release, but fixed "dll problems" that Visual Studio Service Pack 1 introduced that prevented Backblaze from running on some XP systems. Mainly we standardized all libaries on version 9.0.21022.8 of msvcr90.dll for Visual Studio 2008. We also moved over to completely embedded manifests, but we continue shipping an external manifest for backward compatibility.
8/31/09 - Monday - Below is a random picture of Billy with a stack of 500 GB Western Digital Passports that we use for customer restores. At this point we're doing about a USB hard drive restore every other day.
8/31/09 - Monday - End of month, August 2009. This month's revenue was $57,000.00 (out of that $16,767 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $388,500.00. We added about 1,142 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 9,059 licenses (6,093 Mac and 2,966 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
9/1/09 - Tuesday, 6am - Press Launch of the "Backblaze Storage Pod Design Blog Post" at 6am. Title is "Petabytes on a Budget: How to build cheap cloud storage" Click here for a PDF version of the blog post, and Click here for a JPEG version. In the next 6 days over 265,000 people read the blog post, and Backblaze got about 3,000 client installs making this the best launch of all time.
Here is a list of some of the articles and discussions around the launch (preserved as screenshots):
Below is the Google Analytics traffic chart for the next 5 days after the launch:
9/9/09 - Wednesday - the team from the Internet Archive (the Wayback machine) visits Backblaze headquarters to talk about Storage Pods. Below are two pictures:
9/10/09 - Thursday - Backblaze held a party to celebrate the success of the storage pod. Click here for Pictures from 2009 Backblaze Storage Pod Party. Below is one picture from the party of the 7 current employees of Backblaze, all partners. From left to right are (King) Billy Ng, Brian Wilson (CTO ) in back, Damon Uyeda (Macintosh Lead Architect), Gleb Budman (CEO, plaid shirt in back), Tim Nufire (VP of Engineering and creator of the pods in front), Nilay Patel (VP of Sales), and on the far right Casey Jones (VP of Design).
9/11/09 - Friday - emergency release and auto-update of Win32 client version 1.0.2.197. and Macintosh release 1.0.2.196 which lower the frequency at which they post bz_done_ files to the datacenter based on certain criteria. This does not slow down backups, but increases the amount of time between when a file is pushed and the user can see it and restore it from the central authority, so it degrades user perception a little. This was necessary because the central authority was tipping over under the load of the launch.
9/22/09 - Tuesday - below are two pictures of the electrical extension cords under Tim Nufire's desk. I don't quite think it is up to code. :-) Click on the picture below for a larger version.
And below is a closer view (click on it for enormous version).
9/28/09 - Monday - Hit 2 Petabytes of useable space in the datacenter. Below is a snippet of "bzadmin" showing the situation. At this point if you add up all expenses at the company including all computers, software, salary, healthcare, etc it comes to $942,791.66 where we have spent $515,891.38 on pure hardware for the datacenter and another $115,941.40 on services like co-lo space, electricity, and bandwidth.
9/30/09 - Wednesday - End of month, September 2009. This month's revenue was $99,000.00 (out of that $21,000 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $487,500.00. We added about 2,357 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 11,416 licenses (7,494 Mac and 3,922 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
10/2/09 - Thursday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.3.209. Several
interim releases occurred since 1.0.2 on 8/30/09 and this rolls up all those
changes which are:
a. Lower
frequency of transmitting of bz_done_ index files for lower central authority
load and increased client performance
b. Fix several pull down menus like "Schedule" which became the height of
1 menu item when made fixes for blind users
c. Modernize more dialogs to have a Vista "white" look and feel like the
"About" dialog
d. Swap out graphics ("Vault" and "Computer") in Control Panel with slightly
more polished newer versions
e. Exclude WER (Windows Error Reporting) folder from being backed up
f. Added "last_file_uploaded" and "platform" parameters to bztransmit.exe -synchostinfo
which enables email to user when not backed up in a while. Also added "kbitspersec"
and "speedthrottle" for additional future features, not used yet.
g. Point "Check for Updates..." menu item at new
https://www.backblaze.com/update.html web page.
h. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.0.3.210 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Fix to support standard users in installer
c. Fix in installer to support spaces in temporary folder names
d. Much more installer logging for esoteric problems
e. Handle more corner error cases like zero length username string
f. Installer is now more careful about not doing any automatic "Reset
Account" (which is like clicking <CONTROL> "Install Now")
g. Installer creates temporary folder if one does not exist already
h. Installer fixes several permissions problems
i. Exclude from backup the Mac mail "Envelope Index" which changes
constantly and is automatically recreated
j. Misc other small fixes
10/5/09 - Monday - Backblaze passes over $500,000.00 in lifetime customer revenue.
10/24/09 - Added "bi-yearly" (pay for two years at a time) to the Backblaze service. So the pricing is: $5/month for month-to-month (pay each month), $50 to pay once every year, and $95 to pay for two years up front. Enough people accept this new option so that we don't "fear" new customers -> before this if a bunch of new customers showed up we had to dip into savings for the first few months of their subscription before they became cash flow positive. From this point onward about 45 percent of new customers choose $5 for month-to-month, 35 percent of new customers choose $50 for "year-to-year", and 20 percent choose $95 paying for two years in advance. These percentages stay pretty consistent over the next few years of Backblaze growth.
11/30/09 - Monday - End of month, November 2009. This month's revenue was $73,000.00 (out of that $26,829.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $638,430.00. We added about 1,489 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 13,669 licenses (8,758 Mac and 4911 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
12/2/09 - Wednesday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.4.221. Several
interim releases occurred since 1.0.2 on 8/30/09 and this rolls up all those
changes which are:
a. Renewals
notification dialogs - when user has not paid, they get notified of the
countdown until their account is shut down.
b. We verisign every binary (not just the installer) to try to work around
anti-virus software stealing our binaries
c. Now we do backup iPhone backups (reversal from earlier policy)
d. Exclude DropBox cache files from backup (they are recreated automatically on
restore)
e.
Touched up German and French localization strings to be more accurate and not
overrun space provided
f. Constantly hunt down any large files with missing chunks and heal them (by
asking datacenter to repush entire clean file)
g. Now client does not depend on URL redirection to arrive at correct URL (http
vs https) from Notification Dialogs and sigin shortcuts
h. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.0.4.222 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Fixed bug where Mozilla Firefox shortcuts were not being backed up
c. Identify more types of "packages" (nibs)
d. Removed calls to stop bzbmenu during upgrades
e. Stop printing errors to stdout
f. During upgrades, if bzfilelist and bztransmit don't stop kill them forceably
g. In installer, safety initializing pointers to NULL, checks for NULL
pointers
h Now
we do backup iPhone backups (reversal from earlier policy)
i. Auto-upgrades now unpack into uniquely named folders to avoid auto-update
conflicts
j.
Avoid backing up bogus "." and ".." files found in /Users/Shared/ folders
k. "Show Pref Pane" menu now brings it back if it was minimized to the dock
l. Exclude a MobileMe cache folder (contents are recreated automatically on
restore)
m.
Slight tweaks to icons (Vault icon) in Mac Backblaze System Preferences
n. Removed bzbmenu (pull down menu along top of screen) keyboard shortcuts
o. Exclude Safari web browsing cache that is automatically recreated on a
restore
p. Misc other small fixes
12/14/09 - Monday - Nilay announces he is leaving Backblaze, and drops to half time.
12/15/09 - Tuesday - If you google the term "Online Backup" then Backblaze shows up as result #6 as shown below:
12/24/09 - Thursday, Christmas Eve 2009 - backups never stop, Tim and Brian visited the datacenter to rack more pods on Christmas eve around 11am. Below is Tim screwing in rails for the new pods:
Once the pods are mounted, Tim wheels the crash cart over to the pods, boots the pods with a console attached, assigns them their identities, and brings them online for testing and drive sync and burn in for a few days before getting customer data.
This is the row of cabinets Tim is working on in the above picture, just a close
up. It shows 30 pods. We are putting 8 pods in each cabinet at this
point (cannot fit more based on power density reasons).
This is the back side of the same 30 pods.
Below is a picture where NONE of the hardware belongs to Backblaze (it is other company's equipment). I'm standing in Backblaze's area and just wanted to show what is in the room with us when we are working in the datacenter.
12/31/09 - Thursday - The two government pods were shipped! We shipped one to JPL in Pasadena, CA and the other to Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque for $25,000.00 each ($50,000.00 total). Below are $50,000 worth of pods in the back of a $4,500 Nissan Sentra in the driveway on their way to TransPak (to crate and ship).
Below is the Sentra 45 minutes later at TransPak (and then the inside of the shipping area):
Inside of TransPak shipping area:
And out of order of date, below is the picture of the pod at Sandia deployed in their rack:
12/31/09 - Thursday - End of month December, end of 2009. This month's revenue was $112,970.00 (out of that $46,155.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $751,400.00 (and of that $712,337.00 was in 2009). We added about 1,737 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 15,847 licenses (9,888 Mac and 5,518 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
Below are the numbers that generate the above graph:
Some end of year statistics:
- We have had 38,982 customer installs, and leave the year with 15,847 paying
customers
- Of 13,365 hosts are in steady_state (84 percent of paid
customers)
- The Backblaze datacenter has 71 pods sitting in production with
about 3,195 drives representing 4.2 Petabytes of space
- The
datacenter has 1.2 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept customer
data
- The datacenter has 4 "one gigabit" pipes available, and about 1.94
gigabits flowing in continually spread across the pipes.
- The datacenter
services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing $24k / month (in
December) which is a $288k / year run rate.
- In the 3 years (2007 - 2009) Backblaze has spent a total of
$1.28 million on datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all
included. Below is a breakdown:
Below is the "cap table" (capitalization table) as of end of 2009 showing all stock in Backblaze plus loan and Series 1 investor amounts.
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space (slightly under estimating reality because several pods are not accepting customer data yet and therefore not included in these numbers):
Below is the bandwidth coming into the Backblaze datacenter charted over a year. The "drop out" under "B" was when our central authority was having disk I/O scaling problems so we shut it down for 20 hours to copy all the customer account data (meta data, not backups) onto a new set of higher speed drives.
1/31/09 - Sunday - End of month January, 2010. This month's revenue was $148,330.00 (out of that $68,531.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $899,730.00. We added about 1,488 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 17,340 licenses (11,087 Mac and 6,253 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
2/4/10 - Thursday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.5.233. The changes
include:
a. Hunt down more
file inconsistencies (aka Tim's missing chunks) and purge them (causing new
backup to occur of the files)
b. Network chattiness reduction (to keep from affecting VoiP like Skype) -
call SyncHostInfo less often, fetch clientversion.xml (auto-update) less,
perform self healing check less often
c. Added hints of "is_speed_test" and "recommend_server_skip_write" to
SyncHostInfo call to Central Authority - to reduce disk writes
d.
Stop backing up within an hour of the trial expiring (previously initial upload
just continued forever without a license)
e. Fix for locked down bz_todo_ bug affecting 1 percent of customers (probably
anti-virus locking file down)
f. Direct people to "update.htm" page when they check for new client versions to
avoid confusion of homepage
g. Enhanced client "Reports" page adding new rar, cpgz to "Zips & Archives"
category and "adr" (Opera) to "Bookmarks"
h. Made "Backup Now / Pause" button wider for some very wide foreign languages
i. Now we push "bzbackup_state_extras.zip" once per hour - these are needed for
"Inherit Backup State" feature (FAQ #18 items like bzinfo.xml)
j. exclude "qtch"
extension files by default - these are temporary QuickTime files
k. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version
1.0.5.233 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Fixes for French GUI (layout, making it prettier)
c. Fixed problem where folders added to "Excluded Folders" did not have
trailing slashs (caused too much to be excluded)
d. Fixed cosmetic bug where "Check for Updates" dialog displayed local
version number where it should display server version
e. Misc other small fixes
2/17/10 - Wednesday - AVG "letter of intent" arrives which offers $22 million for Backblaze. It has a 24 hour expiration.
2/18/10 - Thursday - Backblaze passes $1 million in lifetime money collected from customers. The 2nd government pod sale (Sandia) check arrived this day and was deposited causing the cross over the million mark.
2/23/10 - Tuesday - Backblaze partners vote to agree to Trend "Letter of Intent" for $20 million. This turns down AVG's offer of $22 million with less favorable terms. Casey, Billy, Gleb, Nilay, Tim all voted they want the Trend deal. Damon and Brian said it's fair and Ok and Damon and Brian are happy, but we would also have been happy running Backblaze independently and wait for a better deal from somebody. A picture of the whiteboard we created during the meeting of the competing offers is seen below. UPDATE 2am 2/24/10 - AVG came through with every single last thing we asked for, so we all switched and signed the AVG LOI for the $26 million total seen on far right below.
The high level mini-timeline of the acquisition is:
a. 11/24/2009 - Gleb meets Punit at Trend to discuss OEM deals, possible
partnerships, general biz-dev
b. 11/30/2009 - Gleb, Tim, Nilay, Brian
come to Trend office where 8 Trend employees are there (including VPs) - Trend
shows excitement
c. 12/9/2009 - Trend sends 2 "technical evaluators"
to the Backblaze datacenter in Oakland, met by Tim, Brian, Gleb
d.
12/15/2009 - Trend tells Backblaze they have a very high degree of interest in
possible acquisition
e. 12/18/2009 - Trend says verbally they want to
make an offer, looking for guidance
f. 1/4/2010 - Trend promises verbally there will
be a LOI (Letter of Intent)
with a short fuse. Trend says "high single digits, low teens" - Backblaze asks for $18M with few strings attached
g. 1/6/2010 - Trend gives LOI for $16M
($9M up front, $7M earn out) with 48 hour timeout and
many strings - Backblaze says "No"
h. 1/15/10 - Gleb asks Trend for
$19M ($12M + $7M).
i. 1/22/10 - Trend comes back verbally with
$19M ($10M + $9M).
j. 2/11/10 - Gleb meets
with another VP at Trend who is excited. This day Gleb also meets with a
VP at McAfee (SaaS division) next day met with "VP of Consumer", at this point
we doubt they can move fast enough to make an offer but keep trying. Also
Hitachi says "no offer will come". Got interest from Roxio and Cisco but
nothing firm, will investigate.
k. 2/17/10 - AVG LOI counter offer arrives which offers $22M ($12M upfront + $10M on 3 year earnout). It has a 24 hour expiration.
l.
2/18/10 - AVG keeps topline $22M offer but changes mix to ($12M upfront + $4M
stock vested purely on employment alone + $6M on shorter 2 year earnout).
m.
2/19/10 - AVG keeps topline $22M offer but changes mix to ($12M upfront + $4M
cash paid purely on employment alone + $6M on 2 year earnout).
n. 2/22/10 -
11am - Trend increases offer one more million to $20M ($10M upfront + $2M based
on 18 months employment alone + $8M earnout).
o. 2/22/10 -
4pm - Backblaze pushed hard on Trend saying they might lose the deal, Trend says
"nothing more can be done" - Trend sticks at $20M
At this point
Here is
Trend's LOI and Here is AVG's LOI.
p. 2/23/10
- 4pm - facing the timeout of Trend and AVG offer letters, Backblaze partners
meet and vote for the Trend deal at $20M with a few tiny clarifications.
Backblaze partners also agree on an offer from AVG they would accept -> where
AVG increases by $4M all up front. There is very little likelyhood AVG
will agree, but might as well let them say "no".
q. 2/23/10 - 9pm -
Trend agrees to small terms, wants to know Gleb will sign if they get offer
letter final in next 2 hours.
r. 2/23/10 - 9:30pm - AVG calls and asks
if they put the final offer in writing for additional $4M whether we will sign
within 10 minutes
s. 2/23/10 - 11pm - Backblaze partner conference call
agree if AVG hit every last single thing asked for, will sign in 10 minutes
t.
2/24/10 - 2am - AVG LOI signed by Gleb.
u. 4/2/10 - got 1st draft of
"Definitive Agreement" to review (this is after technical due diligence and
accounting and legal due diligence all passed)
v. 5/10/10 - AVG says
there is a profound problem, they want to change the purchase price $6 million
lower up front to more like $10M because this is more in line with previous
acquisitions AVG has done (this changes the LOI profoundly and is incredibly bad style at
this point in the deal). The AVG CEO tells us that the board of directors
is not fully onboard. (Not sure the real story.)
w. 5/13/10
- Brian votes to say "no, the original terms sheet deal is the deal". Casey, Gleb, Billy,
Tim vote to propose $4 million lower up front, but INCREASE the total deal from $26M to
$28M.
x. 5/17/10 - AVG comes back STILL offering $6M less up front.
Brian/Damon/Nilay vote "no, the original terms sheet deal is the deal".
Casey, KC, Gleb, Billy, Tim all vote for $3M less at start, deal total of $29M
(so increase of $3M at end).
y. 5/28/10 - AVG investment bankers call
Backblaze and say "deal is dead". Procedures started for AVG to pay
Backblaze legal bills.
z. 5/28/10 - also on this day Backblaze called
Trend and asked if old deal was still good. "No" says Trend, they have
moved on to acquire a new company. Doh!
2/28/10 - Sunday - End of month February, 2010. This month's revenue was $178,216.67 (out of that $51,182.00 was renewals and $50,000 was government pods) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $1,077,946.67. We added about 1,489 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 18,829 licenses (11,987 Mac and 6,842 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
3/1/10 - Monday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.6.237. (THIS IS
FIRST 1.0.6 release!) The changes
include:
a. Fix bug
introduced last release where clients never realize their license expired so
they don't see any renewal popup notifications.
b. Major performance improvement (double central authority) by not posting
bz_done, now posting bz_combined files (also known as "bz_comb_" or "bzcf" files
posted to api/upload_bzcomb)
c. Client now able to show a notification (remotely controlled) about two
machines sharing an HGUID (duplicate hguids are very bad, they mean there is no
real backup occuring)
d. Added bz_auth_token round trip to all APIs (server hands out, clients pass to
other APIs)
e.
Friendlier and clearer installer failure error messages in the case that the
Backblaze servers get too busy and tip over - this is normally not executed but
makes the issue worse when it does
f. More debug output around a year old issue where we spawn two bztransmits
instead of one - should finally be able to find and fix bug now whenever we want
g. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version
1.0.6.238 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes
3/5/10 - Friday - Drobo restore of 8 Terabyte Drobo (4 x 2 Terabyte drives) to John Stillwagen. He originally prepared 18 "500 GB Drive" restores for $3,402. It took 20 days to prepare.
3/14/10 - Sunday - Tim brought 6 more pods online for a total of 4,004 TB (4 PB) of formatted space in 83 pods. Probably around 5 PB of drives.
3/19/10 - Friday - Turned of http://whistler/stats/overview.jsp - We pushed a build to production that turned off the old system of downloading various files for statistics and support to http://whistler in the local 425A Forest office. Below is a final snapshot of the last time that server worked:
3/25/10 - Thursday - release of Mac only client version 1.0.6.246. The changes
include:
a. Fixes install
issue where install failed if Library/LaunchDaemons folder was not present in
advance
b. Fixes
issue where in rare situations bzbmenu can crash
c. Exclusions are sorted when pane is loaded now
d. Exclusions add window now remembers the last directory you opened
e. Fixes issue where 1 user had a crashing bzbmenu
3/29/10 - Casey Christensen accepts his offer at Backblaze. His start date
is April 13, 2010 but here he is dropping off his signed start letter and
picking up his new Backblaze Mac laptop and getting email setup and such:
3/31/10 - Sunday - End of month March, 2010. This month's revenue was $107,000 (out of that $35,000.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $1,184,946.67. We added about 800 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 19,629 licenses (12,387 Mac and 7,242 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
4/13/10 - Tuesday - KC's (Casey Christensen, KC2, Casey2) first day in the office. Here he is below at his desk working.
4/23/10 - Thursday - 7:35pm power goes out in the datacenter. The official report reads "At 7:35pm on Thursday, April 22, a security guard entered colocation room 4 in 365 Main Oakland. The door slammed and caused the cover to open on the EPO switch. This caused the audible alarm to sound. The guard then lifted the door and pushed the red EPO. .... At 8:03 power and HVAC was restored." Tim, Gleb, Billy, and Brian attached crash carts to 78 pods one after another in the next 12 hours and brought them all back online.
Timeline of events:
Below is CEO Gleb Budman at 3am with a crash cart plugged into a storage pod booting it off of an external USB hard drive to bring it back online.
4/26/10 - Monday - Java garbage collector kicks off for the first time on the new "tree browsing server" reducing memory footprint from 25 GBytes of RAM down to 2 GBytes of RAM. This shows several things: 1) that Tomcat/Java are capable of using 25 GBytes of RAM, and 2) that we currently have a factor of 10 growth built into the current one tree browsing server.
4/30/10 - Friday - End of month April, 2010. This month's revenue was $156,000 (out of that $81,000.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $1,184,946.67. We added about 1,171 paid licenses this month bringing our subscribers up to a total of 20,800 licenses (12,893 Mac and 7,907 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart.
5/27/10 - Thursday - Sean Harris drops by office (his official first day is June 1st, 2010). Below Sean is sitting in Nilay's cube who stepped out of the office.
5/27/10 - Thursday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.6.261. The changes
include:
a. New prettier
icons from Casey for main control panel
b. Transfer Backup State (the infamous FAQ #18) - in command line form
c. Exclude some temporary filetypes like "ithmb" in iPod Photo Cache
(among other things, the iPad creates these)
d. Fixed copyright message to include 2010 in "About Dialog"
e. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version
1.0.6.262 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. switched from using temporary folder in the user's home folder which caused
various problems to global tmp folder
c. Misc other small fixes
6/2/10 - Wednesday - Increase 7 core partners salary by $500 / month up from $2,500 to $3,000 / month. After this we increase $500 / month for the next few months in a row. This means that the 7 core partners went from 4/2/09 - 6/2/10 (14 months) with the low salary of $30,000 / year.
6/4/10 - Friday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.6.263. The changes
include:
a. Fix for Transfer
Backup State command line version that mis-calculates disk space needed by
factor of 1,000.
6/4/10 - Friday (same day as above) - deployed the 100th pod into production. That's 4,500 hard drives spinning, and is 6,668 Terabytes in production.
6/21/10 - Monday - release of Win32 client version 1.0.7.267. (This is the
first 1.0.7). The changes
include:
a. Fixed a few
minor problems with "Transfer Backup State" like it produced too much logging
slowing it down
b.
Transfer Backup State - fixed minor issue where the underlying engine did not
call back with the final status at end
c. New SelfHealing feature introduced of "age_bzstorageid_out_in_all_bzdone"
which is non-destructive way of getting a repush of files if possible.
d. New SelfHealing feature introduced where we can kick off a backup on a
customer's computer without them wanting it to happen.
e. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version
1.0.7.268 on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. New "Transfer Backup State" GUI menu item in product, but hidden unless you hold
down "Option" key.
c. Misc other small fixes
6/30/10 - Wednesday - Tim and Sean moved all our pods out of the "GNi" space of
the datacenter. Below is a picture of their new home:
7/19/10 - Monday - release of Win32 client version 1.5.0.283. The changes
include:
a. Transfer Backup State officially
released, this is the first time it is a visible GUI menu item (previously
hidden as a command line) Many bugs fixed in this over any previous version.
b. Maximum individual file size increased
to 9 GBytes. The DEFAULT is still the same old 4 GBytes as always.
c. New BZFF3 Format - Catastrophic Recovery
Help - the clients now encode all bzff files slightly differently (bzff3 instead
of bzff2) where they include the HGUID in plain text. This allows for easier
catastrophic volume recovery searching for one user's files. Restore servers now
decode these files.
d. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.0.284 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. improved an international date formatter
for some circumstances
c. fixed a crashing bug in a very rare
corner debugging case
d.. Misc other small fixes
7/20/10 - Tuesday - release of Win32 client version 1.5.0.285. The changes
include:
a. Fix for Windows only bug where if a user
had previous version (1.5.0.283), selected "9 GB Max", it WORKED, but if they
opened it again cosmetically it displayed "5 Megabyte" instead of the "9
Gigabyte" max.
7/27/10 - Tuesday - release of Win32 client version 1.5.0.289. Fixes around "-explainfile" functionality regarding 9 Gbyte files.
7/31/10 - Saturday - End of month July, 2010. This month's revenue was
$135,000 (out of that about $80,000.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime
Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $1,748,345.77. The stats portal
reports more than 28,000 HGUIDs pinging home, with about 25,000 active licenses
(15,000 Mac and 10,000 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart
(renewal numbers for last couple months approximate, but top revenue accurate
and includes corporate sales which account for about 5 percent of sales at this
point). Not reflected in the chart below is that AVG paid off their
$105,000 debt to pay Backblaze's lawyer bills which gave us enough operating
cash to payback Gleb and Tim's founder loans ($15k each).
8/2/10 - Monday - The monthly increase of 7 core partners salary by $500 / month means this month was $4,000 / month ($48,000 / year run rate). Entire cost to run payroll of 9 employees (includes full time members Sean and KC2) comes to $48,003.96 this month (includes corporate fees, FICA, social security matching, everything). The employee "net" income was $31,994.69 which means for every $1.00 it costs Backblaze, the employees keep 67 cents.
8/10/10 - Tuesday - Released client version 1.5.0.301 (Windows) and The
changes include:
a. Fixed a few small Transfer Backup State
bugs, added better logging around this functionality.
b. removed ".ithmb" from all backups - this
is a temporary cache file created for iTunes, iPhone, iPads, etc.
c. Enhanced the "-explainfile"
functionality to take into account 9 GByte files (was cosmetically reporting
incorrectly)
d. Immediately after the
user changes their "online name for this computer" we now post that information
to the datacenter (keep things in sync for supportability, clarity, especially
important around Transfer Backup State)
e. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.0.302 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. removed some of "Steam's" temporary files from
backup. Steam is a gaming platform for buying and playing games.
c. now we do not backup the temporary
files in a "Blizzard" folder on Mac (Blizzard is a games company)
d. exclude Chrome's "Safe Browsing" temporary files from being backed up
e. Misc other small fixes
8/27/10 - Friday - Paid off "Founders Loans" entirely (except Brian's initial) so Casey, Billy, Gleb, Tim, Damon, Nilay now all repaid.
8/27/10 - Friday - Blog post "Backblaze online backup almost acquired - Breaking down the breakup" Click here for a GIF form preserved. Below are Google Analytics screenshots of what happened on the blog and on the website:
Here is a list of articles about the event:
Original Backblaze Blog Article - Backblaze online backup almost acquired - Breaking down the breakup - Gleb Budman
Tech Crunch - Online Backup Startup Backblaze Was Almost Bought. Twice. What Went Wrong - by Robin Wauters
Venture Beat - Backup service Backblaze almost acquired by .... someone - by Anthony Ha
Hacker News (ycombinator.com) - Discussion about Acquisition Blog Post
Small Net Builder - Backblaze Almost Acquired - Lessons Learned the Hard Way - by Tim Higgins
Law Shucks - Client's Perspective on a Busted Deal
Online Backup Reviews - Backblaze Acquired, Almost
8/31/10 - Tuesday - End of month August, 2010. This month's revenue was $210,369.90 (out of that about $85,000.00 was renewals, $30,571.50 was a RedBull pod sale, and $19,798.40 in Corporate sales) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $1,958.715.67. The stats portal reports more than 30,000 HGUIDs pinging home for the first time, with about 28,000 active licenses (19,000 Mac and 9,000 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart (renewal numbers for last couple months approximate, but top revenue accurate and includes corporate sales). Not reflected in the chart below is that AVG paid off their $105,000 debt to pay Backblaze's lawyer bills, but reflected is the RedBull pod sale:
9/1/10 - Wed - Released client version 1.5.0.311 (Windows) and The
changes include:
a. Fixed a few small Transfer Backup State
bugs, added better logging around this functionality.
b. Added silent installer support (command line installer)
c. Changed frequency of updating metadata
on central authority (from old file counter system to time based)
d. Batching functionality now inside
product (NOT TURNED ON BY DEFAULT - pods cannot accept it yet)
e. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.0.312 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Added silent installer support (command
line installer)
c. Added nice feature to help silent
installer - if bzbmenu not running we launch it when System Pref opened.
d. Checks codesigned binaries after they are put in their final resting place
e. Changed over to using new thread safe suggest API for launching applications
f. Misc other small fixes
9/2/10 - Thursday - Paid 7 founders $10k each in salary (more than double previous months). We consider this the moment we hit "market rate" ($120k/year) so it took a little over 3 years to hit market rate salaries out of profits.
9/3/10 - Friday - Date of Eviction Notice given to Backblaze offices, click here to read it. We had been inhabiting Brian's old apartment up until this moment, and after 3 and a half years of pushing our luck, the landlord finally said "get out". :-)
9/7/10 - Tuesday - Backblaze crosses $2 million in lifetime revenue from customers.
10/25/10 - Monday - Released client version 1.5.1.331 (Windows) and The
changes include:
a. Added command line options to allow
scriptable installers for organizations (-createaccount and -signin)
b. Support for Prepaid Codes by renaming installer
install_backblaze$<giftcode><5-chars-of-SHA1>
c. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.1.332 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Fixes for Mac OS 10.4 to prevent
messages from appearing in the console logs
c. Improve performance on systems mounting
AFS filesystems by not descending into /afs/ folder (which stops a pointless
indexing of AFS network mounts)
d.
Automatically exclude thumbnail cache folder created by iPhoto 11 (increases
performance, stop backing up temporary files).
e. Misc other small fixes
10/31/10 - Sunday - End of month October, 2010. This month's revenue was $181,571.23 (out of that about $91,000.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $2,337,404.71. The stats portal reports more than 34,000 HGUIDs pinging home for the first time, with about 29,500 active licenses (18,000 Mac and 11,500 Windows). Below is a lifetime revenue chart (renewal numbers for last couple months approximate, but top revenue accurate and includes corporate sales).
11/11/10 - Thur - As we prepare to move into our new office at 500 Ben Franklin Ct, San Mateo, Casey and Gleb move furniture aside to make room for new carpet:
11/15/2010 - Monday - Google Search for "Online Backup" results in Backblaze seen as #2!! See screenshot below.
11/17/2010 - Wednesday - Brian White's first day as a contractor, one day per week. Picture below:
11/22/2010 - Monday - Prepaid codes launched for the first time as Gift codes. Blog post Tuesday morning, email out to 30,000 customers Wednesday morning.
11/29/2010 - Monday - Backblaze office moves out of 425A Forest Ave, Palo Alto, CA and moves into 500 Ben Franklin Ct, San Mateo, CA. Below is a picture of the moving van getting loaded on moving day:
Billy carrying out the last of his furniture, the desks are about to be moved out.
And a picture of the cabling aftermath, a mixture of ethernet and extension cord (power) cables. The red arrows in the picture below show holes through the walls that extension cords and ethernet cables were run for three and a half years to provide power to the living room, and ethernet and power into the closets behind the wall where we housed machines. The next step after this picture was taken was to cut off all the cables flush with the wall, pull the cables through the other side, then spackle the holes shut. The landlord had the apartment painted the day after this picture was taken, and you couldn't find the spots where the cables ran through. :-)
11/30/10 - Tuesday - End of month November, 2010. This month's revenue was $188,250.00 (out of that about $92,000.00 was renewals) which makes the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $2,525,654.71. The stats portal reports more than 36,000 HGUIDs pinging home, with about 31,500 active licenses.
12/6/2010 - Monday - Direct deposit of $91,7214.50 arrives into Backblaze checking account from RedBull for 3 pods, which we will now manufacture for them. This brings our bank account back up to "positive", we were running slightly under water running a balance on our Visa cards to stay afloat.
12/7/2010 - Tuesday - Backblaze new office at 500 Ben Franklin Ct, San Mateo, CA is finally getting organized and put away. Below is a panorama, scroll right and left to see more of the office:
Billy working at his desk, Brian's desk on the right.
Tim's desk on the left, Damon's desk on the right, and the kitchen area (with Backblaze logo painting) in back to the right.
12/21/2010 - Tuesday - Backblaze holiday dinner in San Mateo.
Casey Christensen cut off left of picture, Jennifer, Sean, Marianna on far right.
Tim Nufire, Katherine, Brian Wilson.
Katia, Damon, Billy.
Annie, Casey, Gleb, Ali.
12/30/2010 - Thursday - Shipped RedBull pods off loading dock in Oakland datacenter, here is a picture of the packed pod:
While there, I took this picture of our main row of equipment in the Unwired space. That is 17 cabinets in a row (in Unwired) and not in the picture below are 3 more cabinets in Internap (a few hallways over). There is exactly one cabinet without pods which houses the central authority and restore servers, you can see it is the 3rd from the left, and two cabinets waiting for more pods. So we have a total of 20 cabinets at this point, with pods filling 17 of them.
A front facing view of some of the cabinets of pods. We can get 8 pods safely inside one cabinet without exceeding the power restrictions the colo puts on us, and then a couple months later when the pods are totally full of customer data they require less power (less drive activity) so we can squeeze one more pod into the rack for a total of 9 pods per rack. Each pod contains 45 drives, so with two terabyte drives we can fit 810 terabytes per rack.
12/31/2010 - Friday - End of month December, end of 2010. This month's revenue was $311,426.16 (out of that $118,000 was renewals and $91,714.50 was 3 pod sales to RedBull). The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $2,837,080.87 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Below are the numbers that generate the above graph:
Some end of year statistics:
- We have had 85,909 customer installs (46,927 in 2010 alone), and leave the
year with 33,487 paying customers (17,640 added in 2010 alone).
- 30,088 hosts are in steady_state (90 percent of paid customers)
- The Backblaze datacenter has 138 pods sitting in production with 6,195 drives
online representing just over 10 Petabytes of raw space (up from 4.2 a year ago)
- There are 749 drives of size 1 terabyte, 3,166 drives of size 1.5 terabytes,
and 2,280 drives of size 2 terabytes
- The datacenter has about 0.9 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept
customer data
- The datacenter has 4 "one gigabit" pipes available, and about 3.6 gigabits
flowing in continually spread across the pipes.
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing
$36k / month (in December) which is a $432k / year run rate.
- Backblaze now has
9 full time employees, plus SBrian half time
- In the 4 years (2007 - 2010) Backblaze has spent a total of $3.4 million on
datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included. About
$2.12 million of that was in 2010. Below is a
breakdown of 2010:
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
Below is graph of a full year of 2010 of total threads running on Tomcat to pods (clients backing up) in datacenter. At end of year we were having central authority scaling issues (resulting in the migration to a new set of faster drives) and throttled customers backup frequency sporadically to get through the holidays. Also notice the weekly humps, the weekends have a few less computers running.
Below is graph of a full year of 2010 of total customer data size stored in datacenter. Started the year with a little over 2 Terabytes, ended with about 7 terabytes.
Below is graph of a full year of 2010 of free (formatted) space in datacenter that can accept customer data. The vertical spikes indicate when pods are racked and brought into the "available for customer" pool.
Below is graph of a full year of 2010 of formatted total space (used and not yet used) in datacenter:
Below is graph of a full year of 2010 of bandwidth coming into datacenter (customers backing up). We started the year at about 2 Gigabits/sec flowing into the datacenter, and on Jan 3rd 2011 spiked to 4.5 Gigabits/sec as customers came back from vacation and booted their computers.
A screenshot of the client stats, for the record:
1/15/2011 - Nilay Patel leaves Backblaze to co-found a different startup (http://www.selligy.com to focus on mobile applications for businesses).
1/31/2011 - Monday - Mozy drops unlimited storage. Now it is $6 / month (up from $5) and caps at 50 Gbytes. Backblaze sales hit 122 (three digits) by 10am, which has never happened before. Three digits up until now is an "excellent day" by 4pm.
1/31/2011 - Monday - End of month January. This month's revenue was $276,536.28 (out of that $132,000 was renewals). The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $3,113,638.79. We signed up 3,052 new customers making this the best month ever so far.
2/11/2011 - Friday - repurchased Series 1 shares from James Fleishman at the exact investment valuation because James needed cash.
2/16/2011 - Wed - Kenneth Manjang (Ken) starts as a contractor in support.
2/16/2011 - Wed - As of this moment, this just became the best month ever with 3,091 customers signed up so far, below are graphs showing the increase in sales and traffic since Mozy raised prices. Important to note this is only NEW business, renewals are another $5k per day.
Bzadmin shows 47,535 customers pinging home in the last 30 days.
2/19/2011 - Sat - Backblaze crosses over 100,000 lifetime hosts running Backblaze (includes free trials that do not monetize). See above "Total HGUIDs ever created" in the picture above it is 99,048.
2/28/2011 - Tue - End of month February 2011. This month's revenue was $347k (out of that about $130,000 was renewals).
3/30/11 - Wed - Released client version 1.5.2.357 (Windows) and The
changes include:
a. Added Windows custom downloader for very
large free zip file restores - this already existed on the Macintosh
b. Fixed a bug where customers in "steady_state"
had to fully complete a backup before seeing ANY of their files show up, now
more frequent. (It was a problem if a customer added a huge external drive
they would not see progress for weeks until it was finished uploading.)
c. Cosmetic fix - Fixed button label in "Set Private Encryption Key" dialog to
be correct.
d. Enable scrollbar in
"Transfer Backup State" dialog - enables customers with more than 16 computers
to transfer backup state
e. Added test
code to identify wireless access points in the area (if WiFi 802.11 radio is
available) - part of a future functionality to geo-locate lost laptops
f. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.2.358 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Mac ignores some Office 2011 temporary
files
c. Toggling bzbmenu hide/show now launches
bzbmenu if it is not running - this fixes a minor recurring problem
d. If installed on Mac OS 10.4, Backblaze will no longer automatically
auto-update, this is in preparation for branching source tree and end of life
for Mac OS 10.4 in the next 12 months
e.
Support for Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) - new automatic exclusions of some temporary
folders
e. Misc other small fixes
3/31/2011 - Thu - End of month March 2011. This month's revenue was $317k (out of that $135,000 was renewals).
4/3/11 - Monday - Yev Pusin starts at Backblaze. (Gleb knows him as "Gene".) Picture below on his first day.
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. Chad West - 10/18/07
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. Nilay Patel - 11/20/08
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (starts as contractor - 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (starts as contractor - 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
4/3/11 - Monday - met with Dean Drako, who wants to acquire Backblaze.
Before the meeting the founders said "Min Upfront, Buy Now, Tim: $14m $25m,
Casey: $16m $20m, Brian: $20m $40m, Billy: $16m $25m, Gleb: $15m $25m.
4/4/11 - Tuesday - Brian White becomes full time at Backblaze (up until now was
a contractor).
4/5/11 - Wednesday - Ken Manjang becomes full time at Backblaze (up until now was a contractor).
4/30/2010 - Saturday - End of month April 2011. This month's revenue was $297k (out of that $145,000 was renewals) which makes 2011 about $1.2 million so far. As of this time there are 55,400 clients calling home to the datacenter (32,400 Mac and 23,000 Windows).
5/13/11 - Friday - Released client version 1.5.2.389 (Windows) and The
changes include:
a. Hidden geolocation "Locate My Computer"
functionality. Not seen unless you know the hidden URL.
b. Turn off excessive logging of mouse events in some cases that was slowing
down Windows client (not in Mac version)
c. Added
a ton of extra tracking in stats portal around file sizes larger than 9 Gbytes
d. Hidden backdoors for backing up files larger than 9 Gbytes and VMware
images.
e. Added new code to detect file
permission problems that prevent backups of some files in some situations
f. New www-corpstage and ul-corpstage support, this will not affect actual
customers, just better staging internally to Backblaze
g. Added more debugging code around installing and account creation where
affiliate is not getting credit.
h. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.2.388 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Fix a 64-bit bug on Mac OS X 10.5
c. Now the uninstaller is code
signed also
d. Added "Uninstall" from hidden <OPTION>Click menu
e.
Stop setting energy savings mode when we declare victory on the initial upload
on Mac
f. Misc other small fixes
5/22/11 - Monday - Released client version 1.5.3.391 (Windows) and 1.5.3.392
(Mac) The
changes include:
a. Official geolocation "Locate My
Computer" functionality. Exposed in Web Gui, inside installer
info-graphics.
Here is some press that occurred (screenshots of articles to preserve them):
TUAW - Backblaze adds free Locate My Computer service to backups - by Steven Sande
MacStories - Backblaze Launches Location Service to Find Stolen Computers - by Cody Fink
MacTech - Backblaze Online Backup Launches 'Locate My Computer'
Online Backups Review - Locate your Lost or Stolen Computer with Backblaze
Tech Whack - Backblaze launches locate my computer feature
Small Cloud Builder - Backblaze adds Free Stolen Computer Locator
Business Insider - Backblaze adds free Locate service to backups
Mac News - Backblaze Online Backup Launches 'Locate My Computer'
The Inquisitr - Backblaze launches 'Locate My Computer' so everyone can humiliate the person who stole their laptop on YouTube
eWeek - Backup Provider Backblaze Now Includes Locator for Stolen PCs
5/31/2010 - Tuesday - End of month May 2011. This month's revenue was $291k
(out of that $154,000 was renewals) which makes 2011 about $1.5 million so far.
As of this time there are 57,000 clients calling home to the datacenter (33,500
Mac and 23,500 Windows).
6/30/2011 - Thursday - End of month June 2011. This month's revenue was $2??k
(out of that $15?,000 was renewals) which makes 2011 about $1.9 million so far.
As of this time there are 59,000 clients calling home to the datacenter (34,500
Mac and 24,500 Windows).
7/5/2011 - Tuesday - Released client version 1.5.5.401 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Fix so client can handle pod names with
embedded letters (https://ul00z.backblaze.com), not just numbers (both Windows
and Mac) - allows scaling up to 5 million users with no other code changes
b. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 1.5.5.402 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Mac OS X 7 (Lion) only - fixed
"Exclusions" list to work correctly.
c. Mac OS X 7 (Lion) only - added more Lion
specific default "folders to exclude" ("/Library/Saved Application State" and
"/Library/Preferences/SdmHelpData")
d.
Fixed date formatter so "Backup Once Per Day At Time: " appears without
"seconds" displayed
e. Misc other small fixes
7/20/2011 - Wednesday - Press Launch of the "Backblaze Storage Pod 2.0 Blog Post" at 6am. Title is "Petabytes on a Budget v2.0: Revealing More Secrets" Click here for a PDF version of the blog post. In the next 5 or 6 days about 80,000 people read the blog post (about 1/3 the number as read the original blog post), and Backblaze got a few hundred more client installs than average over this 5 or 6 days.
Here is a list of some of the articles and discussions around the launch (preserved as screenshots):
Below is some Google Analytics about the event:
7/31/2011 - Sunday - End of month July 2011. This month's revenue was $324k
(out of that $156,000 was renewals) which makes 2011 about $2.2 million so far.
As of this time there are 63,000 clients calling home to the datacenter (36,500
Mac and 26,500 Windows).
8/2/2011 - Tuesday - 1 Gbit/sec fiber optic line lights up and provides San Mateo office with the first decent network connectivity we have had. Up until now it has been 3 sad DSL lines at 3 Mbits or less. We made the official request to get this line on February 18th, 2011. They refuse to give any status or time estimates until they start work, work suddenly started on June 20th (4 months later) and the network came entirely online and was useable on August 2nd, 2011 (4.5 months). Below are some pictures of the "trenching". Below they are "outside" the concrete wall drilling through it.
Picture from the machine room window of the equipment.
Hole up into the machine room (92 strands of fiber came up through this a day later). We use two strands (one strand each way), the rest are "dark".
8/9/2011 - Tuesday - Carbonite IPO. Carbonite is in the online backup space with Backblaze. Carbonite IPO at a market cap of $384 million, and Carbonite at this point has 1.1 million customers. The IPO raised $77 million of additional capital for "Corporate Uses".
8/31/2011 - Wednesday - End of month August 2011. This month's revenue was $374k
(out of that $170,000 was renewals) which makes 2011 about $2.51 million so far.
As of this time there are 66,000 clients calling home to the datacenter (38,500
Mac and 27,500 Windows).
9/16/2011 - Friday - Paid off the very last of Brian Wilson's "Founder Loans". As of this moment, the founders have extracted their original investment (not including time without salary) back out of Backblaze out of the profits. Here is the list of founder's loans:
Total: $185,000.00 in loans the founders invested in the company and eventually were paid back including 6% interest. The loans paid 6% interest as required by law to be "loans".
10/17/2011 - Andy Klein joins. He is employee number 14. - UPDATE: Andy never joined, at the last minute he didn't show up.
10/25/2011 - The day before the client 2.0 release here were the averages from the stats portal. The average customer currently has 254 GBytes selected for backup.
10/26/2011 - Tuesday - Released client version 2.0.1.431 (Windows).
This was an excellent launch resulting in 1,216 new accounts in 3 days (about
The changes include:
a. Compiled client with new Visual Studio
2010 (old one was Visual Studio 2008) plus went to new msvcr100.dll
b. Sort "todo" list to backup in file size order, plus sort one file from each
hard drive to front, plus resume large files
c.
Only push odd numbered days of bz_done_ files to central authority (speeds up
restore tree loading)
d. Adding copious amounts of new logging in bztransmit to detect all sorts of
issues and potential issues around new features (and some older features)
e.
New installer artwork (wood grain)
f.
Exclude more "chatty" temporary files from being backed up that appeared in
Windows 7.
g. Added "DV" to the "video
files" category to make a client report slightly more accurate
h. Moved to OpenSSL 1.0.0e plus patch for AESNI hardware acceleration support
i. Updated libCURL to version 7.22.0 which improved performance and had many
bugs fixed
j. Added "Restore Files..."
to tray menu item
k. Added "Performance
Tab" to Control Panel - includes speed dial of last file transmitted and
auto-throttle
l. Added ability to set a
"Scratch Disk" now called "Temporary data drive:"
m. Fixed international cosmetic problems (some long languages like Spanish
overlapping onto "Buy" button)
n. Added
"Backup While On Battery Power" checkbox and option
o. Allow customers to backup all file types (namely VMware and ISOs)
p. Added "ithumb" to the recommended default list of things to exclude when you
install Backblaze
q. Batch small files
r. Removed "Backup when Idle" feature -> all these users become "Backup
Continuously".
s. Track bzserv version
in bzadmin stats portal as "version_bzserv"
t. Changed "Backup only when I click Backup Now" to be much more silent, now
called "Silent Mode"
u. Increased a very
old limit from 50,000 to 900,000 which is the number of files we backup before
pausing for a break.
v. Enhancement: if
we get a checksum error when transmitting to a pod, we now retry once before
returning to central authority
w. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.1.432 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. New XCode 4.2 (and gcc 4.2) used to compile,
still using macosx10.6 as the SDK
c. Exclude bzdata (Backblaze folder) from Spotlight in a new way to lower
SpotLight load on system
d. Improved
code that detects client's local IP address which helps Domain Site License (Backblaze
for Business) customers
e. Detect 64-bit
OS more accurately, also detect Mac OS Server Version more accurately (for
bzadmin stats portal)
f. Exclude
temporary folders in new Final Cut Pro X
g.
Added floating window explanation when moving throttle slider what bandwidth
caps that indicates.
h. Added a few default excluded folders that fill with temporary files having to
do with the new location of email in Mac OS 10.7
i.
Fixed a "Locate My Computer" problem where some subset of customer's WiFi
network MAC address had extra space
j.
Fixed "Pause/Resume" cosmetic bug in Mac version of ZIP file downloader.
k. Misc other small fixes
Here is some press that occurred
TechCrunch - Online Storage Service Backblaze Now More Unlimited Than Unlimited - by Robin Wauters
GigaOm - Backblaze now backs up whatever you've got - by Barb Darrow
Wired - Backblaze?s Basic Cloud Storage is 25 Times Cheaper than Amazon S3 - by Jon Stokes
Backup Review: Backblaze Online Backup release version 2.0
Electronista: Backblaze 2.0 removes limits, upgrades performance
ReadWriteWeb: Three new backup developments
SearchCloudStorage.com: Backblaze backup offers unlimited storage; more news
MacGeneration (French): Backblaze 2 removes all limits (English translation)
HostingTalk.it (Italy) Backblaze: now you can backup pretty much everything (English)
ITespresso.de (Germany) Backblaze 2.0: More speed for backup (English)
TechCrunch Japan: Online storage service Backblaze now more unlimited than unlimited
11/4/2011 - Friday - Ken takes *EIGHT* USB restore hard drives to the mail. In one day. This is a record.
Nov 11, 2011 - Friday - Kirk Adams accepts offer to join Backblaze, but official start date will be Jan 1st, 2012.
Nov 16, 2011 - THE DRIVE APOCOLYPSE. Wed - Yev, Casey, Ken, Billy, and BrianW "farm" all the BestBuy USB 3 TByte external hard drives from Sunnyvale through San Mateo (6 stores) including Costco. Below are Yev and Casey grinding. We picked up 62 drives (34 Western Digital MyBook Essential 3 TByte, 28 Seagate GoFlex Desk 3 TByte), and paid $10,196 for them.
Ken and Yev farming hard drives from BestBuy.
Billy and Ken clear out another BestBuy.
Brian piles up drives with Tim.
We split up and brainstorm about who hits which store. Billy is banned from several physical BestBuys for over aggressive drive collection. :-)
Misc Drive Farming Pictures from next week, the first two are notices in the physical stores.
Another physical store warning, this one inside Costco:
Saturday, Nov 19th, the final day of a Best Buy sale we run around the bay area cleaning them out. Below is Brian posing with his take from the day (Katherine helped Brian, she also took this picture).
Yev and Brian near the external USB hard drive pile we accrue in the office. We built up about three of these piles, each time sending them off to "Sonic" to rip apart the USB enclosures and build these into pods.
One pile almost ready for a 7 pod build. We need to do this twice a month (burning through 14 pods, 630 hard drives, 1,890 TBytes per month).
Sonic sends a guy in a van to pick up the drives, we BARELY had space to put all of them.
Sonic builds our pods, here they are picking up farmed USB external hard drives.
The team helping hand off to Sonic all the drives, we tore off the extra plastic packaging before loading them in the Sonic van.
Dec 11, 2011 - We sell the very first PrepaidCode on Amazon.com to Brian Wilson.
Dec 12, 2011 - Monday, Xmas dinner with significant others. It was in the restaurant "Kingfish" in San Mateo, in the basement. On the far far left below is Kirk who hadn't had his first day yet, his wife ??, Katherine, Ali, Tim, Sean's wife Mariana, Yev standing up, KC2, Ken, ??, Jim, SBrian, ?? standing up behind SBrian, Natasha, Katia, Gleb, Casey, Evelyn, Billy, and Brian took the photo so is not in the picture.
Evelyn, Billy, Yev, Kirk, Kirk's wife ??
Tim (far left huge face in picture), Ken at head of table, Jim, SBrian, ??, Natasha, Katia, Gleb half cut off.
12/20/2011 - Tuesday - Backblaze billboard on Highway 101 goes up.
12/22/2011 - Shutterfly has been using a variant on the Backblaze pod for a while, here is a picture of the "Shutterfly Pod Bezel" compared with the Backblaze Pod Bezel:
12/31/2011 - Saturday - End of month December, end of 2011. This month's revenue was $397,000.00 (out of that $221,000.00 was renewals). The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $6,800,532.78 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, and $3,963,325.68 was in 2011). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Some end of year statistics:
- We have had 172,670 customer installs (86,761 in 2011 alone), and
leave the year with 67,382 paying customers (33,894 added in 2011 alone).
- 63,042 hosts are in steady_state (93 percent of paid customers)
- The Backblaze datacenter has 259 pods sitting in production with 11,655 drives
online representing just over 23.8 Petabytes of raw space (up from 10 a year
ago)
- There are 615 drives of size 1 terabyte (down from 749 last year), 3,210
drives of size 1.5 terabytes, 5,130 drives of size 2 terabytes, and 2,700 drives
of size 3 terabytes
- The datacenter has about 2 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept
customer data (about double the amount we had last year)
- The datacenter has 2 "10 gigabit" pipes available, and we regularly exceed 10
gigabits of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays.
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing
$69k / month (in December) which is a $833k / year run rate.
- Backblaze now has 11 full time employees (Kirk Adams starts on 1/1/2012
and is not included in this count)
- In the 5 years (2007 - 2011) Backblaze has spent a total of $7.1 million on
datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included (including
the financed $275k in pod leases). About $4
million of that was in 2011. Below is a breakdown of 2010 and 2011 finances:
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space (taken a couple days later).
Below is a graph of a full year of 2011 of pod deployments where the green line goes up as pods are deployed, and the red line goes up as space is used up.
Below is a graph of a full year of 2011 of "active connections". Since we end the year with about 11k active connections datacenter wide, which spread across the 76,807 hguids means clients backup 8 minutes per hour on average (1/7th are connected at any one time).
A graph of the active users over the year of 2011.
Below is graph of a full year of 2011 of bandwidth coming into datacenter (customers backing up). We started the year at about 4 Gigabits/sec flowing into the datacenter, and on Jan 3rd 2012 spiked to 10 Gigabits/sec as customers came back from vacation and booted their computers.
Amount of disk spaced on our most important drive volume (Dell drive shelf) on the central authority. The drive shelf has 5.5 TByte of formatted disk space available, and we have steadily used up 4.45 TBytes of it by the end of 2011 (2.7 TBytes used in 2011 alone).
Starting in April of 2011, we collected "Disk Busy" statistics on the central authority Dell drive shelf. That graph is shown below.
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2011, for the record:
January 3rd, 2012 - Tuesday - First "working day" of the year, first day Kirk Adams is in the office full time. Below he is in the datacenter (picture taken a few days later):
1/11/2012 -
Wednesday Released client version 2.0.1.449 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Added "choke" feature, allows us
at Backblaze to slow optionally down data flowing into our datacenter.
b. Adjust new 2.0 feature - smooth
out the burst of initial central authority bz_done_ postings lowering first 2
days of initial load on datacenter after a new client installation
c. Improved security - Flipped switch
from using SSL1 up to SSL3 in all HTTPS posts from client to datacenter
d. Added logging around a bug where
large files (larger than 30 MBytes) were not backed up if they had names ending
in whitespace (trailing "space" char at end of filename) - not fixed yet, just
added tons of logging to see if this is really the problem
e. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.1.450 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above (like choke)
b. Changed max file size from "1000000000"
to "No Limit"
c. Choosing the "Restore" menu item on Mac
client now pre-fills out signin name
d. Fixed "auto spelling" issue in
bzsystemprefpane - turned off continuous spelling checking
e. Allow more VMware images to be backed
up, by removing old code that exclude VMware images that appeared in "virtual
machines.localized" folder on Mac
f. Allow more Parallels (like VMware)
images to be backed up, by removing old code that excluded "microsoft windows
xp.pvm" folder on mac
g. Misc other small fixes
1/16/2012 - Monday - Backblaze employees gather under their billboard on highway 101 for a picture. The billboard ran for one month and cost $7,000 to run for 30 days, and cost about $600 to "print" (produce?) it.
Here is the location on Highway 101 (half way from San Francisco to San Jose, California):
Here is a fairly simple movie showing Casey working with his camera gear to film the movie and take photos.
As we were going home, we passed the workers who (in the next 10 minutes) removed our billboard and put up a different one.
Click here, here, and here for more pictures of the billboard on that day.
1/23/2012 - Monday - Andy Klein's first day in the office (see picture below of Andy). To recap the employee hiring order:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (starts as contractor - 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (starts as contractor - 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
1/25/2012 - Tuesday - First USB Flash Thumb Drive restore was
prepared.
2/10/2012 - Friday - 6:30am - somebody walks into Backblaze wearing a horse head mask waking up the security cameras. Click here for a high quality QuickTime movie of some of the horse head office early morning antics. On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm10Wmfwtog
2/29/2012 - Wednesday - Released client version 2.0.2.461 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Improved Japanese Translations for SourceNext Project
b. Added "End Time"
to "Backup Schedule of type 'Once Per Day'"
c. Updated many "Learn More" links from various error dialogs to link to new
localized help pages.
d. Enhanced debug
logging in bzdownloader to make certain things clearer (avoid support issues)
e. New thumb drive icon in client "Restore..." dialog for "USB Flash Drive"
restore option
f. Client running domain
site licenses (Backblaze for Business) now popup billing dialogs tailored to
their situation avoiding billing confusion
g. Added more debugging around TransferBackupState - adding hguids and clarity
around locked down binaries
h. New
Japanese strings for installer
i.
Fixed installer formatting for foreign languages (mainly Japanese)
j. Misc other small fixes
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.2.462 on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above (like choke)
b. Fixed copyright date to 2012 in
"About" dialog
c. Touched up display and formatting issues for foreign languages
d.
Changed way we get network card MAC address - no longer dependent on shelling
out (yay!)
e. Removed ability to run installer on Mac OS X 10.4 - existing 10.4 customers
allowed to continue as customers, but no more "new customers" allowed with 10.4
f.
A few fixes to provide full support for "Moutain Lion" (10.8 release)
g. Misc other small fixes
3/1/2012 - Thursday - Core 5 Backblaze partners salaries increased in anticipation of Russian funding (to have record of paying higher before funding closes).
3/2/2012 - Friday - Backblaze starts it's first 401k. Backblaze contributes 3% to each employee's account (not matching, this is an increase in compensation). The 3% was to achieve "safe harbor".
3/13/2012 - Monday - Released client version 2.0.2.465 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Detection of Windows Eight (Windows 8)
in stats portal (internal bzadmin tool) for the first time
b. Misc small debugging additional code to
help diagnose support problems.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.2.466 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above (like choke)
b. Backup "End Time" cosmetic fix.
d. Misc other small fixes.
3/22/2012 - Thursday - Released (maybe not pushed?) client version 2.0.2.469 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Localized uninstaller
b. Blow reg keys on every uninstall.
c.
More aggressively try to use Prepaid Codes found encoded in the installer name
(install_backblaze$GXPXZ4VX6sha) in first 24 hours of trial
d. Misc small debugging additional code to
help diagnose support problems.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.2.470 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above (like blowing
reg keys on uninstall and localized uninstaller)
b. Fix for the problem that affected some 10.5 installation customers -
prevented some new installs, now fixed.
c. Misc other small fixes.
3/23/2012 - Friday - "April Fools" video shoot involving pigeons. The pigeons were named "Larry" and "Gypsy", Yev rented them (with a trainer/handler) from Mickaboo (also spelled "Mickacoo.org") which is a bird rescue organization.
The birds (pigeons) standing on Gleb's laptop and desk. Billy in the background.
The birds wandering around on our desks. They have little diapers on
3/26/2012 - Monday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.3.471 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Pass uilang in
at_install_time_create_account_and_addhost
b. Stop producing bzduplicates.dat obsolete file (slows down client, we don't
use this information anymore)
c. Fix for
URL affiliate names so that both install_backblaze$<affiliate> and
install_backblaze_%24<affiliate> will both work.
d. Excluded a temporary folder with AVG virus definitions, no need to constantly
back those up
e. Fixed bogus Russian
translation in uninstaller that was actually Portuguese, not Russian
f. "Learn More" link in uninstaller now localized to point at correct web page
for foreign languages.
g. Added date to default name of "online hostname" for new installation of new
hosts, looks like "steamboat_2012_03_26" now
h. Bumped bzdownloader version number - it was still sporting a 1.5 version.
Also added debug lines to bzdownloader.
h. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.3.472 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. increased logging around installs to figure out what paths the email address
is not set until 20 minutes go by
c. Misc other small fixes.
3/26/2012 - Wednesday - most of Backblaze's 14 employees spent all day in a Reddit "IAmA" answering questions. Permanent Link Here. Screenshots to stand the test of time below:
This is how it looked in the "IAMA" section of reddit:
And inside the reddit thread:
4/5/2012 - Thursday - minimum version of client allowed to backup (supported in the field) is increased from 1.0.6 to 1.0.7.267. This cleanly allows a two year old feature of "bz_auth_token" to be activated for all pods, increasing the security around random malicious programs posting data to land on pods.
4/6/2012 - Friday - Cecilia Luu accepted her offer to join Backblaze (on April 23rd, 2012), becoming the first full time woman at Backblaze (thank goodness, we have women contractors and no bias, but it was getting ridiculous). To recap the employee hiring order:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (starts as contractor - 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (starts as contractor - 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
15. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
4/9/2012 - Monday - David (Dave) Stallard starts as a contractor helping out in the Backblaze datacenter. Picture below from two weeks later in the office.
4/10/2012 - Backblaze passes over 200,000 hguids (these are total lifetime, slightly less than half (88,171) have been seen in the last 25 days.
4/13/2012 - Friday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.4.487 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Much improved Japanese translations from
SourceNext for launch on Monday - includes uninstaller localization.
b. Tweaks to "Transfer Backup State" where old hosts are named "old_inactive_"
for clarity.
c. Fixed (I hope) a very
long running bug where Transfer Backup State failed because host was neither
"win32" nor "mac" (unknown)
d. Improved
logging around certain problems -> looking for long term supportability and
possible fixes
e. Activated "bloat"
feature -> bz_done_ files *always* get larger now, never shrink. This is
part of Safety Freeze.
f. Misc other
small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.4.488 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes.
4/14/2012 - Saturday - immediately before the SourceNext launch, here is a snapshot of the uilang summary from the stats portal showing 288 customers running Japanese in their GUI on the desktop client.
Out of time order -> the following was a snapshot of the uilang summary 2 weeks later (May 1st):
On 5/1/2012 the stats portal reports that as 1,975 clients
displaying Japanese (trial and licensed), which is a 1,687 increase. During that
same time, Korean gained 1 customer, we got 4 additional German, and lost 3
Italian. As of 5/1/2012 there are 883 sourcenext Prepaid codes applied.
4/15/2012 - Sunday 11pm (California time) - The SourceNext Japanese launch. In the next 6 hours, 44 PrepaidCodes were sold. Below are some press articles
1) Backblaze page on Sourcenext site: (English) (Screenshot of English Page for Preservation) 3)
Sourcenext Press Release: (English)
(Screenshot of English Page for Preservation)
http://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000024.000004346.html
4) PDF/datasheet of their press release:
http://prtimes.jp/data/corp/4346/cf55eef4be4e3a18d7d663a097960b66.pdf
(Saved
Local Copy of PDF of above link.)
Articles
4/19/2012 - Friday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.4.497 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. New localized Windows bzdownloader with
pull down language menu for first time. This includes Japanese translations from SourceNext.
b. Fix for Windows bzdownloader "Change Folder..." so you can now successfully
select the folder to download into.
b. Fix
for problem where client during fresh installation was mangling Japanese
computer names. Now passed as "nqhost_hex" to datacenter.
c. Misc other
small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.4.496 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above (except no
localized bzdownloader yet)
b. A few
Japanese localization fixes ("Buy" button) plus formatting around those fixes.
c. Misc other small fixes.
4/20/2012 - Friday - Kirk Adams last day at Backblaze.
4/23/2012 - Monday - Cecilia Luu's first official day at Backblaze.
To recap the full time employee hiring order:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (starts as contractor - 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (starts as contractor - 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
5/1/2012 - Tuesday - The Backblaze "ZenDesk" support system gets the 20,000th ZenDesk ticket - the famous bzfileids problem. ZenDesk has only been our primary support system since July 12, 2011 (the helpme-main email address was our old system and it still has 33,000 "sent items" in it). Below is the text from the support ticket:
Nope, this is wrong guys. A message keeps popping up telling me that my bzfileids.dat is too large, and to contact backblaze support (I checked, it's like 1.8 GB, because it scanned something like 9 million files). The problem is that when you run the installation package, it does the file scans automatically, and it scanned all my external drives, which included over 10TB of files that I don't actually want backed up. It does that initial scan before letting you get into the prefpane to exclude external drives, and I can't unmount those drives during installation. It would be awesome if the installer gave you the option to exclude drives before the file scan. If you want to retain simplicity, even just a "do you want to back up external drives, yes/no, you can change your mind later" would be great. Anyway, I deleted the bzfileids.dat file and now the backup now button doesn't do anything. How should I proceed? Thanks.
-Mike
5/3/2012 - Thursday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.5.507 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. This is the first client with Safety
Freeze safetyfreeze safety_freeze in it, all all the supporting code needed
including Notification Dialogs.
b.
Better translations in the downloader (Windows and even more in Mac)
c. Removed extremely old "migration code" that migrated from version 1.0.0.* up
to version 1.0.1 (not needed anymore and dangerous when it accidentally fires)
d. Added hguid to some bzserv log files to make it easier to understand what is
going wrong when BrianW gets logs from support
e. Reduce the "bloat" (part of Safety Freeze) in the case of adding 1 line to
the bz_done_ files -> often we only need 1 or 2 bytes.
f. Misc other
small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.5.508 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Exclude new Adobe Lightroom temporary folders (many GBytes, saves bandwidth
and time and disk)
c. Localized the "Buy" button into Japanese and other languages
d. New background image in installer (the instructions to "double click to run
installer" iconically so no English vs Japanese problems)
d. Misc other small fixes.
5/17/2012 - Thursday - Tying for the record of the "biggest single restore" record - a 8 TBytes of Drobo prepared for Bill Schmidt of http://www.epiccreative.com (Photography and Video studio). The customer was charged $1,134.00 and it cost Backblaze $759.90 for the Drobo and 4 drives (each drive is 2 TBytes). Shipping the 18 pound Drobo via FedEx was $158 (absorbed by Backblaze). So Backblaze kept about $216.10 but the process took a few hours of dedicated work by employees.
5/22/2012 - Tuesday - Random math - the average file backed up at Backblaze is 1.5 MBytes, there is 12 Gbits/sec flowing into the datacenter, taking into account deduplication and such about 100 million files per day are "backed up". There are about 20 billion files in the datacenter.
5/23/2012 - Wednesday - We turn on the "Safety Frozen" system for the first time, immediately freezing customer David Burnett (david.burnett@<....>) who had a duplicate hguid and his backup was not valid. Very nice success. This affects only clients 2.0.5.507 and newer.
6/4/2012 - Monday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.6.511 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Safety
Freeze fixed to handle "InheritBackupState" better.
b. One more corner cases fixed that would be false positives in Safety Freeze.
c.
Added file extension type ".m2ts" as a "video" format, should help reports
shrink "other" category
d. Misc other
small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.6.512 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Macintosh DEFAULTS from old location of /Library/Backblaze into a new location /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/ and is a
"Package" which hints to Spotlight to not Indexing it
c. Moved over to signing all binaries with Apple Developer Id (Moved away from GlobalSign)
d. Fixed uninstaller icon
image to look better
e. Misc other small fixes.
6/5/2012 - Tuesday - Hit all time high free buffer in datacenter of 3.217 Petabytes of free space (26 Petabytes total). This was an "accident" due to a bug disabling the cleanup jobs as of February 29 (leap year) caused us to order lots of extra storage (18 pods per month, each with 45 hard drives). When the cleanup jobs were "fixed" to keep going forward, the "Doomsday Clock" read 451 days of buffer left before running out.
6/14/2012 - Thursday - Vizio announced new laptops and Backblaze partnership. Photo below of several similarly sized companies:
Netflix - 26 million subscribers worldwide (Wikipedia)
Amazon Instant Video - 12 million "enabled appliances" in the world, about 1 - 2 million unique viewers
Hulu Plus - 1.5 million subscribers (Hulu Blog, Jan 12, 2012)
Rhapsody - 1 million subscribers (estimates based on Napster acquisition announcement)
Backblaze - 100,000 customers
6/15/2012 - Friday - Dave's dog "Louie" came into the office:
6/18/2012 - Monday - Ben Villatore's official first day.
To recap the full time employee hiring order:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (starts as contractor - 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (starts as contractor - 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
6/25/2012 - Monday - Adam Nelson's first day.
To recap the full time employee hiring order:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (starts as contractor - 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (starts as contractor - 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
7/1/2012 - Monday - Natalie Poulton becomes Backblaze's first intern, this is her first day in the office.
7/1/2012 - Monday - David (Dave) Stallard first day as an official full time employee. He converted from being a contractor. Picture below from two weeks later in the office.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave
Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
7/13/2012 - Below is a picture of many of Backblaze's employees. From left to right front: Casey Jones, Yev Pusin, Cecilia Luu, Natalie Poulton, Billy Ng, Andy Klein. From left to right back row: Brian White (SBrian), Brian Wilson, Gleb Budman, Tim Nufire, Adam Nelson, Damon Uyeda, Ben Villatore. Missing are: Ken, KC2, Sean, and Dave.
7/13/2012 - Series A investment wire transfers into both personal and Silicon Valley Bank. (The "official" closing date was later on 7/24/2012.) The Series A is $2.5 million today ($1.25 million into personal accounts, $1.25 million into Silicon Valley Bank Backblaze's account), and also includes $2.5 million structured the same way in another year. This buys shares at $4.23 / share, and buys about 5% of the total Backblaze shares today, and another 5 percent in a year (total of 10 percent of Backblaze give or take).
Some Cash Metrics BEFORE funding:
Total May 2012 Cash Brought In: $474k
(one month)
May 31st, 2012 Cash In Bank: $215k
Breakdown of May
2012 Expenses BEFORE funding:
$ 186k Payroll (Includes
contractors like Dave)
$ 103k Colo bill (rent, power, bandwidth)
$ 106k 585 Hard Drives (13 new pods worth, $181 each includes one 4
TByte based pod)
$ 44k Podenclosures (14 pods - includes several prototype - $3.1k
for each pod enclosure)
$ 8k USB restore hard drives (86 USB Hard Drive Restores, 5 USB Keys)
$ 2k Marketing and Sales - This
$ 16k Lease payments (3.25% of expenses - warning signs are at 5%)
$ 5k Affiliate payments
$ 6k Office Rent (extra $1k to replace toilet)
$ 8k Healthcare
$ 1k Legal & Accounting
$ 3k Misc
----------------------------
Total: $491k
Below is the account balance right after the transfer today:
Below is a snapshot showing how many Petabytes in the datacenter before funding:
Below is a snapshot of the stats portal showing we are a few hundred customers shy of 100,000 customers at this point (before funding).
7/17/2012 - Tuesday - Avira promotion launches. They are a standard "Affiliate", but we give them 20 percent of all sales. Screenshot of the experience below:
7/18/2012 - Wednesday - Backblaze passes 100,000 live hguids pinging home on the first cluster.
Some Stats:
- 100,000 live hguids pinging home
-
232,000 hguids created in the history of time (the rest were trials or deleted
hosts, cancelled accounts, etc)
- 174,000 accounts created (each account is
one email address but can contain more than one hguid)
- These hguids fill up
a "net" of 43 TBytes of disk space each day - this is the rate at which we must
buy new pods
- Backblaze has 16
full time employees and one summer intern
- Backblaze brings in about
$500,000 per month in cash from customers
- Each month Backblaze spends $110k
on Colocation fees (space rent, electricity, etc), $150k on pods and drives, and
$180k on salaries.
- Total RAW drive storage on pods is
36,982,849,134,551,040 bytes (about 37 Petabytes give or take)
- 14 servers
make up the "intelligent control":
1 central auth, 1 archive server, 1 static
web page, 1 monitoring, 7 restore, 1 tree browsing,
and 2 mac minis (for USB
hard drive restores). The archive sever is also a spare central auth server.
- 356 pods are in the datacenter
- There are 2 core switches with "10 Gbits/sec"
modules (brand "Force10"), and:
13 "edge node" 48 port 1 Gbit switches (mix of
Force10 and Supermicro).
(We also have 1 spare switch which can be used in the
core or edge.)
- 12 Gbits/sec of bandwidth flows into our
datacenter continuously from these hguids
- We rent 44 cabinets in the
datacenter - each one costs $700/month in physical space rental = $30,800 /
month space rental.
- We use 7.4 TBytes of high performance 15k RPM drives on the
central authority configured as:
CentralAuth: 6 shelves of 24 15k RPM 2.5" SAS 146,163,105,792
bytes drives (144 drives total). Each set of 2 shelves is RAID60.
- The 7.4 TBytes of space on the central authority
drive shelf breakdown is shown below:
See below for stats portal screenshots.
Below is a graph of hguid growth. It isn't exactly apples to apples (the graph subtracts out expired trials) but the trend is accurate:
Below are connections and bandwidth charts.
With 100,000 hguids pinging home, here is the size of the storage farm (27 petabytes):
7/24/2012 - Series A investment officially closes. (Search earlier in this timeline for details.)
7/24/2012 - Thursday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.7.523 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. New Windows downloader comes with "Unzip
It..." button, built in unzipper
b. New
Russian client translations (not installer strings, not downloader strings)
c. Increased maximum size of one day's list of backed up files (bzdone_ file)
from 500 MBytes to 920 MBytes (so you can now backup up to 3 million files per
day) also handled all situations where we run out so the backup just
"pauses" for one day and resumes instead of corrupting the backup
d. Disallow old Windows 95 and Windows ME from backing up any files.
Malicious users were defeating the installer ban, this ends it.
e. Restore tree browsing speedup - Lowered number of bz_done_ files from 1 out
of 2 days to 1 out of 4, unless they are too large.
f. Misc other
small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.7.520 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above (except *NOT* the new
downloader unzipper, Mac is fine without it)
b. A few tiny (purely cosmetic) fixes for Mountain Lion (10.8) like correctly
identifying that OS is running
c. Fixed
problem where upgrading Backblaze on Mountain Lion caused bzbmenu (little flame
icon) to exit
d. Fixed a few small installer
issues around plists and privileges.
e. Fix a
popup Notification dialog to not clip text in "Safety Freeze".
f. Fixed a rare crash on 10.5 when certain libraries weren't available
g. Made language override sticky (when set through the <Control><Button Click on
Settings...>)
h. New installer background image
i. Misc other small fixes.
7/31/2012 - Tuesday - End of month July 2012. Backblaze crosses $10 million ($10,000,000) in lifetime revenue. This month's revenue was $546,000.00 making this the first time Backblaze ever cracked $500,000 in a single month. There are about 90,000 licensed hosts, and over 100,000 calling home (trials and such make up the remainder). The six remaining founders (Nilay left) are each making more than $200,000 per year in salary as of the payroll this month. The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $10,133,015.06. This occurred before we spent any of the TMT Series A funding. Below are the Backblaze revenue numbers (on a cash flow basis) by year:
8/20/2012 - Monday - Chris Grace's first day. Picture below from two weeks later in the office.
8/24/2012 - Friday - Backblaze takes the day off and goes to Malibu Grand Prix. Here are lots of pictures. Below is Natalie Poulton (marketing intern) and this is her last day at Backblaze:
Here is the whole crowd (except S. Brian White who is taking this photo): From left to right that is Malibu Grand Prix employee, Brian Wilson (holding helmet), Ben Villatore, Cecilia Luu, Casey (KC) Christensen, Adam Nelson, Chris Grace, Gleb Budman, Dave Stallard, Casey Jones (wearing "cloud" T-shirt), Andy Klein, Natalie Poulton (marketing intern), Yev Pusin (red checkered shorts), Sean Harris (red T-shirt), Billy Ng, and Ken Manjang on the far right.
8/29/2012 - Wednesday - Zachary (Zack) Miller's first day:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave
Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
9/21/2012 - Friday - Backblaze takes the day off and goes to La Nebbia Winery in Half Moon Bay. Here are lots of pictures. Below is the entrance sign:
9/26/2012 - Wednesday - Released and pushed client version 2.0.8.555 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Fix so we can backup large files with a
trailing space in the filename.
b.
Improved Chinese translations.
c. Fix in
downloader to support really unusual Japanese characters in computer names
d. Sledgehammer fix for strange problem seen in a few customer support cases
where bzlastassignedfileid.dat file is zero bytes long. Now recreates it
accurately pretty quickly and the backup continues.
e. Adapt Backblaze to new iPhoto Library on-disk folder structure and
iTunes folder structure (exclude cache files and podcasts like have always been
done)
f. Fix issue where a self heal
would accidentally transmit all the bz_done_ files instead of just one bz_done_
file.
g. Improved "-explainfile" to call
to attention when bz_done_ lines are commented out (thus not actually useful)
h. Auto-blow all the hidden registry keys that preserve computer's identity
between installations (now we "Transfer Backup State")
i. Added ibs_code to more protocols like stats portal postings and also posting
a bz_comb_ file to datacenter (part of "Transfer Backup State" protection
against duplicate hguids) - Billy now ignores the bogus "divorced client" stats
from being posted.
j. Changed the text
in a popup Notification Dialog from "More Options..." to "Settings...." to
reflect a GUI change that happened 4 years ago.
k. Misc other
small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.0.8.556 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Build settings changes to fix OS X 10.6 weak linking issues.
c. Adapt build and project to Apple's decision to deprecate garbage collection
in the latest SDK
d. Misc other small fixes.
10/2/2012 - Tuesday - Most of the datacenter team tours the possible new datacenters, here they are at lunch (Ken and Dave in picture, behind the camera is Sean).
10/12/2012 - Friday - Released and pushed client version
2.1.0.571 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Fix so we can backup large files with a trailing space in the filename.
b. Improved logging around some ambiguous support issues.
c. Added scripting option "bztransmit -pausebackup" so you can pause the backup
from the command line
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.1.0.572 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Moved to using the very most recent Macintosh build environment (Xcode)
c. Made "Backblaze Flame" icon "Retina" resolution on retina displays (new
Macbook Pros)
d. Misc other small fixes.
10/31/2012 - Wednesday - Emailed Mac OS 10.4 customers explaining it is 3 months until Backblaze end of lifes.
11/8/2012 - Thursday - Backblaze datacenter "ops" team starts setting up SunGuard Datacenter Space in Sacramento, picture below. From left to right Dave Stallard, Sean Harris, Ben Villatore, Ken Manjang. Picture taken by Tim Nufire.
11/24/2012 - Friday - More than 100,000 licensed clients are pinging home in the last 24 days. The hundred thousand customers actually occurred sometime before this, because not all licensed clients ping home, but this is a milestone. Screenshot below of the bzadmin stats portal:
12/6/2012 - Thursday, Backblaze Holiday party 2012. Xmas dinner with significant others. It was in the restaurant "Kingfish" in San Mateo (2nd year in a row), in the basement. Below is a picture of the leaky pipes and how horrible that basement is to remind us not to go back there next year.
Before dinner, a magician named Ryan Horsfall entertained us with card tricks and slight of hand. In the picture below from left to right is Ryan, Damon, Ken (in black "Backblaze" shirt), Nathalie, ??, and SBrian.
Sitting at dinner, the table I'm facing from left to right is Dave, Billy, Evelyn, Katherine, (me in the gap), Zack, Zack's wife Emma, Katia, Gleb, Natasha, Marcel, Ben, Ali, Tim, Casey (arms folded behind head), Mariana, and (Sean missing from empty seat), and facing away from the camera is Cara (the face of Backblaze when we first launched).
At the second table from left to right is Yev, Kristen, Adam, Chris (in beard), Jim, SBrian, Ken (at very end of table), Jenn, KC2, Andy, Lynne, Cecilia, Louis, Damon, Nathalie (in striped shirt).
At the end of the table, Casey, Mariana, Sean, Cara, Dave, Billy, and Evelyn (can't see Evelyn's face).
From left to right Zack, Emma, Katia, Gleb, Natasha, Marcel.
Brian took the photo so is not in the picture.
12/26/2012 - Thursday - day after Xmas. Yev, Billy, BrianW are in office working, Yev shows picture taken by Casey2 of our new 64 GByte "restore thumb drives" seen below. It is sitting on a 5 MB (yes, "MegaByte") platter from a very old hard drive that was disassembled in 1988 while BrianW worked at Hewlett-Packard.
12/31/2012 - Monday - End of month December, end of 2012. This month's revenue was $545,000.00 (out of that $350,000.00 was renewals). The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $12,856,598.86 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Some end of year statistics:
- We have had 293,954 customer installs (121,284 in 2012 alone), and leave the
year with 102,849 paying customers live backups pinging home(35,476 added in
2012 alone).
- 100,129 hosts are in steady_state (97 percent of paid customers)
- The Backblaze datacenter has 433 pods sitting in production (up from 259 in
2011) with 19,486 drives online representing just about 47 Petabytes of raw
space (up from 23.8 a year ago)
- Drive in the datacenter by size: 90 4TB, 10,351 3TB, 5,130 2TB, 3,121 1.5TB;
614 1TB
- The datacenter has about 2 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept
customer data (about the same amount we had last year)
- The datacenter has 2 "10 gigabit" pipes available, and we are almost at 20
gigabits of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays.
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing
$121k / month (in December) which is a $1.4 million / year run rate.
- Backblaze now has 18 full time employees (Monika Gorkani and Ric Marques
starts in January 2013 and are not included in this count)
- In the 6 years (2007 - 2012) Backblaze has spent a total of $13.4 million on
datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included (including
the financed $275k in pod leases). About $6.4 million of that was in 2012. Below
is a breakdown of 2010 and 2011 and 2012 finances:
Billy's Hguid Breakdown
total="294,603"
creditCardMonthly="35,435" (used: XX, unused: YY)
creditCardYearly="41,284" (used: XX, unused: YY)
creditCardTwoYear="18,320" (used: XX, unused: YY)
PrepaidCodesInUse="5,040"
DomainSiteLicenses="12,310"
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
Below is a detail of all the hard drives we have in the datacenter:
Total RAW space (base10) 46,977,823,382,224,896 (47 PB) Total Number of Drives 19,486 (433 pods worth) Count NumBytes Size DriveName 4719 2000398934016 2TB Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 4321 3000592982016 3TB Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 4146 3000592982016 3TB ST3000DM001 2225 1500301910016 1.5TB ST31500541AS 1033 3000592982016 3TB Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 800 1500301910016 1.5TB ST31500341AS 477 3000592982016 3TB WDC WD30EZRX 477 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD10EADS 396 2000398934016 2TB ST32000542AS 310 3000592982016 3TB ST33000651AS 87 1500301910016 1.5TB ST1500DL003 84 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD10EACS 45 4000787030016 4TB Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 45 4000787030016 4TB HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 45 3000592982016 3TB WDC WD30EFRX 19 3000592982016 3TB WDC WD30EZRS 16 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD10EADX 15 1000204886016 1TB Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 14 1000204886016 1TB SAMSUNG HD103UJ 9 2000398934016 2TB ST320005XXXX 6 2000398934016 2TB Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 4 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD10EARS 3 1500301910016 1.5TB WDC WD15EARS 3 1500301910016 1.5TB ST1500DL001 2 1500301910016 1.5TB ST1500DM003 2 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD10EARX 1 1500301910016 1.5TB WDC WD15EADS 1 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD10EALS 1 1000204886016 1TB WDC WD1001FALS
Summary: 90 4TB, 10,351 3TB, 5,130 2TB, 3,121 1.5TB; 614 1TB
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2012, for the record:
1/7/2013 - Monday - Ric Marques's first day:
1/14/2013 - Monday - Monika Gorkani's first day (technically she starts getting paid Wednesday), but she showed up early:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave
Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
1/29/2013 - Tuesday - Backblaze takes a field trip to the datacenter!
1/30/2013 - Wednesday - Public announcement that iOS iPhone "Backblaze mobile" is coming soon!
Here is our booth at MacWorld, with Yev and Damon working:
1/31/2013 - Thursday - at the 2013 MacWorld trade show we had a booth to talk about the iOS client. Below Yev is with CrashPlan (Code 42) employees Mike Evangelist on Yev's right (left in the picture below) and Rob Bajorek on Yev's left (right in the picture below). CrashPlan is considered a "competitor" to Backblaze, but I have always liked them and their style.
2/20/2013 - Wednesday, Press Launch of the "Backblaze Storage Pod 3.0 Blog Post" at 6am. Title is "180 TB of Good Vibrations - Storage Pod 3.0" Click here for a PDF version of the blog post. Here is a list of some of the articles and discussions around the launch:
Storage Pod 3.0 blog post Takeaways (Gleb wrote this section)
2/21/2013 - Thursday - at a little after 5pm Backblaze pods in Sacramento (Sunguard Datacenter) went live for the first time and started filling with customer data.
2/23/2013 - Wednesday - Backblaze takes the day off and goes to Pacifica Archery. Below is the entrance sign:
Dave (left) and Ken (right):
Milling about waiting to start.
The line up. Chris Grace on far left, Sean Harris, Tim Nufire, Ken Manjang, Zack Miller, Yev Pusin, Gleb? and Adam on the far end. This was one of two lines, the other line is just as long.
Arrows in targets.
The line from in front.
3/21/2013 - Thursday - Backblaze attended Roots Tech 2013 which is a genealogy conference. Below are a few photographs. Here are all the photos.
Roots Tech 2013 the Backblaze booth with Andy Klein, KC2 (Casey Christensen), Ken Manjang working the booth. Yev is not pictured but was along.
Below is Yev Pusin giving a talk at Roots Tech 2013 conference.
Yev's audience.
The Backblaze booth at Roots Tech 2013:
Ken and Yev working the booth at Roots Tech 2013.
3/26/2013 - Tuesday - the first trial move of 18 pods from Oakland to Sacramento happens. Click here for more pictures. Click Here for pictures of Sungard (Sacramento) taken by Casey Jones.
3/29/2013 - Friday - iOS app 1.0.0 submitted to the Apple store for the very first time.
3/30/2013 - Saturday - 4am on Saturday Gleb's daughter Rafaella Lynn Budman was born.
3/31/2013 - Sunday - End of month March, end of first quarter 2013. This month's revenue set a record at $694,000.00 (out of that probably $450,000.00 was renewals). The lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals about $14.7 million (and of that $1.9 million was first quarter of 2013).
4/5/2013 - Friday - Backblaze first electric car recharging station comes online at 3:30pm. (An extension cord out the window of our office to the parking lot.) Monika has a Nissan Leaf (all electric) and Billy and Ben have plug-in Prius that can use it.
4/8/2013 - Monday - iOS app 1.0.0 approved by Apple (so about 11 days after submitting): App Name: Backblaze, App Type: iOS App, App SKU: BZ-IOS-0001, App Apple ID:628638330
4/15/2013 - Monday - iOS app 1.0.0 launches publically in the Apple store. The one lonely tree browsing server tipped over at 4pm, so we deployed another tree browsing server and brought it up again.
4/25/2013 - Thursday - Released and pushed client version 2.1.0.601 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Now supports clusters (cluster 2) in the
client installer (untested until Monika Billy setup multiple clusters)
Puts in bzinstall.xml file: <bzcluster bzcaurl=https://ca002.backblaze.com
cluster_num=002 />
b. track cluster_num in stats portal.
b. Now every line of the
bz_done_ files (bz_comb_ in datacenter) contain cluster number and hguid
c. Detect different hguids in same bz_done_ files and correct problem
d. Fix of bug which caused different hguids written into same bz_done_ during
"Transfer Backup State"
e. ZIP file
downloader now tries forever to download file, instead of dying on a bad network
connection in middle of night
f.
Clarified some logging and added new logging to help chase http errors in the
future, also logging around launching sub-processes (failures, helps support)
g. Updated some German strings
for Avira
h. Fixed a problem with ZIP
file downloader for SourceNext (Japanese character prevented putting file on
disk)
i. In the case of a very
rare error on the ZIP file downloader (unsupported Japanese character), pop up a
special purpose dialog explaining what occurred and how the user can work around
it.
j. Changed "32 GB Thumb Restore" in
dialog to "64 GB Thumb Restore"
k. Added
"-printMemUsage" debug code to chase memory useage problems in future
l. Added debug logging when bringing up "About..." dialog so we can understand
Windows 8 tablet issues in future (menu appears but doesn't operate without a
mouse on the tablet).
h. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - DID NOT release of Mac client version 2.1.0.602 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. stuff
c. Misc other small fixes.
5/7/2013 - Tuesday - Released and pushed client version 2.1.0.607 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Now supports clusters (cluster 2) in the
client installer. Puts in bzinstall.xml file: <bzcluster bzcaurl=https://ca002.backblaze.com cluster_num=002 />
b.
cluster_num is now in the calls to backup individual files to pods for the first
time
b. moved installer from using https://ul.backblaze.com to using final form of
https://ca000.backblaze.com
c. added an
error message to the installer if the installer URL does not start with
https://ca to help developers.
d. clarified some error logging messages when a file could not be opened in
bztransmit logs
e. increase maximum size
of a "BackupState" supported in "TransferBackupState" (1 GByte increased to 1.5
GBytes)
f. exclude some chrome temporary folders
h. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.1.0.608 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, and also the
PREVIOUS release of the Windows client.
b. Now supports clusters (cluster 2) in the client installer. Puts in
bzinstall.xml file: <bzcluster bzcaurl=https://ca002.backblaze.com cluster_num=002
/>
c. some exclusions included in Mac OS
10.7 were accidentally left out of Mac OS 10.8 - now they are included
d. Misc other small fixes.
5/9/2013 - Thursday - Yev declares victory at achieving a paid advertisement that acquires a customer for $50. The ad was on John Gruber's Daring Fireball Podcast. Yev writes: (Daring Fireball = 7) + (Muleradio.net = 4) + (Partner Stats = 51) = "62 Purchases and a $50 CPA for the advertisement". Click Here for Google Analytics Graphic.
5/16/2013 - Thursday - Backblaze runs it's first TV commercial with the
Ellen DeGeneres Show.
The clip is here in YouTube at timecode 3:45 -
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SGVZqPcAQUo - it cost Backblaze about $150,000
for the whole thing including giving away 400 iPad mini to the audience.
Gleb
writes the next day on Friday at 5pm: "About 300 extra free trials. By
average metrics we'll get 200 customers,
And a ton of branding/awareness:
* Ellen show: 6,000,000 viewers (saw skit & pre- & post-commercial tidbits)
* Ellen YouTube Video "One Day of May Giveaways": 60,000 views, 1,500 upvotes,
350 comments
* EllenTV "Win an iPad Mini" page with our logo & video: 1,400 likes, 33
comments
* EllenTV "May Giveaways" page with our logo, description, site link: 4,900
likes
* Ellen has 10,000,000 Facebook fans, and as a result we received:
* Ellen Facebook link of our logo: 1,100 likes, 15 shares, 80 comments
* Ellen
Facebook
link of photo: 6,000 likes, 76 shares, 140 comments
* Ellen Facebook link to giveaways: 4,7000 likes, 113 shares, 500 comments
* Backblaze Facebook "As Seen on Ellen" post: 12,000 saw post, 80 likes, 18
shares, 20 comments
* Backblaze blogpost "As Seen on Ellen": 14 likes, 7 G+1, 12 tweets
* Branded search traffic jumped from 115 clicks and 11 trials to 393 clicks and
47 trials for the day.
5/16/2013 - Thursday - Wall of Pods in Sungard datacenter in Sacramento. This is 80 pods - 3,600 drives each is 4 TBytes - 14.4 Petabytes of data
5/20/Monday - Sona Patel and Ehren Maedge start as contractors:
Sona Patel:
Ehren Maedge:
5/21/2013 - Brian went through and deleted any backups of the last 50 or so Mac OS X 10.4 (MacOsX-10.4 or MacOsX-10.4) users. Self destructs were issued, so about 30 days from this day we should see almost zero of these customers in the stats portal anymore.
5/29/2013 - Wednesday - Backblaze takes the day off and goes GoKart Racing. Here are lots of pictures. Below is a picture:
6/4/2013 - Tuesday - Yoda goes live, multiple clusters enabled
(but no ca001.backblaze.com yet because Tim has yet to order the hardware), released and pushed client version 2.2.0.615 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. This is the OFFICIAL release (2.2
major release) that fully supports cluster 2 and Yoda in the
client installer. Puts in bzinstall.xml file: <bzcluster bzcaurl=https://ca002.backblaze.com cluster_num=002 />
b.
"Question Mark" button in the Downloader now launches URL with a "version" in
the URL for support.
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.2.0.616 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, and also the
PREVIOUS release of the Windows client.
b. This is the OFFICIAL release (2.2 major release) that fully supports cluster 2
and Yoda in the
client installer. Puts in bzinstall.xml file: <bzcluster bzcaurl=https://ca002.backblaze.com cluster_num=002 />
c. Made preparing "todo" list of files faster on Mac (moved block of code out of
inner loop into one time initialization)
d. installer improvement - make sure /Library/LaunchDaemons exists during
installation
e. Fix for installing in
some esoteric situations with Time Machine on root drive
f. Misc other small fixes.
Below is the stats portal IMMEDIATELY BEFORE the push that includes Yoda:
6/6/2013 - Thursday - Yoda is now fully live and fully populated, here are some
scaling calculations for entertainment:
- So far in our history we have about 250,000 email account creations at
Backblaze
- we have 350,000 hguids added
- 125,000 live hguids pinging home and paying us money
- 6.4 GBytes of Yoda space used
- 0.25 percent Yoda disk and CPU busy (quarter of 1 percent)
So our goal with this current architecture is to scale up
to about 50 million paying customers which would mean:
- 100 million email account creations at Backblaze
- 140 million hguids added
- 50 million live hguids pinging home
- 2.5 TBytes of Yoda disk space
- 100 percent Yoda CPU and disk busy
- 200 cluster authorities (so ca201.backblaze.com exists), each with 32 TBytes
of fast disk shelf
- 2,000 restore servers
- $250 million per month in revenue ($3 billion per year)
- (based on a 5x revenue multiple) the market cap of Backblaze is $15 billion
(each current stock share is worth $2,500.00)
- there are 50,000 pods in 6,000 racks (Note: 50,000 pods can be named with 3
digits in base 37, yay!!! ulXYZ for the win!)
- Sean is really busy.
6/7/2013 - Friday - Geneology Jamboree conference, Yev is there and took the picture below.
6/27/2013 - Thursday - Powered up "Cluster 2" central authority (no new accounts going there yet). Present were an EMC tech and Tim Nufire and rest of datacenter team in Sungard datacenter. Picture below.
7/3/2013 - Wednesday - released and pushed client version 2.3.0.627 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Supports bzfileids.dat larger than 1
GByte (up to 8 GBytes now) on 64 bit architectures (all Mac OS X 10.7 and later, not Windows XP but
Vista64 and WinSeven64 and WinEight64)
b. Introduced bztransmit64.exe which is the first time Backblaze has run 64 bit
on 64 bit Windows OS (it has run 64 bit on Mac for years).
c. Optimized for speed by using more RAM in some situations - some data structures
were sized for the average number of files we saw in 2008. Average number
of files and average amount of RAM in computers has increased, this speeds up Backblaze's "Producing File List" phase.
d. Optimized for speed of
hard drives vs SSD drives - if the high drive throughput of SSD is recognized
Backblaze automatically tweaks settings.
e. Added extensive timings in
logs of bztransmit towards making future optimizations and identifying problems
in the field
f. Added extensive logging
of bztransmit "RAM in use" to diagnose a rare Mac
problem where bztransmit reports use of much RAM.
g. Added some exclusions for Windows8 temporary files to reduce backing up
unnecessary files.
h. Fixes for
Backblaze's internal staging and testing environment so installer can install
against new ".net" Backblaze internal network
i. Added "-bloatbzfileids" command line option to bztransmit for testing really
large bzfileids
j. Fixed a bug where hex
encoded passwords were appearing in log files if you did certain things (like
Transfer Backup State). Logs always cleared in 24 days, but might as well
not do this.
k. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.3.0.628 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Excluded ".MobileBackups" from
the backup
c. Increased performance by not even indexing ".DocumentRevisions-V100", ".fseventsd",
".MobileBackups" since we refuse to ever back them up anyway
d. Misc other small fixes.
7/21/2013 - Sunday - pod ul287 lost volume 0000 and fsck could not recover it, this is about 16 TBytes of customer data. UPDATE 7/31/2013 - Ric updated e2progs and was able to recover the filesystem, followed by accelerated healing.
7/22/2013 - Monday - Backblaze's "Africa Playground for children" is completed, below are two pictures, the top picture are the children holding thank you signs. The guy at the top is "Justin" who works for the "Umvoti Aids Centre".
7/28/2013 - Sunday night at 9:30pm - Arya Manjang-Kydd was born to Ken Manjang and Tamiko Kydd. She was 7lbs and 1oz and 20 inches long.
7/29/2013 - Monday - released and pushed client version 2.3.1.635 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Fix for Windows on 64 bit architectures
where we now ship a redistributable copy of msvcr100.dll in 64 bit - because
some customer systems are corrupted.
b.
Fix where customers with double byte characters (like Japanese) in their "users
home directory folder" can set their "Private Encryption Key" now.
c. Fix for memory leak where bztransmit would take up multiple GBytes of Virtual
Memory in a small subset of customer accounts. This is a 5 year old bug.
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.3.1.638 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
d. Misc other small fixes.
7/29/2013 - Monday - The second Tranche (Tranche 2) of TMT funding was wire transferred into the Backblaze checking accounts and personal accounts.
8/8/2013 - Thursday - screenshot of the stats portal which summarizes number of customers and approximate revenue per month.
8/12/2013 - Monday - James Fleishman first day - a marketing experiment
8/22/2013 - Backblaze attends a conference: Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS). Below is a picture of our booth, Yev attended.
8/27/2013 - Tuesday - Cluster 2 goes live (bzmetadata001) as the default for new customers. Below are screenshots of the bzadmin stats portal for both ca000 and ca001 two days later to keep records around of things like numbers of hguids seen on both and initial upload vs steady state, etc. As you can see, cluster zero (ca000, the original cluster) handled 142,789 hguids pinging home in the last 24 days and is not out of disk bandwidth or space yet which is 5 years after the first product launch. We're hoping the second cluster (ca001) will handle twice as many hguids which at our current growth rate is about 4 years (but if the growth rate rises we can deploy as many clusters as we need).
Below is ca001 (the new cluster) stats a couple days after rollout. The "DSL - Domain Site License" numbers are duplicates, they aren't really on cluster 2.
9/30/2013 - Monday - End of Q3. This quarter's revenue was just over $2 million for the first time. Year to date revenue is $5,812,424.00 which makes lifetime revenue $18,670,022.00
10/7/2013 - Monday - Brian Beach first official day at Backblaze.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave
Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
10/11/2013 - Friday - A graph of the active users on ca001 (the second cluster) starting from the beginning.
10/11/2013 - Friday - the above graphs are interesting.
10/11/2013 - Friday - To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave
Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
10/14/2013 - Hguid 9458b2dac1c4c10b3e900816 in account me@davidstites.com hits a new record of size_bzfileids="sH_8245305902" which means 8 GBytes. We introduced the "larger than 1 GByte" feature on 7/3/2013 so we went 3 months without a single problem.
10/28/2013 - Monday - snapshot of bzadmin stats portal BEFORE changing the
default from "backup 4 GByte max file size" to "backup unlimited file sizes":
zz_everythingnum 233,956
aalicense_state="licensed_current"
zz_everythingnum
262,879 aalicense_state="active_trial"
zz_everythingtotbytes 393,140,760,450 aalicense_state="licensed_current"
zz_everythingtotbytes 577,826,797,958 aalicense_state="active_trial"
10/28/2013 - Monday - released client build version 2.3.1.673 or later defaults to "unlimited" file size. It also FIRST CONTACTS https://ca001.backblaze.com (instead of the old system of first contacting https://ca000.backblaze.com) which will allow us to move ca000 from Oakland to Sacramento -- BrianW
10/28/2013 - Monday - released and pushed client version
2.3.1.673 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Made the default max file size unlimited
(was formerly 4 GByte max for any one file)
b. By default the installer now contacts https://ca001.backblaze.com (second
cluster authority) which will allow us to move the old ca000 in a few weeks with
less customer impact.
c. Speed up
bzdownloader (zip file downloader) to be faster - will not go under 10 MByte
chunk size which will prevent long latency (Australia) connections from slowing
down.
d. Added more logging to
bzdownloader for customer support to figure out problems in the field.
e. Added some more explicit error
messages in the installer to help customers and support when anti-virus steals bztransmit during the installation
f. Added internal debugging "bztransmit -testify" command line option.
Turned on api/host_testimony for all new installations. This allows for
Email Notifications to be implemented.
g. Now we remember on a "per volume basis" the latest file transmitted (part of
the Email Notifications feature).
h. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.3.1.675 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Some Mavericks (Mac OS X 10.9) minor compatibility fixes
c. Misc other small fixes.
11/30/2013 - Saturday - close of November, 2013 - best month ever! Highest monthly sales (revenue) of all time of $772,000 in November. New record of "net" 5,480 increases licenses sold (total of 7,687 new customer licenses before attrition). Previous best month was Feb 2011 when Mozy raised prices driving a lot of customers to Backblaze.
12/2/2013 - Monday - Apple reaches out to Backblaze, click here to read the email.
12/7/2013 - Friday - Dave Stallard wears a Santa Hat and goes shirtless in the
datacenter for a caption contest:
Ken M. - "I reluctantly admit to
being part of these shenanigans! Can you tell how cold it is here in the DC?"
Chris G. - ?Backblaze storage pods occasionally go down, but Dave always does!?
Ric M. - "Should have shot it in the warm aisle...
Andy K. - "Can you
back up in the buff, could you, would you in the buff?"
Casey C. -
"Just Because your data is safe, doesn?t mean that you should be."
Ken
M. - "Hungry? Backblaze is all you can eat baby."
Adam N. - "Backblaze: ? Unlimited backups ? No throttling ? Creepy
shirtless guys in Santa hats who are in charge of your data."
James F.
- "Secure. Offsite. And shirtless."
Dave S. - "What do you expect? It's
5 bucks."
Zack's below:
12/9/2013 - Monday - Backblaze holiday party. Click here for pictures and names of everybody at the holiday party.
12/16/2013 - Monday - Nathan Wieneke's first day (as a part time contractor in
support)
12/31/2013 - Tuesday - End of month December, end of 2013. This month's revenue was $808,657.02 and the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $20,960,263.81 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Some end of year statistics:
- We have had 435,844 customer installs (141,890 in 2013 alone), and leave the
year with 162,393 paying customers (of which 150,748 of the paying have pinged
home in last 24 days).
- 135,284 hosts are in steady_state
- The Backblaze datacenter has 619 pods sitting in production (up from 433 in
2012) with 27,567 drives online representing just about 85 Petabytes of raw
space (up from 47 a year ago)
- Drive in the datacenter by size: 8,387 4TB, 10,981 3TB, 4,999 2TB, 2,486
1.5TB; 712 1TB
- The datacenter has about 5.5 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept
customer data (about twice the amount we had last year)
- The datacenter has 4 "10 gigabit" pipes available, and we are at 23
gigabits of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays.
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing
$130k / month (in December) which is a $1.56 million / year run rate.
- Backblaze now has 22 full time employees (increase of 4 since the end of
2012)
- In the
7 years (2007 - 2013) Backblaze has spent a total of $22.2 million on
datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included. About $8.8 million of that was in 2013. Below
is a breakdown of 2010-2013 finances:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear:
month_to_month_hguids: 43,776 * $5 = $218,880 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: 1,301 * $5 = $6,505 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: 63,460 * $50/12 = $264,416 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: 1,376 * $50/12 = $5,732 per month
two_year_hguids: 32,174 * $95/24 = $127,354 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: 909 * $95/24 = $3,597 per month
DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_used: 17,581 * $50/12 = $73,254 per month
DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_unused: 1,514 * $50/12 = $6,308 per month
DomainSiteLic dsl_out_of_compliance_hguids: 302 lose * $50/12 = $-1,258 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Total: 162,393 paid licenses $704,788 per month
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
Below is a detail of all the hard drives we have in the datacenter (collected by Brian Beach):
total_bytes: 80,954,004,628,611,072 total_drives: 27,567 total_pods: 619 total_terabytes: 73,627
|========================================================================| | drive_size | drive_count | total_terabytes | total_bytes | |------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 1.0TB | 712 | 647 | 712,145,878,843,392 | | 1.5TB | 2486 | 3392 | 3,729,750,548,299,776 | | 2.0TB | 4999 | 9094 | 9,999,994,271,145,984 | | 2.5TB | 10981 | 29967 | 32,949,511,535,517,696 | | 3.5TB | 8389 | 30525 | 33,562,602,394,804,224 | |========================================================================|
Total Number of Drives: 27,567
Summary: 8,387 4TB, 10,981 3TB, 4,999 2TB, 2,486 1.5TB; 712 1TB
|================================================================================| | model | drive_count | total_terabytes | total_bytes | |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WDC WD1001FALS-00Y6A0 | 1 | 0 | 1000204886016 | | WDC WD10EALS-002BA0 | 1 | 0 | 1000204886016 | | WDC WD10EADS-11P8B2 | 1 | 0 | 1000204886016 | | WDC WD10EARS-00MVWB0 | 1 | 0 | 1000204886016 | | WDC WD10EADS-00R6B0 | 1 | 0 | 1000204886016 | | ST2000DL003-9VT166 | 1 | 1 | 2000398934016 | | WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0 | 1 | 2 | 3000592982016 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630 | 1 | 2 | 3000592982016 | | WDC WD15EARS-00S8B1 | 2 | 2 | 3000603820032 | | ST1500DL001-9VT15L | 2 | 2 | 3000603820032 | | WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 | 3 | 2 | 3000614658048 | | WDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 | 3 | 2 | 3000614658048 | | ST2000DL001-9VT156 | 2 | 3 | 4000797868032 | | WDC WD10EADS-00P8B0 | 5 | 4 | 5001024430080 | | ST1500DM003-9YN16G | 4 | 5 | 6001207640064 | | SAMSUNG HD154UI | 4 | 5 | 6001207640064 | | WDC WD10EADS-00R6B0 | 1 | 0 | 1000204886016 | | ST2000DL003-9VT166 | 1 | 1 | 2000398934016 | | WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0 | 1 | 2 | 3000592982016 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630 | 1 | 2 | 3000592982016 | | WDC WD15EARS-00S8B1 | 2 | 2 | 3000603820032 | | ST1500DL001-9VT15L | 2 | 2 | 3000603820032 | | WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 | 3 | 2 | 3000614658048 | | WDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 | 3 | 2 | 3000614658048 | | ST2000DL001-9VT156 | 2 | 3 | 4000797868032 | | WDC WD10EADS-00P8B0 | 5 | 4 | 5001024430080 | | ST1500DM003-9YN16G | 4 | 5 | 6001207640064 | | SAMSUNG HD154UI | 4 | 5 | 6001207640064 | | ST2000DM001-9YN164 | 4 | 7 | 8001595736064 | | ST2000VN000-1H3164 | 4 | 7 | 8001595736064 | | WDC WD10EADS-11M2B2 | 10 | 9 | 10002048860160 | | WDC WD10EADS-11M2B1 | 11 | 10 | 11002253746176 | | WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0 | 11 | 10 | 11002253746176 | | WDC WD10EADS-65L5B1 | 11 | 10 | 11002253746176 | | WDC WD10EADS-22M2B0 | 12 | 10 | 12002458632192 | | SAMSUNG HD103UJ | 14 | 12 | 14002868404224 | | WDC WD10EADS-00P6B0 | 14 | 12 | 14002868404224 | | Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 | 15 | 13 | 15003073290240 | | Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 | 8 | 14 | 16003191472128 | | WDC WD10EADX-00TDHB0 | 20 | 18 | 20004097720320 | | WDC WD10EACS-00D6B1 | 23 | 20 | 23004712378368 | | Hitachi HDS723030BLE640 | 10 | 27 | 30005929820160 | | ST320005XXXX | 15 | 27 | 30005984010240 | | WDC WD10EACS-00D6B0 | 34 | 30 | 34006966124544 | | WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0 | 15 | 40 | 45008894730240 | | WDC WD10EACS-65D6B0 | 52 | 47 | 52010654072832 | | ST1500DL003-9VT16L | 51 | 69 | 76515397410816 | | ST4000DM000-1CD168 | 26 | 94 | 104020462780416 | | WDC WD30EZRX-00AZ6B0 | 46 | 125 | 138027277172736 | | HGST HDS724040ALE640 | 42 | 152 | 168033055260672 | | TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 | 58 | 158 | 174034392956928 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 47 | 171 | 188036990410752 | | WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 | 111 | 302 | 333065821003776 | | WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1 | 469 | 426 | 469096091541504 | | ST32000542AS | 246 | 447 | 492098137767936 | | ST3000DM001-1CH166 | 180 | 491 | 540106736762880 | | ST4000DX000-1CL160 | 179 | 651 | 716140878372864 | | WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 | 240 | 654 | 720142315683840 | | ST31500341AS | 538 | 734 | 807162427588608 | | ST33000651AS | 293 | 799 | 879173743730688 | | WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0 | 340 | 927 | 1020201613885440 | | ST31500541AS | 1885 | 2572 | 2828069100380160 | | Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 | 1027 | 2802 | 3081608992530432 | | Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 | 4719 | 8585 | 9439882569621504 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 2632 | 9577 | 10530071463002112 | | ST3000DM001-9YN166 | 4067 | 11098 | 12203411657859072 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 | 4592 | 12531 | 13778722973417472 | | ST4000DM000-1F2168 | 5463 | 19878 | 21856299544977408 | |================================================================================|
A Domain Site License (Backblaze for Business) screenshot prepared by SBrian below:
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2013, for the record:
12/31/13 - First order for a 128 GB flash drive was actually placed by a user *before* the blog post announcing them went live. Matthew Ingleby - matt@riptapparel.com for 94.69 GB of data on a Windows 128 GB flash drive.
1/1/2014 - 128 GB flash drives went live on the blog: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/01/doubling-down-on-usb-flash-drive-restores/
1/23/2014 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
2.3.1.701 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Support for "per drive overview page" in web login and email notifications (when the last file was transmitted per drive)
b. Added new "api/host_testimony" API which should come to eliminate a lot of the old api/synchostinfo
c. Massively sped up creation of "Preparing Files" list by not making useless temporary copies
d. Changed default file size to "Unlimited" (I think the old max was 4 GBytes) - for Macintosh also
e. Changed client's dialog "Restore Files..." to say "USB Flash Drive - Get up to 128 GB of your files" (up from 64 GB)
f. Updated copyright to 2014
g. Profoundly changed the "Files Remaining" to always include all drives - even unplugged drives. Before unplugged drives "went away" from the totals.
h. Stopped using and producing "completefilelist.dat" and now *ONLY* use the per-volume filelists. Half the disk I/O!!
i. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.3.1.702 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Exclude some Aperture thumbnails from being backed up (these are automatically regenerated by Aperture)
c. Changed default file size limit to "Unlimited" (might have been mentioned in previous blog post - but GUI needed updating)
d. Changed over to use most newest XCode 5 build environment from Apple.
e. Slowed down the "rate" we are willing to backup Apple native Email ".emlx" files - not more often than once every 48 hours - works around problems with gmail and Apple mail - all of these are "Deduplications" anyway, just bloat the bz_done_ files causing web tree browsing slowdowns for zero gain
f. Misc other small fixes.
1/31/2014 - Friday - End of month January 2014. This month Backblaze brought in revenue of more than $1 million for the very first time.
2/3/2014 - Monday - Nathan Wieneke hired full time (started contracting earlier at 12/16/2013)
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left
the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
2/5/2014 - Wednesday - released and pushed client version
2.5.0.705 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Official version that supports "per drive overview page" in web login and email notifications (when the last file was transmitted per drive)
b. Removed obsolete paragraph from the uninstall popup warning - we DO NOT remove your backup anymore when you uninstall
c. Fixed a bug where Files Remaining said "0 files but 164 MB remaining" now they will always agree
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.5.0.706 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Slowed down backing up calendar events "*.ics" to not more often than once every 48 hours like we do the "*.emlx" files already
d. Misc other small fixes.
2/7/2014 - Backblaze attends "RootsTech Conference 2014", below is Yev presenting on stage (panorama of the audience taken from the stage) and then the Backblaze booth with Andy Klein, Adam Nelson (shaved head), Chris Grace (beard).
2/20/2014 - Thursday - Matt Write joins.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left
the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
3/3/2014 - Monday - Below is Matt Wright and Brian Beach on a video conference (small Starleaf video conferencing screen in the corner). This is our company all-hands.
3/10/2014 - Monday - Aaron McCormack's first day.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
3/11/2014 - Monday - Backblaze company picture (taken in San Mateo park).
Front row left to right: Casey Jones, Yev Pusin, Monika Gorkani, Cecilia Luu, Nathan Wieneke, Casey Christensen
Second row left to right: James Fleishman, Adam Nelson, Brian Beach, Aaron McCormack, Tim Nufire
Third Row left to right: Ken Manjang, Sean Harris, Ric Marques, Brian White, Andy Klein
Fourth Row: Billy Ng, Dave Stallard (with Louie the dog), Chris Grace, Sona Patel, Gleb Budman
Fifth (very back) row: Brian Wilson, Ben Villatore, Zack Miller.
Missing: Damon Uyeda, Matt Wright
Silly faces:
3/13/2014 - Wednesday - Backblaze banner hanging in Sungard Datacenter (newly put up):
3/15/2014 - Friday - Backblaze crosses over 100 PBytes of storage online. (For comparison in Jan 2011 Backblaze had 10 PBytes of storage - 2.5 years to go 0 - 10 PBytes and then 3.5 years to go from 10 PBytes to 100 PBytes.) Below is a list of the number of each type of hard drive.
Cluster 0 (the original Cluster) - has 27,847 drives as follows:6428 4000787030016 ST4000DM000
4714 2000398934016 Hitachi HDS722020ALA330
4593 3000592982016 Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630
4089 3000592982016 ST3000DM001
2580 4000787030016 Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630
1800 1500301910016 ST31500541AS
1020 3000592982016 Hitachi HDS723030ALA640
514 3000592982016 WDC WD30EFRX
437 1500301910016 ST31500341AS
434 1000204886016 unknown
290 3000592982016 ST33000651AS
211 2000398934016 ST32000542AS
178 4000787030016 ST4000DX000
176 3000592982016 WDC WD30EZRX
104 1000204886016 WDC WD10EADS
58 3000592982016 TOSHIBA DT01ACA300
47 4000787030016 HGST HMS5C4040ALE640
42 4000787030016 HGST HDS724040ALE640
37 1500301910016 unknown
35 1000204886016 WDC WD10EACS
12 1500301910016 ST1500DL003
10 3000592982016 Hitachi HDS723030BLE640
9 2000398934016 Hitachi HDS723020BLA642
7 1000204886016 WDC WD10EADX
6 2000398934016 ST320005XXXX
4 1500301910016 SAMSUNG HD154UI
3 3000592982016 WDC WD30EZRS
3 2000398934016 ST2000DM001
2 3000592982016 unknown
2 2000398934016 unknown
2 2000398934016 ST2000VN000
2 2000398934016 ST2000DL003
2 2000398934016 ST2000DL001
2 1000204886016 WDC WD10EARX
1 3000592982016 Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630
1 1500301910016 ST1500DL001
1 1000204886016 WDC WD10EARS
1 1000204886016 WDC WD1001FALS
Cluster 1 (the second Cluster we built) - has 4,275 drives as follows:4221 4000787030016 ST4000DM000
45 4000787030016 WDC WD40EFRX
8 4000787030016 Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630
1 4000787030016 ST4000DX000
3/19/2014 - Wednesday - Storage Pod 4.0 blog post announcement. Click here for blog post. http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4/
Articles:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/178757-how-to-build-your-own-180tb-raid6-storage-array-for-9305
http://www.zdnet.com/buy-a-180tb-array-for-6gb-7000027459/
http://gigaom.com/2014/03/19/backblazes-newest-storage-pod-holds-180tb-at-5-cents-per-gb/
http://www.tuaw.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-now-storing-100-petabytes-of-data-announces-storage-p/
http://www.electronista.com/articles/14/03/19/new.array.boasts.higher.speeds.lower.per.gb.cost/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7428143
3/20/2014 - Christel Luu (Cecilia's daughter) starts as a part time contractor
3/27/2014 - Thursday - Backblaze's booth at MacWorld 2014 in Moscone conference center San Francisco. We had the largest booth, right by the front door. Below from left to right are Nathan (obscured), Grigory Rudko (the cameraman in a backpack), Ken, Zack facing away, Anna, James, and Gleb on the far right in grey shirt. The large stack of red pods are a sculpture in the shape of a "B".
The picture below is taken standing in the Backblaze booth looking at the front door to the conference as people are gathered to storm into the show floor.
Backblaze was giving away $5 cash to any customer who would buy Backblaze there on the show floor, below is Yev holding the envelope of money.
4/7/2014 - Monday - Anthony Alexander hired:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left
the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
4/7/2014 - Monday - released and pushed client version
2.5.1.719 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Official version that has the new "Skipped Files Report" listing files on your laptop Backblaze WANTED to backup, but failed due to PERMISSIONS or alternatively failed due to being locked by another application.
b. added utility functions to bzfilelist to lock a file (part of testing the feature listed in "a" above in this list)
c.
tiny installer optimization related to no longer asking Yoda for what the correct cluster is on an upgrade (implemented when we lost power to the datacenter and could not longer update clients)
d. added "pvm" to the default list of excluded file types - "pvm" is part of "Parallels" which is a VMware like emulator on the Mac
e. added ".mkv" file type and ".vob" file types to the list of file types classified as "video". This makes reports more accurate (less things in "other")
f. Windows Only - fix for a bug where sometimes the bztransmit32.exe would half fail an auto-update leaving you with different bztransmit32.exe and bztransmit64.exe. Fix for when the "corporate installer" (silent deployments) was logging a password into a log file. Now it no longer logs the password.
i. Added file type ".img" and ".emlx" and "lightspeedbackup" to file types to make reports more accurate. Fallout from BrianB analysis.
j. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 2.5.1.720 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. Updated text for the Macintosh uninstaller to no longer say it deletes your backup (it hasn't deleted the backup since "TransferBackupState" was invented)
b. Moved away from using "Gestalt" calls to get OS version
c. Reduced number of "stat" filesystem calls effectively doubling the performance of walking folders of files.
d. Fixed Pref Pane Launcher bug
e. Turned off ARC (garbage collection for pref panes that has been deprecated by Apple)
4/8/2014 - Tuesday - Big "B" Metal Pod Sculpture from MacWorld is brought into the Backblaze office:
4/21/2014 - Monday - Brian Beach gives white paper talk on the new pod storage "Vaults" engineering is building to increase reliability. This is the meeting room:
This is one of the handouts:
4/28/2014 - Monday - Lisa Pusin starts as an intern at Backblaze:
4/30/2014 - Wednesday - Backblaze passes 500,000 total hguids
created in a lifetime (not all still have clients or are paying Backblaze).
That's 500,000 hguids created, one at a time through the installer. Running the
client installer is the only thing that can create an hguid, and we first
released a client on 6/2/08 (6 years ago).
5/13/2014 - Through a 4pm datacenter update, the central authority and all pods became vault aware. The central authority is now handing out bz_cvt (cluster vault tome) in addition to the old bzstorageIds, plus Windows client version 2.5.1.749 and Mac client version 2.5.1.750 are released to the field which upload to the new pod DNS names and new upload_to_vault entry point like https://pod-000-0686-17.backblaze.com/api/upload_to_vault However, this version of the client is still writing bz_done_ (bz_comb_) files with the old format which has a 7 digit bzstorageId and not a bz_cvt yet.
5/15/2014 - Thursday - Ariel Ellis is hired. Here he is on his first day:
Another photo at his desk:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
5/23/2014 - Better (final double super final) version of pod vault naming and folder names:
5/28/2014 - Wednesday - Refer a friend hits 1,000 invitations sent - it was released 9 days ago. 129 accounts created, and 114 installations.
5/31/2014 - end of May 2014 finished with 163 USB restore drives
ordered by customers - the most ever in a single month.
- 106 USB hard drives (max 4 TByte) ordered, the most in a single month for 2014
so far.
- 57 flash drives (max 128 GBytes) ordered. (April 2014 holds the record
with 60 - average is 52 per month.)
6/1/2014 - Sunday - alpha client windows version 2.5.1.755 with new bz_done_ version 5 vers5 bzdone line version 5 *ALPHA* released. Not for customers, probably contains bugs.
6/2/2014 - Final pod move out of Oakland into Sungard in Sacramento. For the first time, all Backblaze pods (all customer data) is not in an earthquake zone.
6/9/2014 - Candace Bain first day. Here she is on her first day:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
6/11/2014 - Wednesday - A Backblaze monthly outing to the Pacifica Boat Docks for Pizza. Click here for more pictures.
6/19/2014 - Thursday - Chris Bergeron first day. Here he is on his first day:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
6/30/2014 - Monday - Two interns start today! Eli Echt-Wilson and Angelina Harris first day. Here Eli is on his first day:
Here is Angelina Harris on her first day:
7/8/2014 - Tuesday - support answers their 100,000th ticket in Zendesk:
7/31/2014 - deployed first 6 TByte pod (45 drives, 6 TBytes each - Western Digital Red 6 TB) - ul796 - pod-000-0796-00.backblaze.com.
8/6/2014 - Irish Iain McMahon and Tania Stoose hired for the first time (contractors) to pickup Craigs List conference table and Ikea furniture and assemble it.
8/11/2014 - Backblaze holds the Monday lunch and lunch meeting all hands in the new downstairs conference room (that Tania and Irish Iain helped setup). Picture by Yev so he isn't in the picture. :-)
8/20/2014 - Wednesday - Android client launch! We hit 1,169 installs on the first day of launch (see graph below).
8/22/2014 - Friday - Brian Beach clocks the new "vaults" accepting data at 2.8 GBytes/sec (22.4 Gbits/sec) which is fast enough to launch with the current backup system (our "goal" was 2.5 GBytes/sec which is 20 Gbits/sec). Explanation: in the past, we could bring online 20 pods and each one had a 1 Gbit network card and we could almost saturate that link, so 20 pods (one vault) could accept 20 Gbits/sec.
9/3/2014 - Wed - Mitch Portnoy (Backblaze customer) physically walks into the Backblaze office to demand face to face support. We prepared a restore, he came back the next day and Adam Nelson helped him get it working flawlessly. Brian Wilson promises to hire a security guard within 2 years to physically protect us from customers, this is the note in the timeline to start the 2 year clock ticking. :-) Below is a picture of Anthony (who got the Mitch support ticket first) with Mitch's restore hard drive:
9/18/2014 - Thursday - "bz_done_ line version 5" declared Beta. - Windows client version 2.5.1.799 and Mac client version 2.5.1.800 are put up as the http://files.backblaze.com downloads that support can give out to customers for the very first time. No client outside of Backblaze development has ever written a bz_done_ line version 5 until this moment. I hope it's right. This solves the inherent limitation where we are running out of pod names (ul000-ul999) and also allows backing up to vaults (which will all be numbered ABOVE ul999 for clarity).
9/22/2014 - Monday - Larry Wilke's first day. Here he is on his first day. Ken is on the left, Larry is the blonde on the right.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
9/29/2014 - Monday - In the founders meeting, the founders finally unanimously admitted out loud Backblaze could theoretically go public (IPO) eventually in about 5 years. Here is the list of who was present: Gleb, Tim, Damon, Billy, Casey Jones (on the phone), and Brian Wilson. Brian thinks it could happen in two years, but EVERYBODY agreed it was possible in 5 years and might very well occur and would be a "good thing". Whatever varying opinions were in the past, as of now it is unanimous. UPDATE a few days later: this was yanked from the timeline due to concerns that it was over-promising IPO within 5 years even though it did not say that. Final UPDATE: added back to timeline a few years later because it is not harmful anymore, just a historical record.
10/09/2014 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
3.0.0.817 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. First official release of version 5
lines in bz_done_ file for default download from the homepage
b. Support new maximum size of bz_done_ files increased from 500 MBytes (for
last 7 years) up to 2 GBytes
c. Files
now uploaded to new DNS names: https://pod-000-0123-00.backblaze.com instead of
old https://ul123.backblaze.com
d.
Backup state extras changed API (like geo location for "Find My Computer") now
uploading to api/upload_backup_state_extras (old way: api/ul_backup_state_extras)
e. Underlying BzString now supports up to a full 2 GBytes ONLY on 64 bit
computers - up from 1 GByte previously
f. Implemented testing backdoor which allows EARLY eXpiring of files from the
datacenter (anywhere from 0 - 30 days)
g.
New upload APIs to pods now batch files with SHA1 on the headers for better
integrity, SHA1 on all files.
h. New testing backdoors to "-bloatbzdone", "-pushbzdone", to help force certain
issues and debug client problems
i. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 3.0.0.818 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Fixed corner case where volumes were listed twice in some circumstances (bzfilelist
-queryvolumes)
c. Updated binary signatures (installer, uninstaller, bzdownloader) to work on
Mac OS X 10.10 and some 10.9 ? builds
d. Misc other small fixes.
10/16/2014 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 3.0.1.823 (Windows) and 3.0.1.824 (Macintosh). This is a fix to turn off SSL3 to fix the Poodle security exploit in HTTPS.
10/23/2014 - Thursday - BrianW made the "B2 Buckets" GUI proposal found here.
10/31/2014 - Friday - End of October 2014, the revenue this month was a new all time record of $1.073 million, outdoing the previous record of January 2014 which was $1.065 million.
11/03/2014 - Monday - Bryan Williams's first day. Here he is on his first day reporting directly to the datacenter because Cecilia Luu (HR and finance) was on vacation so we put off "onboarding" for a week:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
11/4/2014 - Tuesday - Brian Wilson (for the first time ever) visisted the Backblaze Datacenter located at 11085 Sun Center Dr, Rancho Cordova, CA (Sungard). Brian took these pictures here.
11/5/2014 - Wed - with 1,207 account creations this might have been our biggest sign up day of all time so far (a regular day is 200-300 create accounts). It was a combination of a couple marketing events, one is "Stack Social" where we give out the product at vast discounts for the first 6 months, and another was a backup company called "Backup Beast" was going out of business so we offered their customers 6 months or a year free or something.
11/12/2014 - Wed - Backblaze founders vote to rent the back half of "Susan's Space" (Susan Uzunoglu is the next door neighbor who owns "European Beauty Therapy") starting immediately. This eventually becomes the "NAP Room" - Network Access Point. It was possible because Brian quietly worked with Susan to put an extra bathroom/toilet in a closet in the front of her store which took a few weeks of time preparing for this moment.
11/13/2014 - Thursday - Backblaze deploys the very first "vault" into production as 17 + 3 (17 data members, 3 parity). We declare "beta" for the vault project, for now only accounts ending in @backblaze.com are backing up data to the vault as we test and work out a few issues. Below is a screenshot of the vault in bzadmin.
12/1/2014 - Monday - Emily Miller's first day. Here she is on her first day:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
12/8/2014 - Monday - Backblaze holiday party. Click here for pictures and names of everybody at the holiday party.
12/17/2014 - Wednesday - At 2:33pm the very first vault is declared "final" and "released" and is "out of beta" and we flipped a switch and customers OUTSIDE of the Backblaze employee list begin sending their data onto the vault.
12/31/2014 - Wednesday - End of month December, end of 2014. This month's revenue was $1,055,000.01 and the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $33,018,263.81 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Some end of year statistics:
- We leave the year with 240,702 paying customers (up from 162,393
at the end of 2013) - of which 229,922 of the paying
have pinged home in last 24 days).
- Lifetime we have created 660,568 hguids
(each hguid represents a "fresh install" on a customer's computer), of which
224,724 were in 2014.
- 199,730 hosts are in steady_state
- The Backblaze datacenter has 913 pods sitting in production (up from 619 in
2012) with 41,082 drives online representing just about 150 Petabytes of raw
space (up from 85 a year ago)
- Drive in the datacenter by size: ??? 4TB, ??? 3TB, ??? 2TB, ???
1.5TB; ??? 1TB
- The datacenter has about 13.5 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept
customer data (about twice the amount we had last year)
- The datacenter has 5 (?) "10 gigabit" pipes available, and we are at
34 gigabits
of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays.
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing
$140k / month (in December) which is a $1.68 million / year run rate (only a
SMALL increase over the previous year!!)
- Backblaze now has 31 full time employees (increase of 9 since the end of 2013)
- In the 8 years (2007 - 2014) Backblaze has spent a total or $34.8 million on
datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included. About $12.4
million of that was in 2014. Below is a breakdown of 2010-2014 finances:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear:
Total User Accounts ever created: 449,229 Total HGUIDs ever created: 660,568 Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 229,922 month_to_month_hguids: 61,163 * $5 = $305,815 per month month_to_month_unused_licenses: 2,571 * $5 = $12,855 per month includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: 93,605 * $50/12 = $390,020 per month one_year_unused_licenses: 4,457 * $50/12 = $18,570 per month two_year_hguids: 50,079 * $95/24 = $198,229 per month two_year_unused_licenses: 1,441 * $95/24 = $5,704 per month DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_used: 26,601 * $50/12 = $110,837 per month DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_unused: 2,725 * $50/12 = $11,354 per month DomainSiteLic dsl_out_of_compliance_hguids: 533 lose * $50/12 = $-2,220 per month ------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- Total: 240,702 paid licenses $1,040,0733 per month PrepaidCodes Total Created: 227,277 PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 213,696 PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 7,660 PrepaidCodes Expired: 754 PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 5,166
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives,
150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes unformatted).
|
Count |
Size |
Model |
|
8,473 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
ST4000DM000-1F2168 |
|
7,083 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
HGST
HMS5C4040ALE640 |
|
4,685 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 |
|
4,595 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 |
|
4,101 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000-1F2168 |
|
3,103 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
HGST
HMS5C4040BLE640 |
|
2,489 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 |
|
1,505 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS |
|
1,074 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
ST3000DM001-9YN166 |
|
1,016 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 |
|
385 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Western Digital Red (AF) WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 |
|
307 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS |
|
279 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS |
|
267 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
WDC
WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 |
|
240 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1 |
|
225 |
6,001,175,126,016 |
WDC
WD60EFRX-68MYMN1 |
|
201 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
WDC
WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 |
|
154 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 |
|
132 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
ST4000DX000-1CL160 |
|
116 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
ST3000DM001-1CH166 |
|
68 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Western Digital Red (AF) WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 |
|
45 |
6,001,175,126,016 |
WDC
WD60EFRX-68MYMN0 |
|
45 |
6,001,175,126,016 |
ST6000DX000-1H217Z |
|
45 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
WDC
WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 |
|
45 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
Seagate Barracuda XT ST4000DX000-1CL160 |
|
42 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
HGST
HDS724040ALE640 |
|
39 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS |
|
38 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Toshiba |
|
32 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EACS-00D6B0 |
|
24 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
Seagate Barracuda Green (Adv. Format) ST1500DL003-9VT16L |
|
20 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
ST4000DM000-1CD168 |
|
19 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
WDC
WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 |
|
15 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EACS-65D6B0 |
|
12 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
WDC
WD10EADX-00TDHB0 |
|
11 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
Western Digital Red (AF) WDC WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 |
|
10 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-65L5B1 |
|
9 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 |
|
9 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 |
|
9 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-22M2B0 |
|
9 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-00P6B0 |
|
8 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Hitachi HDS723030BLE640 |
|
8 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0 |
|
7 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-11M2B2 |
|
6 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
HGST
HDS5C4040ALE630 |
|
5 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
ST2000VN000-1H3164 |
|
4 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-11M2B1 |
|
4 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green WDC WD10EADS-00P8B0 |
|
3 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
ST1500DM003-9YN16G |
|
3 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
WDC
WD10EARX-00N0YB0 |
|
2 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
ST1500DL001-9VT15L |
|
2 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
SAMSUNG SpinPoint F2 EG SAMSUNG HD154UI |
|
2 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Black WDC WD1001FALS-00Y6A0 |
|
1 |
4,000,787,030,016 |
Hitachi/HGST Deskstar 7K4000 Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 |
|
1 |
3,000,592,982,016 |
Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630 |
|
1 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
ST2000DL001-9VT156 |
|
1 |
2,000,398,934,016 |
Seagate Barracuda Green (Adv. Format) ST2000DL003-9VT166 |
|
1 |
1,500,301,910,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green (Adv. Format) WDC WD15EARS-00S8B1 |
|
1 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green (Adv. Format) WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 |
|
1 |
1,000,204,886,016 |
Western Digital Caviar Green (Adv. Format) WDC WD10EARS-00MVWB0 |
|
41,037 |
150,529,843,666,944 |
|
A Domain Site License (Backblaze for Business) screenshot prepared by SBrian below:
Some graphs from Zabbix:
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2014, for the record:
1/27/2015 - Tuesday - Backblaze makes the decision to build "B2" - a storage API and platform that will compete with Amazon S3. Below are the people who unanimously made the decision from left to right: Tim Nufire (in chair tipped back), Casey Jones (on couch), Brian Wilson (behind the camera), Gleb Budman (under the TV), Billy Ng, Candace Bain, Brian Beach, and Damon Uyeda almost cut off the right. We also unanimously decided on using the same login namespace as the traditional only backup product - so if you have a login under the traditional product it is the same username and password as the new namespace.
Decisions whiteboard: Yes to share account login name. Yes to share vaults (1 vault will have data from B2 and also from Backblaze Online Backup). Also we have decided we will not be compatible with Amazon S3 APIs because those are too clunky and slow and raise costs, we want to be less expensive than S3 and faster with better APIs.
We toasted the decision with Champagne in paper cups, here is the one empty (tiny) bottle we all split. The other bottle stayed closed, to be opened when we launch B2.
1/28/2015 - Wed - The check for $200,000 below is a historic moment. It is a transfer from our Wells Fargo checking account (where customer payments go) INTO our long term "VC fund" in Silicon Valley bank. This is the first time in Backblaze history money has flowed from customer to the VC account, what this represents is profit we aren't sure how to spend in the immediate future. We're 8 years and 14 days into this company's history, and this is the first time we have had "profits" we don't really know how to spend so we started building a "war chest".
1/31/2015 - end of January 2015, Backblaze sets an all time high revenue for one month at $1,224,206 in revenue. For 2015 we change accounting of "gross revenue" to include the charge card fees (about $52,000 for January). This was a mistake before, the customers paid $1,224,206 and we had to pay Visa and American Express as an "expense" out of that top amount of money just like we rent space from the colocation company - this is an expense.
2/3/2015 - Tuesday - released and pushed client version
3.0.2.859 (Windows). The changes include:
a. First release with new calls to "batching" Vault API - api/upload_batch_of_files
b. Changed copyright in about dialog to 2007-2015 (include this
year)
c. Contains HIDDEN thread functionality (without clicking
<CONTROL><MouseClick> at hidden location no threads)
d. Fixed Windows OS version to include Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
reporting into the stats portal.
e. Fixed a very old bug which might have resulted in missing chunks
in large files
f. Fixed bug where only the first 16 computers were listed in
"Transfer Backup State" dialog choices
g. Changed user agent string in all HTTP requests from "backblaze_agent"
to "backblaze_agent/3.0.2.859" (version).
h. Profound change to large files where each chunk can have a
different timestamp - allowing 1 large file to transmit for months (old system
the large file had to complete transmission within 5 days or it completely
failed and started over)
i. Increased the limit of number of fileIds allowed during a
"Transfer Backup State" from 20 million to 60 million
j. Made dedup work 1,000 times better - "batching" often defeated
dedup, ESPECIALLY during initial upload. Now fixed.
k. Fixed Windows only "display wrapping" problem in some languages
in the Backblaze Control Panel
l. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 3.0.2.860 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Mac installer will no longer create new accounts on Mac OS X
10.5, only new installs on 10.6 and higher
c. Add testing backdoor command line option "-createlargefilewithrsrcfork"
to help with new feature
d. Small tweak to bzdownloader icon
e. Misc other small fixes.
2/6/2015 - Friday - took possession of the back of Susan Uzunoglu's space (European Beauty Therapy - our next door neighbor) - the renovations are finished and we plan to make this a computer room.
2/13/2015 - Friday - Backblaze attends "RootsTech Conference 2015", below is Yev presenting on stage (panorama of the audience taken from the stage).
A picture of the Backblaze booth at Roots Tech 2015:
2/16/2015 - Monday, President's day holiday - Brian Wilson is working in the office on this holiday and Katherine Chung (Brian's girlfriend) and Chou Chou (Katherine's dog) came to spend the day in the office with Brian. Below Katherine and Chou Chou are taking a nap on the office "Fuff" (large bean bag chair in the conference room) while Brian works. During this 12 month era Katherine and Chou Chou would come in most weekends to be with Brian while he worked.
2/17/2015 - With load tests Brian Beach sustained more than 1 Gbit/sec per pod (up to 1.3 Gbit/sec) in the vault 1001 (not yet loaded with customer data), graphs of individual pod networking below. The tests ended when the switch "melted down", so future results might be higher.
2/26/2015 - Adam Feder's first day (as a contractor).
3/11/2015 - Backblaze blogged about the "Backblaze Vaults" for the first time today. (Picture below.) For the very first time we can talk with customers about EXACTLY how many copies of their data is stored and in how many datacenters (thank goodness). Here is the link (won't survive the test of time): https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architecture/
3/18/2015 - the NAP room (Network Access Point - the back of "Susan's Facial Shop") comes online! The first rack is bolted to the floor, it has power running to network switches, and the networking is flowing down into the NAP room (at 10 Gbit/sec speeds!) Nothing is blocking the deployment of all USB restores to this room at this point. We began renting the NAP room on 11/12/2014 - so it took 4 months to successfully bring equipment online in a room we rented. This is why we try to avoid moving offices.
3/26/2015 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
4.0.0.871 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Threads in the backup client and zip file downloader.
l. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.0.0.872 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
e. Misc other small fixes.
3/29/2015 - Sunday - the NAP room contains all the USB restores, picture below:
4/2/2015 - Thursday - The very first USB restore is shipped from the NAP room by Anthony Alexander.
4/6/2015 - Monday - Ryan Kilby's first day. Here he is on his first day:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
4/20/2015 - Monday - released and pushed client version
4.0.1.875 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Fixed bug where a "gap" was left in large files if there was
even one failure in one chunk.
b. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.0.0.872 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
4/28/2015 - Tuesday - Julie Forbush's first day (Sacramento Datacenter Tech). Here she is on her first day:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
5/12/2015 - Tuesday - We cut over to putting all new accounts on
ca001 (the second cluster authority built on EMC) on 6/4/2013 (two years ago).
At that point in time ca000 was seeing 137,000 live clients calling home asking
for pods to backup to.
Today the ca001 (the second cluster - the EMC) is handling 138,000 live clients
calling home.
The "4am morning jobs" which walk all the accounts in order and do various
accounting and billing tasks:
ca000 - 4am jobs take 5 hours each morning
ca001 - 4am jobs take 2.3 hours each morning
The size of the data on these "big" shelves looks like this:
ca000 - has 22 TBytes of data, of which 18 TBytes are bz_done files
ca001 - has 11 TBytes of data, of which 9 TBytes are bz_done files
So the vast majority of the data on the cluster authorities is the meta data of
all the files the customer has backed up.
5/25/2015 - Monday - Adam Nelson reports: "Yesterday about 2:30pm, our 150,000th Zendesk ticket came in. From what I can tell, we started using Zendesk in June of 2011. In June 2012 we were at 22,000 tickets. In June 2013, we were at 52,000. In June 2014, we were at 95,000. Now in June 2015, we?ll likely hit 151,000."
5/25/2015 - Monday - new hire Eric Tam started today! Eric joined Cecilia Luu in the accounting and finance department.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. Eric Tam - 5/25/2015
5/26/2015 - Tuesday - new intern Katherine Huang started today! Picture below:
6/1/2015 - Caitlin Luu started as an intern.
6/15/2015 - Monday - new hire Kelly Moore started today! Kelly joined the engineering department to help with web development.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. Eric Tam - 5/25/2015
40. Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015
6/23/2015 - Monday - new hire Jim Goldstein started today! Jim joined the marketing department.
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. Ric Marques - 1/7/2013
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. Eric Tam - 5/25/2015
40. Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015
41. Jim
Goldstein - 6/22/2015
7/3/2015 - Friday - the final JFS filesystem pods are decommissioned. They have been all successfully migrated into Vaults. JFS had a good 7 year run, but it is over. We currently use Ext4 for our filesystem on pods.
7/9/2015 - Thursday - Adam Feder's new Stripe code comes online and we bill customers for USB restores and Gift codes through Stripe.
7/13/2015 - Monday - Brian Guzman's first day as an engineering intern:
7/27/2015 - Monday - Steve Wilke (son of Larry) starts his internship in the datacenter, below is Steve in the datacenter
:
8/3/2015 - Monday - Below is Matt in front of the new large flatpanel screens displaying the health of the Backblaze servers plus a Slack(?) chat window? If Slack is dead or no longer exists when you read this, it was an extremely "hip" instant messaging / chat room / discussion board program that some people liked in 2015.
8/5/2015 - Wednesday - Kendall MacDonald's first day as an intern. She begins by helping Billy out with internationalization of the web pages.
8/18/2015 - Casey Christensen becomes the first person to ever try B2 python/curl on Windows, discovers a few problems for Brian Beach to fix.
6/5/2015 - We jack hammered through to George's space into the cafeteria / kitchen. Timelapse Time lapse video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EvsOCPRnI4 with a single frame of the video seen below:
9/8/2015 - Backblaze new cafeteria / kitchen is completed (except for a few minor touches) so we hold the Monday Meeting there (it is Tuesday after a 3 day weekend).
A different angle, same day:
9/9/2015 - Wednesday - released and pushed client version
4.0.4.903 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Built with newest Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015 (also
called "Visual Studio 14") which was just released July 20, 2015
b. Rolled forward to the latest official OpenSSL release 1.0.2d released July 9,
2015 to pick up latest security and performance improvements
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.0.4.904 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. support for new
Mac OS X 10.11 "El Capitan" - made flame icon look better.
b. Misc other small fixes.
9/14/2015 - Monday - Marjorie Ready's first day. She is a contractor.
9/16/2016 - since we have not yet announced B2, I wanted to snapshot some of our business metrics BEFORE the announcement. As of this moment, we have made just over $10.5 million in 2015 (gross sales cash basis of accounting) and we are making about $1.2 million every month. Below are the stats portal screenshots (for cluster one and two) which when added together say we have 280,657 licensed customers which generate $1,212,432 / month approximately in renewals assuming no new sales. First the doomsday clock:
Now the stats portal showing revenue and customer stats:
9/17/2015 - Friday - the very first file is pushed into production "B2" at 11:01am, and served up. It is a picture of Griffin, Candace's son. The URL is here and below is a screenshot: This "friendly name URL" also works: https://f000.backblaze.com/file/boatboys/boatboys.jpg
9/22/2015 - Backblaze B2 is announced today, very successful press launch signing up about 5,500 programmers to the early access waiting list here are some of the articles:
Original Blog Post: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-cloud-storage-provider/
Screenshot of our announcement splasher homepage, and Api Documentation page (with code samples).
At the start of the day at 8:45am (15 minutes before the announcement) this was a google search result:
At the end of the day it looked totally filled out.
10/23/2015 - Monday - new hire Chuck Goolsbee started today! Chuck joins the datacenter team, and Chuck lives in Oregon.
And Natasha (Tasha) Rabinov earlier on 9/17/2015:
And Marjorie Ready started a week later on 10/11/2015 so I'm including her here also:
And finally, Nilay Patel joined as employee number 45 (formerly Nilay was employee 8 but he took a several year hiatus to start http://www.selligy.com)
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011 - but returned as
employee 45 see below)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. (*) Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010, SBrian
left on 10/30/2015)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. (*) Ric Marques - 1/7/2013 (Ric left on 8/31/2015)
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. Eric Tam - 5/25/2015
40. Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015
41. Jim
Goldstein - 6/22/2015
42. Natasha Rabinov - 9/22/2015 (started contracting
part time off and on earlier at 2/1/2011)
43. Chuck Goolsbee - 10/7/2015
44. Marjorie Ready -
10/12/2015 (started contracting earlier at 9/14/2015)
45. Nilay Patel -
10/29/2015 (Nilay is employee 8 and also employee 45)
46. Elliott Sims -
11/2/2015
47. Doug Fults - ??
9/23/2015 - The very first people are allowed into the invite only beta of B2. All of these are Backblaze employees like brianwbackblaze-atsign-codeblaze.com
10/1/2015 - Julian Bain becomes the first person (outside of Backblaze employees) allowed into the invite only beta of B2. Julian is Candace's husband, his email address is: madswirls-atsign-gmail-dot-com
10/9/2015 - Nilay Patel becomes the second person (outside of Backblaze employees) allowed into the invite only beta of B2. Nilay Patel, trusted friend and former very early employee of Backblaze. Nilay's email address is nilayp-atsign-gmail-dot-com
10/14/2015 - On the Backblaze Blog, a 43K ZIP file is served up via a link from B2. https://f001.backblaze.com/file/Backblaze_Blog/q3-2015-hard-drive-table-Backblaze.zip This is Backblaze?s first public use of B2 to download a Backblaze file. The file is downloaded over 100 times in the first 2 days without issue.
11/4/2015 - Thursday - Almost everybody who works at Backblaze took a bus up to Rancho Cordova (near Sacramento) to get a tour of our datacenter. Click here for pictures.
11/12/2015 - Thursday - the very first Encrypted USB restore drive was requested by a customer. This was a feature added to prevent "cross shipping" of drives, or "unencrypted data left in the wild" when FedEx loses a package.
11/16/2015 - Monday - Doug Fults first day.
11/18/2015 - Wed - B2 charges the credit cards (brings in revenue for the very first time). This charged four of the invite only beta customers (two of which were Brian Wilson's accounts, one was Yev, and one was Adam Feder). One external customer in the invite only beta owed $0.17 so we don't actually charge his Visa until it passes $0.50.
11/30/2015 - Monday - new hire Amanda Lee started today!
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011 - but returned as
employee 45 see below)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. (*) Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010, SBrian
left on 10/30/2015)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. (*) Ric Marques - 1/7/2013 (Ric left on 8/31/2015)
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. Eric Tam - 5/25/2015
40. Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015
41. Jim
Goldstein - 6/22/2015
42. Natasha Rabinov - 9/22/2015 (started contracting
part time off and on earlier at 2/1/2011)
43. Chuck Goolsbee - 10/7/2015
44. Marjorie Ready -
10/12/2015 (started contracting earlier at 9/14/2015)
45. Nilay Patel -
10/29/2015 (Nilay is employee 8 and also employee 45)
46. Elliott Sims -
11/2/2015
47. Doug Fults - 11/16/2015
48. Amanda Le - 11/30/2015
12/7/2015 - Monday - Backblaze holiday party. Click here for pictures and names of everybody at the holiday party.
12/15/2015 - Tuesday - Backblaze B2 Public Beta.
Our blog post: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-cloud-storage-public-beta/
Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timconneally/2015/12/15/backblaze-undercuts-all-cloud-storage-competitors/
TechCrunch.com: http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/15/backblazes-low-cost-cloud-storage-service-comes-out-of-beta/
TheNextWeb.com: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/12/15/backblazes-dirt-cheap-developer-storage-is-now-available-for-all/
VentureBeat.com: http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/15/backblaze-launches-public-beta-for-b2-cloud-storage-service-after-getting-15k-requests/
BetaNews.com: http://betanews.com/2015/12/15/backblaze-launches-low-cost-cloud-storage-for-it-departments/
Vator.tv (VatorNews): http://vator.tv/news/2015-12-15-backblaze-announces-open-beta-for-affordable-cloud-storage
TechMeme.com: http://www.techmeme.com/151215/p14#a151215p14
LifeHacker.com: http://lifehacker.com/backblaze-b2-offers-dirt-cheap-cloud-storage-for-half-a-1748335260
TheRegister.co.uk: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/16/public_backblaze_b2_beta_blasts_off/
ComputerWorld.com: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3015863/cloud-computing/backblaze-b2-cloud-storage-itbwcw.html
ITProPortal.com: http://www.itproportal.com/2015/12/16/backblaze-b2-cloud-storage-opens-¼-price-aws/
Here is our lunch that day at restaurant called "three" in San Mateo:
12/31/2015 - Thursday - End of month December, end of 2015. This month's revenue was $1,520,000.01 and the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $48,192,731.81 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Business ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 42% (150 PBytes grew to 214 PBytes)
2) Revenue grew by 20.4% ($12,600,613 grew to $15,174,468)
3) Paying customers grew by 23% (240,702 grew to 296,136 paying customers)
4) Employee # grew by 32% (31 grew to 41)
5) Monthly payroll grew by 30%
($459,471 grew to $600,000)
6) Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs
SHRUNK by 5% ($140k/month shrunk to $133k/month)
7) Total USB restores grew
by 36% (1,997 drives and flash keys grew to 2,723 drives and flash keys)
Some end of year statistics:
- We leave the year with 296,136 paying customers (up from 240,702 at the end of
2014) - of which 274,137 of the paying have pinged home in last 24 days).
- Lifetime we have created 881,662 hguids (each hguid represents a "fresh
install" on a customer's computer), of which 221,094 were in 2015.
- 248,170 hosts are in steady_state
- The Backblaze datacenter has 1,291 pods sitting in production (up from 913 in
2014) with 58,095 drives online representing just about 214 Petabytes of raw
space (up from 150 Petabytes a year ago)
- Drive in the datacenter by size: ??? 4TB, ??? 3TB, ??? 2TB, ??? 1.5TB; ??? 1TB
- SEE CHART BELOW titled "Drive Population on 2015-12-31"
-
Backblaze spent $2,322,787.15 on drives for pods in 2015 (!)
- We spent
$1,382,167 on pod "chassis" in 2015
- We started the year with a
?vault? configuration (v4.5) costing $3,576.02 ea. We ended the year with a 5.0
chassis costing $2,994.27 -> a cost reduction of ~16%
- 4TB Seagate
drives were more cost effective throughout the year - the price decreased ~20%
over the year (from $138 to $110)<br>a<br>a
- The datacenter has about 10.3??? Petabytes of formatted free space ready to
accept customer data (about the same as we had last year)
- The datacenter has 6 (?) "10 gigabit" pipes available, and we are at
44
gigabits of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays.
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing
$133,000 / month (in December) which is a $1.596 million / year run rate (which
is a DECREASE over the previous year's $1.68 million / year run rate!!)
- We
spent $214,065 on USB drives -> which I think is really close to a 20% increase
from 2014
- We shipped a total of 2,723 drives (including flash keys) vs 1997 in 2014 -> a
36% increase
-
Bandwidth is running at $48,000/month in December ($576,000 / year run rate)
a
- Our current datacenter combines space rental and all power into one bill (not
separable) which is $85,000/month in December ($1.02 million / year run rate).
- Backblaze now has 41 full time employees (increase of 10 since the end of
2014)
- In the 9 years (2007 - 2015) Backblaze has spent a total or $49.97 million on
datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included. About $15.17
million of that was in 2015. Below is a breakdown of 2010-2015 finances:
An xls spreadsheet of the below numbers is available here.
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear:
Total User Accounts ever created: 573,079
Total HGUIDs ever created: 881,662
Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 274,137
month_to_month_hguids: 70,635 * $5 = $353,175 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: 3,982 * $5 = $19,910 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: 114,633 * $50/12 = $477,637 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: 2,482 * $50/12 = $10,637 per month
two_year_hguids: 61,538 * $95/24 = $243,587 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: 1,755 * $95/24 = $6,947 per month
DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_used: 36,201 * $50/12 = $150,837 per month
DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_unused: 4,336 * $50/12 = $18,066 per month
DomainSiteLic dsl_out_of_compliance_hguids: 574 lose * $50/12 = $-2,391 per month
------------------------------------------------------ ------------------
Total: 296,136 paid licenses $1,278,110.96 per month
PrepaidCodes Total Created: 284,905 PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 270,112 PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 4,981 PrepaidCodes Expired: 1,189 PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 8,622
The "Backblaze B2" product went "open beta" on December 15, 2015 and as of Dec 31st, 2015 there are 15,007 "buckets" created by customers uploading about 7 TBytes of data resulting in about $15/month (yes, very very small so far - essentially contributing nothing to Backblaze revenue up to this point).
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
A detailed count of all the hard drives in pods in the datacenter (collected by Tim).
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150
Petabytes unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives,
214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214 Petabytes unformatted).
|==============================================================| | drive_size | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.1TB | 32 | 2 | 2560843579392 | | 0.2TB | 204 | 30 | 32648544681984 | | 0.3TB | 209 | 54 | 59823811806208 | | 0.5TB | 807 | 367 | 403587044646912 | | 1.5TB | 224 | 306 | 336067627843584 | | 2.0TB | 4634 | 8431 | 9269848660230144 | | 3.0TB | 6661 | 18178 | 19986949853208576 | | 4.0TB | 42405 | 154299 | 169653374007828480 | | 5.0TB | 45 | 205 | 225044148510720 | | 6.0TB | 2340 | 12772 | 14042749794877440 | | 8.0TB | 45 | 327 | 360070344990720 | | TOTAL | 57606 | 194971 | 214372724682204160 | |==============================================================|
|==================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |------------------------------------------------------------------| | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 29084 | 12.2 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 7085 | 17.2 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 | 3.0TB | 4558 | 43.7 | | Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 | 2.0TB | 4489 | 58.6 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 3091 | 20.1 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 2638 | 33.0 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 1882 | 9.4 | | WDC WD30EFRX | 3.0TB | 1046 | 19.6 | | Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 | 3.0TB | 1000 | 48.9 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 513 | 8.7 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 458 | 12.4 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 262 | 14.8 | | ST31500541AS | 1.5TB | 222 | 68.1 | | ST4000DX000 | 4.0TB | 212 | 27.0 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 145 | 8.4 | | WDC WD20EFRX | 2.0TB | 131 | 8.7 | | WDC WD1600AAJS | 0.2TB | 98 | 40.0 | | ST320LT007 | 0.3TB | 68 | 34.0 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 61 | 6.6 | | ST3160316AS | 0.2TB | 52 | 52.0 | | ST9250315AS | 0.3TB | 51 | 25.9 | | TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 | 3.0TB | 47 | 31.9 | | ST3160318AS | 0.2TB | 47 | 59.6 | | WDC WD40EFRX | 4.0TB | 46 | 20.8 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA500V | 5.0TB | 45 | 10.1 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 45 | 10.7 | | HGST HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 40 | 27.5 | | ST250LM004 HN | 0.3TB | 32 | 28.2 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 24 | 32.6 | | ST9320325AS | 0.3TB | 22 | 22.5 | | WDC WD800AAJS | 0.1TB | 14 | 45.0 | | WDC WD3200BEKX | 0.3TB | 11 | 16.0 | | Hitachi HDS723030BLE640 | 3.0TB | 9 | 29.7 | | WDC WD2500BPVT | 0.3TB | 8 | 31.3 | | Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 | 2.0TB | 8 | 37.3 | | WDC WD800AAJB | 0.1TB | 7 | 60.3 | | WDC WD1600AAJB | 0.2TB | 6 | 49.1 | | ST2000VN000 | 2.0TB | 6 | 6.7 | | WDC WD800BB | 0.1TB | 5 | 108.3 | | WDC WD5002ABYS | 0.5TB | 5 | 44.9 | | WDC WD800JB | 0.1TB | 4 | 74.5 | | ST250LT007 | 0.3TB | 4 | 28.3 | | Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 3 | 12.3 | | WDC WD2500AAJS | 0.3TB | 3 | 26.5 | | WDC WD5003ABYX | 0.5TB | 2 | 18.0 | | WDC WD3200AAJS | 0.3TB | 2 | 24.5 | | WDC WD3200AAJB | 0.3TB | 2 | 35.8 | | ST3500320AS | 0.5TB | 1 | 42.6 | | WDC WD800LB | 0.1TB | 1 | 121.6 | | WDC WD1600BPVT | 0.2TB | 1 | 19.7 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630 | 3.0TB | 1 | 33.9 | | WDC WD3200LPVX | 0.3TB | 1 | 23.3 | | WDC WD3200BEKT | 0.3TB | 1 | 27.0 | | WDC WD2500AAJB | 0.3TB | 1 | 38.0 | | WDC WD800JD | 0.1TB | 1 | 54.7 | | Hitachi HDT725025VLA380 | 0.3TB | 1 | 78.3 | | SAMSUNG HD154UI | 1.5TB | 1 | 29.3 | | WDC WD2500BEVT | 0.3TB | 1 | 26.0 | | ST31500341AS | 1.5TB | 1 | 75.5 | | WDC WD3200AAKS | 0.3TB | 1 | 65.4 | |==================================================================|
A Domain Site License (Backblaze for Business) summary prepared by Sona below:
| New DSL Customers: | 678 | |
| New One Year: | 8651 | $431,636.00 |
| New Two Year: | 59 | $5,605.00 |
| Prorated: | 6895 | $208,336.91 |
| Total New Lic: | 15605 | $645,577.91 |
| Renewing Customers: | 1258 | |
| Renew One Year Lic: | 26714 | $1,319,383.80 |
| Renew 2&3 Year Lic: | 607 | $78,665.00 |
| Total Renew Lic: | 27321 | $1,398,048.80 |
| 2012 B4B Total: | $2,043,626.71 |
Some more Zabbix graphs below, these are all disk busy, plus explanation from Tim:
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2014, for the record:
2/3/2016 - Backblaze has a big double booth at "RootsTech" conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Another picture (notice "Backblaze" is on both sides of the aisle).
3/22/2016 - Tuesday - Support answers 200,000th support ticket. (100,000 was on 7/8/2014)
5/3/2016 - We detected that vaults lost two files (one on "Personal Backup" and one in B2) due to a bug. This is the first file we have ever realized was gone on the vaults. One file was in "Personal Backup" so we issued a healing request to replace it. The B2 file we will alert the customer as we are still in "Beta" for that product.
5/20/2016 - Backblaze had a company outing to visit the Lagunitas Brewery. Click here for pictures and movies from that event.
2/5/2016 - Peter Cohen's first day at Backblaze.
Troy Liljedahl (3/7/2016) first day:
Jon Jones first day in datacenter:
Natalie Cook's first day was 3/28/2016:
And Annalisa Penhollow started on June 16, 2016:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011 - but returned as
employee 45 see below)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. (*) Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010, SBrian left on 10/30/2015)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. (*) Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012, Dave left on 2/1/2016)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. (*) Ric Marques - 1/7/2013 (Ric left on 8/31/2015)
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. (*) Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013, Nathan left on 3/24/2016)
27. Matt Wright - 2/20/2014
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. Candace Bain - 6/9/2014
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. Eric Tam - 5/25/2015
40. Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015
41. Jim
Goldstein - 6/22/2015
42. Natasha Rabinov - 9/22/2015 (started contracting
part time off and on earlier at 2/1/2011)
43. Chuck Goolsbee - 10/7/2015
44. Marjorie Ready -
10/12/2015 (started contracting earlier at 9/14/2015)
45. Nilay Patel -
10/29/2015 (Nilay is employee 8 and also employee 45)
46. Elliott Sims -
11/2/2015
47. Doug Fults - 11/16/2015
48. Amanda Le - 11/30/2015
49. Peter Cohen - 2/5/2016
50. Troy Liljedahl - 3/7/2016
51. Jon Jones - 3/10/2016
52. Natalie Cook - 3/28/2016
53. Annalisa Penhollow - 6/16/2016
NOTE ON SUMMER INTERNS for June, July, August of 2016:
- Tony Song started on 4/25/2016 as an intern (Helping Sona and Natasha).
- Aaron Kline started on 6/27/2016 working in marketing.
Ari Aisen started on 6/27/2016 as a marketing intern:
- Caitlin Luu came back to us on 6/1/2016 helping ?Cecilia? (she was also an intern last summer on 6/1/2015):
- Katherine Huang came back to us on 6/13/2016 in engineering and working on bzadmin (she was also an intern last summer on 5/26/2016):
- Alex Miller started in the datacenter as an intern on 6/17/2016:
Luke McDougald started as an intern in engineering on 7/5/2016:
6/4/2016 - The very first 10 TByte Snapshot was created, see below:
6/16/2016 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.0.5.949 (Windows). The changes include:
a. No more "hard coded rules" for exclusions, now all found in bzdata files: bzexcluderules_mandatory.xml and bzexcluderules_editable.xml
b. New "get upload url" calls the new B2 front end API servers at URL example: https://api001.backblaze.com/api2/get_b1_upload_urls
c. Transfer Backup State has become "Inherit Backup State" (requested by support).
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.0.5.946 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Retina graphics update for Macintosh only
c. Misc other small fixes.
6/28/2016 - Tuesday - B2 1.0 - The B2 product line launches 1.0 with full access, an SLA, Premium Support, here are some press articles:
Actual Blog Post: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/budget-cloud-storage/
ZDnet - http://www.zdnet.com/article/backblaze-b2-dirt-cheap-cloud-storage-for-business/
LifeHacker - http://lifehacker.com/this-is-timely-i-need-a-new-offsite-backup-provider-fo-1782817115
StorageReview - http://www.storagereview.com/backblaze_announces_its_b2_cloud_storage_is_out_of_beta
News Factor - http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1300025M9SEA
PC World - http://www.pcworld.com/article/3088923/backblaze-wants-to-eliminate-tape-based-storage.html
TopTechNews - http://www.toptechnews.com/article/index.php?story_id=1300025M9SEA
Reddit One - https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/4qb2ol/backblaze_finally_comes_to_synology/
Reddit Two - https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4qawuh/backblaze_launches_b2_10_the_lowest_cost_cloud/
Silicon Angle - http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/06/29/backblaze-launches-dirt-cheap-storage-offering-to-compete-with-amazon/
That was the B2 1.0 lauch!
7/11/2016 - JC's first day at Backblaze (Jessica Castaneda).
Also on 7/12/2016 Ahin Thomas started as VP of Marketing:
On 7/15/2016 Terry LoBianco started
8/8/2016 - Monday - Brian Guzman's first day as a full time engineer.
9/12/2016 - Monday - Lance Norskog's first day as a full time engineer.
9/13/2016 - Tuesday - Tony Sale's first day as a full time engineer.
LeAnn Sucht first day was 9/26/2016:
Joe Kacacek first day on 10/31/2016:
Larry Stancil on his first day of 11/14/2016:
Roderick Bauer on his first day July 10th, 2017:
Carlo Mogavero on his first day:
Lorelei Small - 9/25/2017 below:
Robert (Rob) Shaffer below:
Zach Rice below:
Rich Rivest is below:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at
1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011 - but returned as
employee 45 see below)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. (*) Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010, SBrian left on 10/30/2015)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. (*) Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012, Dave left on 2/1/2016)
20. Chris Grace
- 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller
- 8/29/2012
22. (*) Ric Marques - 1/7/2013 (Ric left on 8/31/2015)
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013
(Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting
earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO: Sona's official paperwork is back dated to
9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after BrianB.)
26. (*) Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013, Nathan left on 3/24/2016)
27.
(*) Matt Wright - 2/20/2014 (Matt left on 11/17/2017)
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock (started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. (*) Candace Bain - 6/9/2014 (Candace left on 8/12/2016 to cure cancer at "Grail")
33. Chris Bergeron
- 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
38. Julie Forbush -
4/8/2015
39. (*) Eric Tam - 5/25/2015 (Eric left on 9/29/2016)
40. (*) Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015
(Kelly left on 11/30/2017)
41. Jim
Goldstein - 6/22/2015
42. Natasha Rabinov - 9/22/2015 (started contracting
part time off and on earlier at 2/1/2011)
43. (*) Chuck Goolsbee - 10/7/2015 (Chuck left on 10/11/2016)
44. Marjorie Ready -
10/12/2015 (started contracting earlier at 9/14/2015)
45. Nilay Patel -
10/29/2015 (Nilay is employee 8 and also employee 45)
46. Elliott Sims -
11/2/2015
47. Doug Fults - 11/16/2015
48. Amanda Le - 11/30/2015
49.
(*) Peter Cohen - 2/5/2016
(Peter left on 5/2/2017)
50. Troy Liljedahl - 3/7/2016
51. Jon Jones - 3/10/2016
52. Natalie Cook - 3/28/2016
53. Annalisa Penhollow - 6/16/2016
54. Jessica Castaneda ("JC") - 7/11/2016
55. Ahin Thomas - 7/12/2016
56. Terry LoBianco – 7/15/2016
57. Brian Guzman - 8/8/2016
58. (*) Lance Norskog - 9/12/2016 (Lance left on 11/18/2016)
59. Tony Sales - 9/13/2016
60. Jeannine Smith - 9/19/2016 (Jeannine started 24 hours per week - 3 days a week)
61. LeAnn Sucht - 9/26/2016
62.
(*) Marty Lucich - 9/27/2016 (Marty left on 3/3/2017)
63. Andely Wu - 10/10/2016
64. Joe Kacacek - 10/17/2016
65.
(*) Larry Stancil - 11/14/2016 (Larry left on 10/23/2017)
66.
(*) Brittney Wassermann - 11/28/2016 (Brittney
left on April 14th, she was substituting for Natalie during maternity leave)
67. Shelby Welsch - 2/27/17
68. (*) Max Kalashnikov - 6/6/2017 (Max left on
7/14/2017)
69. Roderick Bauer - 7/10/2017
70. Carlo Mogavero - 9/18/2017
71. Lorelei Small - 9/25/2017
72. Rob Shaffer - 10/5/2017
73. Zach Rice - 10/16/2017
74. Rich Rivest -
10/30/2017
7/18/2016 - Monday - Backblaze B2 passes over 1 PByte of data stored. It makes a little less than $2,000 per month in total revenue at this point, so half of it is probably in the "free" category.
8/12/2016 - Backblaze Family Outing to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Click here for pictures. Also Candace Bain's last day (she left for "Grail").
8/25/2016 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.2.0.965 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Based on former release of bzdata files: bzexcluderules_mandatory.xml and bzexcluderules_editable.xml -> made it clear in GUI that exclusions apply to all volumes (all drives)
b. Put "*:\Windows" instead of "C:\Windows" to make it absolutely clear it applies to all volumes (all drives)
c. Put "Inherit Backup State" in main "Settings...." dialog so customers can find it easier.
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.2.0.966 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. a few fixes for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.12
c. Misc other small fixes.
8/27/2016 - Backblaze expands office into neighbor's space by cutting this doorway. Derman Uzunoglu cuts the holes.
Peeking through the hole.
At the end of the day, this is where we stopped:
9/16/2016 - Lego the dog comes to the Backblaze office. Lego belongs to Jim Goldstein.
9/20/2016 - Tuesday - A record number of USB drive restores at 32 shipped in one day, picture below of what the FedEx guy sees when he walks into our office.
10/7/2016 - Friday - Dax Nelson becomes the first baby to use Backblaze's new baby changing station in our newly remodeled bathroom:
10/11/2016 - Tuesday - Nilay summarizes the breakdown of B2 expenses for from 2015-11-13 to 2016-10-13 as this:
10/20/2016 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
4.2.0.979 (Windows).
The changes include:
a. Support for "Business Groups" in the client - suppress some billing popups if paid for by Group admin, use correct "Contact your Group Admin" in others.
b. Added fossil tracking, group tracking to stats portal
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.2.0.980 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above.
Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
10/25/2016 - Tuesday - construction workers on scaffolding on wheels with a bench on top cut through the walls into our new office expansion. Click HERE for a Timelapse video of the work seen in the picture below! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWwuyVjf9Qw
10/24/2016 - Thursday - Backblaze B2 hits 1 billion files uploaded by customers. Here are some stats:
- 1 billion files in B2
- Total storage: 3,465,666 GBytes (3.5 PBytes) broken down as: 3,137,549 GBytes on cluster 001 and 328,117 GBytes on cluster 000.
- Average file size: 3.466 MBytes
- Cassandra size PER NODE for ca001 (4 nodes) is 162 GBytes (and another 18 GBytes on ca000). (So about 1,000 bytes / file.)
- The datacenter has a total of 263 PBytes being managed.
- B1 (Personal Backup) has about 117 billion file names across two clusters. This takes about 60 TBytes of space to store. (513 bytes / file)
11/20/2016 - Sunday - Backblaze has now restored 20 billion files for customers.
12/12/2016 - Monday - Three Fireballs were shipped to actual customers this week (one on Monday 12/12, two on Tuesday 12/13). These are our first ones shipped (the other one was dropped off locally). Synology boxes along with eight 8 TB drives (64 TByte capacity minus overhead for RAID).
12/14/2016 - Wednesday - Jeffrey Van Zelt is hired at Backblaze as a temporary CFO to look into funding. He is a consultant so does not get an employee number.
12/15/2016 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.3.0.1 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Absolutely nothing - it was a "roll-over" release for the build number (the trailing "1" - we ran out of digits).
b. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.3.0.2 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes.
12/16/2016 - Friday - We shipped 31 items from FedEx this day broken down as: 23 restores, 2 fireballs, and 6 marketing prizes. Picture below:
12/31/2016 - Saturday - End of month December, end of 2016. This month's revenue was $1,473,677 and the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $65,922,058 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015, and $17,729,325 of that was in 2016). Below is a lifetime revenue chart:
Here is a graph of storage over time:
The $17,729,326 Gross Sales in 2016 broken down by category:
$14,802,075 (83%) -
B1 (Personal Backup)
$ 2,481,921 (14.0%) - B4B (This is the old Domain Site Licenses - Will be replaced by "Business Groups" next month)
$ 351,243 (2.0%) - USB Restores
$ 94,086 (1/2 of 1%) - B2 (storage API)
B2 was a little disappointing in 2016 but below here is the graph of how B2 is doing (the trends are great):
If you let Excel project that out through the end of 2017 it starts looking very healthy:
USB Restore Trends:
Business ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 50.5% (214 PBytes grew to 322 PBytes)
2) Revenue grew by 17% ($15,174,468 grew to $17,729,325)
3) Paying customers grew by 13% (296,136 grew to 334,281 paying customers)
4) Employee # grew by 29% (41 grew to 53)
5) Monthly payroll grew by 8% ($600,000 grew to $652,134)
6) Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs increased by 36% ($133k/month increased to $181k/month)
7)Total USB restores grew by 48% (2,723 drives and flash keys grew to 4,049 drives and flash keys)
Some end of year statistics:
- We leave the year with 334,281 paying customers (up from 296,136 at the end of 2015) - of which 308,269 of the paying have pinged home in last 24 days).
- Lifetime we have created 881,662 hguids (each hguid represents a "fresh install" on a customer's computer), of which 251,117 were in 2015.
- 283,314 hosts are in steady_state
- The Backblaze datacenter has 1,522 pods sitting in production (up from 1,291 in 2015) with 73,653 drives online representing just about 322 Petabytes of raw space (up from 214 Petabytes a year ago)
- Backblaze spent $4.1 million on hard drives in 2016 (up from $2.3 million in 2015)
- We spent $717,000 on pod "chassis" in 2016 down from $1,382,167 in 2015
- We started the year with a pod 5.0 chassis with 45 drives costing $2,994.27 -> we ended the year a 6.0 pod chassis with 60 drives cost in $3,342.13
- 4TB Seagate drives at the end of 2015 were $110 each and decreased to $89.86 each.
- 8TB drives are becoming the preferred drive at $261 each (because they take half the datacenter space and electricity for the same amount of storage)
- The datacenter has about 29.3 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept customer data (up from 10.3 PBytes last year)
- The datacenter has 8x "10 gigabit" pipes available on one ISP, and 2x40Gbits/sec to the other ISP, and we are at 74 Gbits/sec of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays (up from 44 gigabits last year in December).
- The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing $181,000 / month (in December) which is a $2.2 million / year run rate (which is a 36% increase over the previous year's $1.6 million / year run rate)
- We spent $169,552 on USB drives (thumb drives and spinnning) down from from $229,330 in 2015
- We shipped a total of 4,049 drives (including flash keys) vs 2,723 in 2015 -> a 49% increase
- Bandwidth is running at $61,000/month in December ($732,000 / year run rate)
- Our current datacenter combines space rental and all power into one bill (not separable) which is $120,000/month in December ($1.44 million / year run rate).
- Backblaze now has 53 full time employees (increase of 12 since the end of 2015)
- (LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) In the 9 years (2007 - 2015) Backblaze has spent a total or $49.97 million on datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included. About $15.17 million of that was in 2015. Below is a breakdown of 2010-2015 finances:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear:
Total User Accounts ever created: 687,435 Total HGUIDs ever created: 1,132,779 Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 308,269 month_to_month_hguids: 79,848 * $5 = $399,240 per month month_to_month_unused_licenses: 373 * $5 = $1,865 per month includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: 131,072 * $50/12 = $546,133 per month one_year_unused_licenses: 1,337 * $50/12 = $5,570 per month two_year_hguids: 69,558 * $95/24 = $275,333 per month two_year_unused_licenses: 1,353 * $95/24 = $5,355 per month DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_used: 44,892 * $50/12 = $187,050 per month DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_unused: 5,223 * $50/12 = $21,762 per month DomainSiteLic dsl_out_of_compliance_hguids: 625 lose * $50/12 = $-2,604 per month ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ Total: 334,281 paid licenses $1,439,704 per month PrepaidCodes Total Created: 291,022 PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 275,011 PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 3,257 PrepaidCodes Expired: 1,455 PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 11,298
A Domain Site License (Backblaze for Business) summary prepared by Sona below:
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives, 214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214 Petabytes unformatted).
2016 SUMMARY: 73,653 hard drives, 322,191,216,469,722,112 bytes (322 Petabytes unformatted).
(this is from https://drivestats.backblaze.com/) but the link only works inside of Backblaze
|==============================================================| | drive_size | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.2TB | 136 | 20 | 21765696454656 | | 0.3TB | 140 | 35 | 38158860903424 | | 0.5TB | 1285 | 584 | 642638602690560 | | 1.0TB | 1 | 1 | 1000204886016 | | 1.5TB | 41 | 56 | 61512378310656 | | 2.0TB | 3 | 5 | 6001196802048 | | 3.0TB | 6616 | 18055 | 19851923169017856 | | 4.0TB | 54281 | 197512 | 217166720776298496 | | 5.0TB | 45 | 205 | 225044148510720 | | 6.0TB | 2340 | 12772 | 14042749794877440 | | 8.0TB | 8765 | 63786 | 70133701640970240 | | TOTAL | 73653 | 293031 | 322191216469722112 | |==============================================================|
|==================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |------------------------------------------------------------------| | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 34737 | 21.16 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 9406 | 14.92 | | ST8000DM002 | 8.0TB | 8660 | 4.13 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 7014 | 28.89 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 | 3.0TB | 4480 | 55.28 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 2625 | 44.76 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 1889 | 20.90 | | WDC WD30EFRX | 3.0TB | 1101 | 29.96 | | Hitachi HDS723030ALA640 | 3.0TB | 978 | 60.61 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 782 | 15.73 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 447 | 23.55 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 328 | 22.68 | | ST4000DX000 | 4.0TB | 186 | 38.02 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 146 | 20.02 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050 | 0.5TB | 99 | 3.61 | | WDC WD1600AAJS | 0.2TB | 83 | 51.00 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 75 | 16.57 | | ST8000NM0055 | 8.0TB | 60 | 0.84 | | ST9250315AS | 0.3TB | 51 | 37.18 | | WDC WD40EFRX | 4.0TB | 46 | 31.94 | | TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 | 3.0TB | 46 | 43.53 | | WDC WD5000LPCX | 0.5TB | 46 | 5.55 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA500V | 5.0TB | 45 | 21.56 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 45 | 22.40 | | ST31500541AS | 1.5TB | 41 | 72.98 | | HGST HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 40 | 39.25 | | ST3160316AS | 0.2TB | 39 | 62.23 | | ST250LM004 HN | 0.3TB | 31 | 38.83 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 24 | 44.17 | | ST9320325AS | 0.3TB | 23 | 34.25 | | ST3160318AS | 0.2TB | 13 | 69.85 | | WDC WD3200BEKX | 0.3TB | 9 | 29.06 | | ST320LT007 | 0.3TB | 9 | 41.22 | | Hitachi HDS723030BLE640 | 3.0TB | 9 | 41.43 | | WDC WD2500BPVT | 0.3TB | 8 | 42.91 | | ST6000DM001 | 6.0TB | 4 | 1.86 | | ST4000DX002 | 4.0TB | 3 | 6.38 | | Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 3 | 24.04 | | WDC WD2500AAJS | 0.3TB | 3 | 38.19 | | Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 | 2.0TB | 3 | 69.06 | | WDC WD5002ABYS | 0.5TB | 3 | 55.09 | | WDC WD3200AAJS | 0.3TB | 3 | 34.12 | | WDC WD5003ABYX | 0.5TB | 2 | 27.22 | | ST3500320AS | 0.5TB | 1 | 54.31 | | WDC WD1600BPVT | 0.2TB | 1 | 34.59 | | Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630 | 3.0TB | 1 | 45.64 | | WDC WD3200LPVX | 0.3TB | 1 | 34.42 | | Hitachi HDT725025VLA380 | 0.3TB | 1 | 89.95 | | WDC WD2500BEVT | 0.3TB | 1 | 37.56 | | ST1000LM024 HN | 1.0TB | 1 | 3.57 | | ST33000651AS | 3.0TB | 1 | 49.62 | |==================================================================|
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2016, for the record:
1/6/2017 - Friday - Record number of USB restores at 37:
1/9/2017 - Monday - The very first equipment is installed in our new Phoenix datacenter. Sean Harriswrites in email:
"First day was very successful and productive. Although we had a few setbacks (broken cabinet feet, and a damaged ladder-rack shipment), we were able to unload and stage all of the expected deliveries for this week.
1. 36 cabinets
2. The 53' truck from Sungard that had:
a. network cabinets
b. PDU's
c. Tools
d. bench
e. 5 vaults
f. Vault drives
g. carts
h. Guido (lift)
3. Core servers
4. supplies (printer/stationary/etc)
5. Ladder racks
The entire row A of cabinets was aligned and bolted together.
Tomorrow we should have the replacement broken cabinet feet, and cables will begin to arrive.
The rest of the cabinets will be seated and we will install the ladder racks and begin to assemble vault pods.
Replacement ladder rack material from the damaged shipment will arrive later in the week."
More pictures here (need to be organized into a useful web page). \\whistler\bowl\Pictures\Omnis_DC_Phoenix\move-in-Jan-2017\
1/12/2017 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.3.0.9 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Moved registry exclude rules from "Mandatory" to "Editable"
b. Bumped copyright to 2017
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.3.0.2 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes.
1/19/2017 - Thursday - "Business Groups" is officially launched. It allows one credit card to pay for several other users. This replaces the older "Domain Site Licenses" which was an abomination for 8 years. On Jan 29th the remote engineers were in town so we went to "Espetus Brazilian Steak House" to celebrate, pictures below. The first shows how it works, these guys walk around with meat on sticks and carve it off. You use little tweezers to hold the slice.
Below is a panorama of the entire group (3 tables).
A close up of one table.
Another close up of a table.
2/16/2017 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.3.0.15 (Windows) including bzdownloader. The changes include:
a. Touchup bzdownloader to display names of "in the process of being prepared" restores as "Created on <blah> date".
b. Put in additional debug logging for Inherit Backup State to chase a customer problem.
c. When a customer adds a hard drive to the backup -> we no longer wipe out all
the exclusions and return them to defaults.
d. Added BzHashTable64 to bzbase which allows 'C' HashTables to have more than 2 billion buckets (the old limit).
e. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.3.0.16 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes.
3/13/2017 - Monday - Including both cluster 000 and cluster 001, B2 crossed over holding 10 PBytes of data. (10067559014302027 bytes or 10.067 PBytes)
4/6/2017 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.3.0.23 (Windows) including bzdownloader. The changes include:
a. Turned on compression for all files, not just ".txt" and ".html".
Initial tests come up with about 6% space savings in datacenter.
b.
Put in a new 7za.exe binary into the bzdownloader (Windows only). It went
from 2011 to 2017 (6 years newer). This makes the unzipper work a much higher
percentage of the time.
e. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.3.0.24 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes.
4/14/2017 - Friday - Finished auto-update rollout of 4.3.0.23 and 4.3.0.24 (full auto-update thrown). Within a few days Backblaze will be getting the benefit of the compression on all files.
6/1/2017 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 4.3.0.47
(Windows). The changes include:
a. Fixed Inherit Backup State
InheritBackupState to work with 4 GByte files. Also required a Java fix
for >2 GByte backup states!
e. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version 4.3.0.48 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above
b. Misc other small fixes.
6/2/2017 - Random update that we have lifetime total:
Total User Accounts ever created: 754,693
Total HGUIDs ever created: 1,253,398 (more than 1 million hguids)
Number Paying HGUIDs still in use: 363,470 ($1.8 million per month in gross revenue)
7/19/2017- Backblaze B2 crosses over 5 billion objects stored, 1 year after launch.
8/9/2017 - Wednesday (unusual push) - released and pushed client version
5.0.0.109 (Windows). The changes include:
a. The 5.0 client has a top of 20
threads (increased from 10 threads)
b. The 5.0 downloader has a top of 20
threads (increased from 10 threads)
c. The 5.0 client - when you set to "AutoThrottle"
it now selects 2 or 4 threads as the default instead of 1 thread.
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.0.0.110 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. other stuff
c. Misc other small fixes.
8/22/2017 - Tuesday - CrashPlan announced they are discontinuing "CrashPlan Home". The whole world recomends Backblaze instead:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/22/crashplan-shuts-down-its-popular-cloud-backup-service-to-focus-on-business-customers/
“The Wirecutter has already updated its online cloud backup service guide. It
now recommends Backblaze instead of CrashPlan. I’ve been using Backblaze and the
service works fine. It doesn’t slow down your computer and it offers plenty of
options to restore your files.”
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/08/22/1647242/ask-slashdot-what-are-some-cloud-backup-solutions-that-you-recommend
"Anybody aware of decent cloud backup solutions such as Backblaze?"
http://www.macworld.com/article/3218646/data-center-cloud/how-to-move-from-crashplan-for-home-to-another-backup-solution.html
“Switch your cloud backup. The cloud part of CrashPlan is easiest. I recommend
Backblaze hands down.”
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/22/16184430/crashplan-home-shutting-down
“But I’d personally go for Backblaze — and the company is more than happy to
accept expelled CrashPlan customers.”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/08/23/crashplan
"If you don’t have an off-site backup system in place for your Macs, I
implore you to check out Backblaze."
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-back-up-your-files-now-that-crashplan-isnt-an-op-1798320345
"While CrashPlan was our backup service of choice, Backblaze was a close second, and was easier to use thanks to its simple installation process and default option to backup everything on your computer."
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/quick-tip/losing-crashplan-home-heres-tmo-staff-uses-online-backups/
"Here’s what we use...Dave Hamilton, Bob LeVitus, and Kelly Guimont rely on
BackBlaze."
https://thestack.com/cloud/2017/08/23/crashplan-ends-consumer-backup-services-to-focus-on-business/
"Although existing customers are being pushed towards Carbonite, the end of
Crashplan’s home backup service has clearly pleased rival Backblaze."
http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/450425025/Code42-CrashPlan-for-Home-ending-Carbonite-seeks-its-users
"IDrive and Backblaze were among those vendors touting their products in the
wake of the news."
https://thenextweb.com/apps/2017/08/23/crashplan-is-killing-off-its-backup-service-for-home-users-heres-how-to-switch/#.tnw_ccmZiHbe
"Another formidable alternative is Backblaze"
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/crashplan-cloud-backup-home-users/
"Backblaze wasted no time in reaching out for CrashPlan customers, offering
them the chance to try its service for free."
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/with-crashplan-getting-out-of-the-consumer-cloud-backup-game-whats-next-best/
"Backblaze
is the way to go."
There were 2,200 Account creations on the first day and 2,900 on the second day vs 400 "normally".
8/31/2017 - Thursday - now that CrashPlan has left the market, below is what the bandwidth charts of incoming bandwidth into Backblaze's datacenter looks like. There are two lines you have to add together, because they are each 80 Gbit/sec maximum switches (so we can sustain 160 Gbits/sec maximum inbound traffic). Before the CrashPlan announcement there was about 70 Gbits/sec flowing into the datacenter. Now 10 days after the announcement it is about 115 Gbits/sec (a 64% increase in 10 days).
In terms of account creations, this is what it looked like. It went from about 450 account creations per day to settling in at 1,200 account creations per day.
9/22/2017 - Friday - Ken Manjang writes "Today we just put a vault into production filled with 10TB drives. All told that gives us 10PB of available space...in one single vault! For reference we only had around 10PB of total space when I was hired on in early 2011. So, here's the really crazy thing though. That 10PB of space that we gained this afternoon will only give us about 15 days of burn on ca001."
9/30/2017 - Saturday - closed first month of all time that exceeded $2 million in revenue.
10/5/2017 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.0.0.131 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Fixed bzdownloader "hacker one"
exploit - it no longer loads various DLL from the "current working directory"
allowing exploits
b. Fixed large file uploads where all three true caused
bug: 1) large file, 2) external hard drive scratch folder, and 3) vault returned
"vault full" failing a chunk
c. Client includes "groups mass
deployment" (silent installer that now creates an account and ALSO joins a
group)
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.0.0.132 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Client includes "groups mass deployment" (silent installer that now creates
an account and ALSO joins a group)
c. other stuff
d. Misc other small fixes.
10/10/2017 - Yev and other attend the WFX Conference in Dallas Texas, below is a picture of our booth:
Below is a picture of QNAP who uses Backblaze B2 quite a bit.
10/12/2017 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.1.0.133 (Windows). The changes include:
a. bumped version number to
reflect "mass silent installer" options
b. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.0.0.134 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
10/19/2017 - Thursday - Backblaze quietly passed through the 400,000 paid B1 licenses (unique laptops or desktops) for the first time. As of this morning, it was 400,760 according to bzadmin.
10/20/2017 - Friday - Backblaze deploys the first "all 12 TByte drive" vault. That is 1,200 drives (20 pods * 60 drives) and 14.4 Petabytes (unformatted) in a single vault.
10/31/2017 - Tuesday - End of Month - made $2.05 million (second month ever more than $2 million). Sold 12,685 consumer B1 licenses, sold 3,250 B1 Groups licenses (assumed to be mostly business), and B2 now has 28.75 Petabytes stored in it and is now a $1.9 million per year business (but ramped up to this point so the past year hasn't been that much). B2 is about 50% profit, so at around $1 million per year profit B2 can kind of be considered to "break even" since there is a development and sales staff of around 8 dedicated people to B2. The $1 million "profit" finally pays for the dedicated sales and engineering staff.
11/23/2017 - Tuesday - Cluster 002 is added to bzadmin!
The timeline looks like this:
Feb 15, 2008 - ca000 is born (The ORIGINAL cluster) and begins accepting new customers
Aug 27, 2013 - ca001 is born and begins accepting new customers as the default.
This is the first time that "Available Clusters: ca000 ca001" line was ever seen.
Nov 21, 2017 - ca002 is born (not yet accepting customers).
12/14/2017 - Backblaze Holiday Party at Social Kitchen and California Academy of Science in San Francisco. Click here for pictures.
12/31/2017 - Sunday - End of month December, end of 2017. This month's revenue was $2,021,073 and the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $87,798,227 (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015, and $17,729,325 of that was in 2016, and $22,418,301 was in 2017). Below is a lifetime revenue chart showing a breakdown by product:
The chart below I have produced for years so I extended it, but the "renewals" part is incorrect (based on bad assumptions and bad math) so I'm going to stop producing it from now on:
Here is a graph of storage over time:
The $22,418,301 Gross Sales in 2017 broken down by category:
$17,644,672 (78.7%) -
B1C (Personal Backup)
$ 3,336,665 (14.9%) -
B1B + legacy B4B (Biz Groups + Old Domain Site Licenses)
$ 1,094,509 (4.9%) - B2 (storage API)
$
322,461 (1.4%) - USB Restores
$ 19,994 (0.1%)
- Fireball (rental, no deposits)
B2 is picking up steam in 2017 sales. (LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) Below here is the graph of how B2 is doing (the trends are great):
USB Restore Trends:
Business ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 65.5% (322 PBytes
grew to 533 PBytes)
2) Revenue grew by 26% ($17,729,325 grew to
$22,418,301)
3) B1 Paying customers grew by 27% (334,281 paying customers
grew to 425,406)
4) Employee # grew by 3% (53 grew to 55) NOTE: we need to
grow much more in 2018!
5) Monthly payroll grew by 5% ($652,134 to $684,xxx)
6) Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs increased by
65xxx% ($181k/month increased to $299xxx? k/month)
7)Total USB restores grew by 48% (4,049 drives and flash keys grew to
xxxx? drives and flash keys)
Some end of year statistics:
- We leave the year with
425,406 paying B1 customers (up from 334,281 at the end of 2016) - of which 386,926 of the paying have pinged home in last 24 days).
- Lifetime we have created 1,507,281 hguids (each hguid represents a "fresh install" on a customer's computer), of which
625,619 were in 2017.
- The Backblaze datacenter has 1,522 pods sitting in production (up from
1,522 in 2017) with 93,240 drives online representing just about 533 Petabytes
of raw space (up from 322 Petabytes a year ago)
- Backblaze spent $xxx.xxx million on hard drives in 2017 (up from $4.1 million in 2016)
- We spent $717,xxx on pod "chassis" in 2017 down from $717k
in 2016
- 12TB drives are becoming the preferred drive at $xxx each (because they take
less datacenter space and electricity for the same amount of storage)
- The
datacenter has about 38.9 Petabytes of formatted free space ready to accept
customer data (up from 29.3 PBytes last year)
- (LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) The datacenter has 8x "10 gigabit" pipes available on one ISP, and 2x40Gbits/sec to the other ISP, and we are at 74 Gbits/sec of data flowing into the datacenter on Mondays (up from 44 gigabits last year in December).
-
(LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) The datacenter services (rental of space/bandwidth/electricity) are costing $181,000 / month (in December) which is a $2.2 million / year run rate (which is a 36% increase over the previous year's $1.6 million / year run rate)
-
(LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) We spent $169,552 on USB drives (thumb drives and spinnning) down from from $229,330 in 2015
- We shipped a total of 4,049 drives (including flash keys) vs 2,723 in 2015 -> a 49% increase
-
(LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) Bandwidth is running at $61,000/month in December ($732,000 / year run rate)
-
(LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) Our current datacenter combines space rental and all power into one bill (not separable) which is $120,000/month in December ($1.44 million / year run rate).
- Backblaze now has 55 full time employees (increase of
1 since the end of 2016)
- (LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS, NEEDS EDIT) In the 9 years (2007 - 2015) Backblaze has spent a total or $49.97 million on datacenter, salaries, health care, office, everything all included. About $15.17 million of that was in 2015. Below is a breakdown of 2010-2015 finances:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear on 12/31/2017:
Total User Accounts ever created: 620,603 + 278,828 = 899,431
Total HGUIDs ever created: 919,466 + 587,815 = 1,507,281
Number HGUIDs deleted: 473,110 + 463,170 = 936,280
Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 295,438 + 91,488 = 386,926
month_to_month_hguids: (73,627 + 29,965) * $5 = $517,960 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: (480 + 52) * $5 = $2,660 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: (168,518 + 53,809) * $50/12 = $926,362 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: (8,293 + 1,112) * $50/12 = $39,187 per month
two_year_hguids: (63,404 + 23,367) * $95/24 = $343,469 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: (1,579 + 352) * $95/24 = $7,643 per month
DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_used: 706 * $50/12 = $2,941 per month
DomainSiteLicense dsl_num_licenses_unused: 106 * $50/12 = $441 per month
DomainSiteLic dsl_out_of_compliance_hguids: 36 lose * $50/12 = $-150 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Total: 425,406 paid licenses $1,840,512 per month
PrepaidCodes Total Created: 398,422
PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 381,239
PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 2,086
PrepaidCodes Expired: 1,826
PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 13,270
And some info on Backblaze Groups:
Groups Specific Summary (Note: these are already part of above numbers):
Groups month_to_month_hguids: (8,248 + 805) * $5 = $45,265 per month
Groups month_to_month_unused_licenses: (145 + 6) * $5 = $755 per month
Groups one_year_hguids: (47,147 + 8,603) * $50/12 = $232,291 per month
Groups one_year_unused_licenses: (6,519 + 665) * $50/12 = $29,933 per month
Groups two_year_hguids: (4,195 + 621) * $95/24 = $19,063 per month
Groups two_year_unused_licenses: (449 + 35) * $95/24 = $1,916 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Groups Total: 77,438 paid group licenses $329,220 per month
A Domain Site License (Backblaze for Business) summary prepared by Sona and Shelby below:
Some observations on the B2 product line 12/31/2017:
B2 Totals (as of 12/31/2017) ----------------------------- - B2 bills for 37 PBytes (37,269,570 GBytes) as of 12/31/2017 - B2 bills $171,965 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2017 - B2 bills $12,883 per month additional in transactions and downloads as of 12/31/2017 - B2 contains about 14 Billion (13,316,325,274) customer files as of 12/31/2017 Cluster 000 B2 Usage/Billing -------------------------------------- - B2 on ca000 bills for 2.7 PBytes (2,752,399 GBytes) as of 12/31/2017 - B2 on ca000 bills $455 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2017 - B2 on ca000 bills $23 per month additional in transactions and downloads as of 12/31/2017 - B2 on ca000 contains about 1 Billion (741,005,975) customer files Cluster 001 B2 Usage/Billing -------------------------------------- - B2 on ca001 bills for 34 PBytes (34,517,171 GBytes) as of 12/31/2017 - B2 on ca001 bills $171,510 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2017 - B2 on ca001 bills $12,860 per month additional in transactions and downloads as of 12/31/2017 - B2 on ca001 contains about 13 Billion (12,575,319,299) customer files
Backblaze BLOG Blog blog performance:
Blog Performance in 2017
2.6 million Pageviews (2.4 million Unique) 1,972,488 million Sessions 1,516,591 million Users 73.3% New Visitors 26.7% Returning Visitors Posts in 2016: 94 Posts in 2017: 106 Blog home page as landing page: 4.41% (4 pages ranked higher: 3 drive stats pages and the CrashPlan post)
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives, 214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214 Petabytes unformatted).
2016 SUMMARY: 73,653 hard drives, 322,191,216,469,722,112 bytes (322 Petabytes unformatted).
2017
SUMMARY: 93,240 hard drives, 533,305,794,474,639,360 bytes (533 Petabytes unformatted).
(this is from https://drivestats.backblaze.com/) but the link only works inside of Backblaze
|==============================================================| | drive_size | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.2TB | 59 | 9 | 9442471256064 | | 0.3TB | 111 | 27 | 30137049686016 | | 0.5TB | 1661 | 755 | 830679158808576 | | 1.5TB | 39 | 53 | 58511774490624 | | 10.0TB | 1220 | 11097 | 12201014245457920 | | 12.0TB | 7220 | 78800 | 86641000872673280 | | 2.0TB | 65 | 118 | 130025930711040 | | 3.0TB | 181 | 494 | 543107329744896 | | 4.0TB | 55972 | 203665 | 223932051644055552 | | 5.0TB | 45 | 205 | 225044148510720 | | 6.0TB | 2336 | 12750 | 14018745094373376 | | 8.0TB | 24331 | 177066 | 194686034754871296 | | TOTAL | 93240 | 485039 | 533305794474639360 | |==============================================================| |==================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |------------------------------------------------------------------| | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 32070 | 32.25 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 14797 | 19.63 | | ST8000NM0055 | 8.0TB | 14396 | 6.14 | | ST8000DM002 | 8.0TB | 9886 | 15.57 | | ST12000NM0007 | 12.0TB | 7220 | 1.90 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 6032 | 33.31 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 2296 | 57.00 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 1881 | 33.00 | | ST10000NM0086 | 10.0TB | 1220 | 3.37 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 687 | 26.11 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 437 | 35.69 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050 | 0.5TB | 435 | 8.36 | | ST4000DM001 | 4.0TB | 392 | 6.80 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 313 | 33.77 | | WDC WD30EFRX | 3.0TB | 180 | 41.78 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050M | 0.5TB | 149 | 6.30 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 146 | 32.04 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 95 | 21.52 | | Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 | 2.0TB | 65 | 68.28 | | ST4000DM005 | 4.0TB | 60 | 0.60 | | WDC WD5000LPCX | 0.5TB | 56 | 16.25 | | WDC WD40EFRX | 4.0TB | 45 | 44.06 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA500V | 5.0TB | 45 | 33.72 | | ST9250315AS | 0.3TB | 45 | 49.66 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 45 | 34.56 | | WDC WD1600AAJS | 0.2TB | 42 | 59.14 | | ST31500541AS | 1.5TB | 39 | 85.67 | | HGST HUS726040ALE610 | 4.0TB | 31 | 4.68 | | ST250LM004 HN | 0.3TB | 24 | 48.88 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 21 | 55.67 | | ST9320325AS | 0.3TB | 19 | 46.97 | | ST6000DM001 | 6.0TB | 15 | 8.24 | | ST3160316AS | 0.2TB | 12 | 71.78 | | ST320LT007 | 0.3TB | 9 | 53.52 | | ST4000DX002 | 4.0TB | 5 | 6.38 | | WDC WD2500BPVT | 0.3TB | 5 | 54.88 | | ST8000DM005 | 8.0TB | 4 | 1.49 | | ST3160318AS | 0.2TB | 4 | 81.07 | | WDC WD2500AAJS | 0.3TB | 3 | 50.34 | | WDC WD3200BEKX | 0.3TB | 2 | 40.80 | | Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 2 | 36.78 | | ST6000DM004 | 6.0TB | 2 | 1.16 | | WDC WD3200AAJS | 0.3TB | 2 | 48.26 | | TOSHIBA HDWE160 | 6.0TB | 1 | 2.06 | | WDC WD3200LPVX | 0.3TB | 1 | 46.57 | | WDC WD1600BPVT | 0.2TB | 1 | 46.74 | | WDC WD3200AAKS | 0.3TB | 1 | 80.02 | | HGST HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 1 | 50.30 | | ST33000651AS | 3.0TB | 1 | 61.60 | |==================================================================|
A screenshot of the client stats at the end of 2017, for the record (notice it is wide and has ca002 to the far right as well!):
1/4/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.2.0.151 (Windows). The changes include:
a. changed copyright date to 2018
b. Fixed cosmetic bug in JAMF tracking (silent install tracking in stats portal)
c. lowered load on computer and sped it up while backing up "large files" (no
longer re-read bzfileids.dat every file)
d. introduced DEFCON Volume_Defcon
concept - and tracking of "defcon_vol" in stats portal.
e. if an
external drive has an "interesting" defcon (like 4) then it is "indexed first"
before the other drives, and the index is swapped in early.
f. if an external
drive has an "interesting" defcon of 3 or lower, then it is indexed "urgently_run_fast=TRUE"
to make go super fast.
g. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.2.0.152 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. User can exclude top level folders that are 1 character or 2 characters long
c. Misc other small fixes.
1/22/2018 - Alex Marchevskiy's first day, picture below:
Below is Lin Bocash:
To recap the full time employee hiring order, (*) means has left the company:
1. Brian Wilson - 1/15/2007
2. Casey Jones - 8/27/07 (started contracting earlier at 5/12/07)
3. Billy Ng - 9/17/07
4. Gleb Budman - 10/2/07
5. (*) Chad West - 10/18/07 (Chad left on 12/27/07)
6. Tim Nufire replaces Chad - 2/1/08
7. Damon Uyeda - permanent hire 8/25/08 (started contracting earlier at 1/8/08)
8. (*) Nilay Patel - 11/20/08 (Nilay left on 1/15/2011 - but returned as
employee 45 see below)
9. KC2 - 4/13/10
10. Sean Harris - 6/1/2010
11. (*) Brian White - 4/2/2011 (started contracting earlier at 11/17/2010,
SBrian left on 10/30/2015)
12. Ken Manjang - 4/3/2011 (started contracting earlier at 2/16/2011)
13. Yev Pusin - 4/4/2011
14. (*) Kirk Adams - 1/3/2012 (Kirk left on 4/20/2012)
15. Andy Klein - 1/24/2012
16. Cecilia Luu - 4/23/2012
17. (*) Ben Villatore - 6/18/2012 (Ben left on 6/30/2014)
18. Adam Nelson - 6/25/2012
19. (*) Dave Stallard - 7/1/2012 (started contracting earlier at 4/9/2012, Dave
left on 2/1/2016)
20. Chris Grace - 8/20/2012
21. Zachary (Zack) Miller - 8/29/2012
22. (*) Ric Marques - 1/7/2013 (Ric left on 8/31/2015)
23. (*) Monika Gorkani - 1/16/2013 (Monika left on 12/5/2014)
24. Brian Beach - 10/7/2013
25. Sona Patel - 10/11/2013 (started contracting earlier on 5/20/2013 - ALSO:
Sona's official paperwork is back dated to 9/21/2013, but she was "hired" after
BrianB.)
26. (*) Nathan Wieneke's - 2/4/2014 (started contracting earlier on 12/16/2013,
Nathan left on 3/24/2016)
27. (*) Matt Wright - 2/20/2014 (Matt left on 11/17/2017)
28. James Fleishman - 3/4/2014 first day of "full employee" now with stock
(started "a marketing experiment" on 8/12/2013 up to this point as kind of a
virtual contractor with benefits and no stock)
29. Aaron McCormack - 3/10/2014
30. Anthony Alexander - 4/7/2014
31. Ariel Ellis - 5/15/2014
32. (*) Candace Bain - 6/9/2014 (Candace left on 8/12/2016 to cure cancer at
"Grail")
33. Chris Bergeron - 6/19/2014
34. Larry Wilke - 9/22/2014
35. Bryan Williams - 11/3/2014
36. Emily Miller - 12/1/2014
37. Adam Feder - 2/26/2015 (Started as a
contractor on 2/26/2015, went full "employee" on 5/30/2018)
38. Ryan Kilby - 4/6/2015
39. Julie Forbush - 4/8/2015
40. (*) Eric Tam - 5/25/2015 (Eric left on 9/29/2016)
41. (*) Kelly Moore - 6/15/2015 (Kelly left on 11/30/2017)
42. Jim Goldstein - 6/22/2015
43. Natasha Rabinov - 9/22/2015 (started contracting part time off and on
earlier at 2/1/2011)
44. (*) Chuck Goolsbee - 10/7/2015 (Chuck left on 10/11/2016)
45. Marjorie Ready - 10/12/2015 (started contracting earlier at 9/14/2015)
46. Nilay Patel - 10/29/2015 (Nilay is employee 8 and also employee 45)
47. Elliott Sims - 11/2/2015
48. Doug Fults - 11/16/2015
49. Amanda Le - 11/30/2015
50. (*) Peter Cohen - 2/5/2016 (Peter left on 5/2/2017)
51. Troy Liljedahl - 3/7/2016
52. Jon Jones - 3/10/2016
53. Natalie Cook - 3/28/2016
54. Annalisa Penhollow - 6/16/2016
55. Jessica Castaneda ("JC") - 7/11/2016
56. Ahin Thomas - 7/12/2016
57. Terry LoBianco – 7/15/2016
58. Brian Guzman - 8/8/2016
59. (*) Lance Norskog - 9/12/2016 (Lance left on 11/18/2016)
60. Tony Sales - 9/13/2016
61. Jeannine Smith - 9/19/2016 (Jeannine started 24 hours per week - 3 days a
week)
62. LeAnn Sucht - 9/26/2016
63. (*) Marty Lucich - 9/27/2016 (Marty left on 3/3/2017)
64. Andely Wu - 10/10/2016
65. Joe Kacacek - 10/17/2016
66. (*) Larry Stancil - 11/14/2016 (Larry left on 10/23/2017)
67. (*) Brittney Wassermann - 11/28/2016 (Brittney left on April 14th, she was
substituting for Natalie during maternity leave)
68. Shelby Welsch - 2/27/17
69. (*) Max Kalashnikov - 6/6/2017 (Max left on 7/14/2017)
70. Roderick Bauer - 7/10/2017
71. Carlo Mogavero - 9/18/2017
72. Lorelei Small - 9/25/2017
73. Rob Shaffer - 10/5/2017
74. Zach Rice - 10/16/2017
75. Rich Rivest - 10/30/2017
76. Alex Marchevskiy - 1/22/2018
77. (*) Jacob Moore - 2/5/2018 (Jacob left on 5/23/2018)
78. Lin Bocash - 2/12/2018
79 Daren Reid - 2/21/2018
80. Matt Ortiz - 2/22/2018
81. Nathan Verrilli - 2/28/2018
82. Sarah Choi - 3/5/2018
83. Billy McCarthy - 3/6/2018
84. Michele Muhamedcani - 3/6/2018
85. Sadie Contini - 3/19/2018
86. Josh Taylor - 3/26/2018
87. Victoria Yu - 4/2/2018
88. Jyotsna Saini
- 4/9/2018
89. Jack Fults - 4/10/2018
90. John Tran - 4/16/2018
91.
Steven Peniche - 4/23/2018
92. Vanna Ngo - 4/24/2018
93. Tim Lucas -
5/14/2018
94. Daniel Lloyd Pias - 5/29/2018
95. Colin Weld - 6/4/2018
(started as an intern on this date)
96. Kelly Olivier - 6/11/2018 (started as
an intern on this date)
1/25/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.2.0.167 (Windows). The changes include:
a. potential fix for problem where
customer's large file code gets hung because cannot read
bzlastassignedfileid.dat (worn out disk).
g. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.2.0.168 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
1/26/2018 - LeAnn and her foster dog "Jack". Jack was placed in his foster home this day. He was 9 years old.
2/26/2018 - Backblaze passes 100,000 hard drives deployed in the farm in the datacenter. From https://drivestats.backblaze.com/ we see: "Drive Population on 2018-02-26 is 99033" (but they deployed a 1,200 drive vault and it will be updated the next day).
3/22/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.2.0.183 (Windows). The changes include:
a. New GUI code that distinguishes
between "Computer is offline" from "Backblaze datacenter is undergoing
maintenance" (cannot reach cluster authority, but networking is fine).
b. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.2.0.184 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Fix for "Backup Now" when customer has backups set to "Only When Click".
c. Misc other small fixes.
3/26/2018 - Vlad Bolshakov's first day as a contractor.
4/9/2018 - Gleb and Brian make first formal in person VC pitch for $20 million funding on $100 million valuation at Scale Ventures in Foster City tower.
6/7/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.2.0.195 (Windows). The changes include:
a. New SSL HTTPS code that verifies the
domain https://ca001.backblaze.com for
the very first time (only enabled on Windows 10)
b. New installer code to
support falling back to another cluster authority if the default cluster is
currently offline (so new customers still sign up)
c. Higher resolution
graphics for Windows customers with Retina type displays (dense pixels).
Also better support for various font settings and scaling.
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.2.0.184 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
6/28/2018 - Thursday - release of Mac client version
5.2.0.206 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. New SSL HTTPS code that verifies the
domain https://ca001.backblaze.com (only enabled on
most recent OS X versions)
b. First "hospice" Mac client that end of life for 10.6 and 10.7. It still
installs, but 10.6 and 10.7 will no longer auto-update and always get old
versions from now on.
c. Misc other small fixes.
7/19/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.3.0.213 (Windows). The changes include:
a. "Hospice" made official
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO - release of Mac client version
5.3.0.214 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
7/3/2018 - The day before 4th of July not many employees were in the office, so the employees that did show up went out to lunch together at the "Three" restaurant (this is the closest place to eat next to the San Mateo Backblaze office). Picture below of everybody.
7/18/2018 - in the picture below, we are half way through the construction of our latest expansion into the neighbor's space. Our contractor (Alex, in white shirt and shorts) talks with Casey Jones about what to do next.
This next picture is "out of order", but it shows the "after" picture of the above construction on 5/27/2019 months and months after we moved in. Click the picture for a higher quality original without red annotations. Notice the new window in back (called out in red) to get some sunlight into the area but still provide sound insulation.
8/1/2018 - Backblaze B1 (the original online backup product not including B2) passed 500,000 paying hguids (paying backups). Total this morning is 500,146 paying backups.
Paying Hguids (each hguid is a single B1 "backup", not an email address):
ca000: 141,416
ca001: 325,172
ca002: 33,558
---------------------
Total: 500,146
User Accounts:
ca000: 339,856
ca001: 640,577
ca002: 74,262
---------------------
Total: 1,054,695 user accounts created (not all contain active customers)
8/2/2018 - Backblaze Family Fun Day 2018 at Spark Social SF. Click here for pictures.
8/25/2018 - Founders met with Investment Banker Cowen to discuss a Backblaze IPO in late 2019. Click here for screenshots of some of the slides Cowen presented. The Cowen representatives said this sentence, "We would be willing to take Backblaze public in 2019 which would be one of our smallest IPOs, but we do not recommend it and instead recommend you sell the company..." BrianW joked that the rest of the unsaid sentence was "...because Cowen would make much more money in a private sale." At this time Backblaze will end 2018 with more than $30 million in revenue, and is looking at growing to $45 million in 2019 thus the slides focus on "IPOs of companies making less than $100 million." Cowen said several times that if you IPO at less than $100 million in revenue you should have "clear visibility" into getting there. BrianW interpreted this as "Backblaze is a subscription business and grows every year from EXISTING customers and is in a hot market - so we have clear visibility to $100 million/year revenue already." The other partners concluded differently, something like "We better wait until we make $110 million per year to IPO."
9/11/2018 - Backblaze Boat Ride. Click here for pictures.
9/13/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.3.0.219 (Windows). The changes include:
a. 2-Factor (Two-Factor, Two
Factor, 2 Factor) now in the Inherit
Backup State
b. 2-Factor now in the bzdownloader
c. 2-Factor now in the
iOS client
d. 2-Factor now in the Android client
e. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
5.2.0.220 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
10/3/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.4.0.245 (Windows). The changes include:
a. 2-Factor (Two-Factor, Two
Factor, 2 Factor) now in the Inherit
Backup State
b. 2-Factor now in the bzdownloader
c. 2-Factor now in the
iOS client
d. 2-Factor now in the Android client
e. Changed "Inherit
Backup State" and "bzdownloader" to prompt for username first, then password
second (prep for SSO flow).
f. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
5.4.0.246 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Support for new "Dark Mode" graphics in Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave
c. Changed
way the client opens the System Prefs to avoid a "Allow/Deny" dialog for bzbmenu
in Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave
d. Changed Mac installer to give customers
instructions on how to give Backblaze client "Full Access" in Mac OS X 10.14
Mojave
e. Algorithmically detect whether Backblaze has "Full Access" yet and
prompt user to allow it in Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave
f. Track whether customer
has given Backblaze "Full Access" in internal Backblaze stats portal so we know
who to message.
g. Misc other small fixes.
10/31/2018 - Tuesday - Closing out October, 2018 Backblaze made $3 million in bookings in a single month for the first time ever. That makes Backblaze a $36 million ARR (Annualized Recurring Revenue) company.
10/31/2018 - Tuesday - Halloween in the office, here are the employees who dressed up:
11/1/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
5.4.0.249 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Public release of SSO (Single
Sign On) for Business Groups users, only tested with Gmail.
b. SSO in
installer
c. installer now only has a "Sign In" flow (no longer can "Create
Account" from the GUI)
d. SSO in the bzdownloader
e. there is no SSO in
the Inherit Backup State yet
f. Misc other small fixes - including SSO fully
supported in both Android and iOS.
ALSO release of Mac client version
5.4.0.250 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Final fixes for Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave
c. SSO in installer (but the
bzdownloader on Mac did not have SSO until 5.4.260 one week later.
d. Misc other small fixes.
11/8/2018 - Thursday - B2 passes 30 billion files stored (in about 87 Petabytes). So (I think) that makes the average file size is about 3 MBytes per file.
11/20/2018 - Wednesday - released and pushed Mac client version
5.4.0.266 (Macintosh). The changes include:
a. Various installer fixes, this
one looks perfect.
f. Misc other small fixes
11/23/2018 - Friday - Ken Manjang announces "the very last 2 classic pods have finished migrating from ca000 - the only remaining pods are the 201 classics all on ca001." That makes ca000 and ca002 both entirely free of old style stand alone pods.
12/1/2018 - Saturday - Derman Uzunoglu breaks down the wall making a place for the client team to sit in the engineering room.
12/5/2018 - Wed, Dec 5th, 2018 - Backblaze eStaff met and officially started down the IPO path by making it official and stating a 2 - 3 year goal of "Try and build a strong/valuable company that could go IPO in 2-3 years." Click here for a screenshot of the email in 2018 of the meeting recap where this occurred and was written down formally.
12/10/2018 - the new "client area" is all finished, Brian and Vlad and Damon and Allen have moved in, the remote engineers are in town, and here is an unfortunately lit panorama picture of the entire engineering area with many people at work.
12/11/2018 - Backblaze engineering cuts over from Subversion (SVN) to Git (GIT) for source code control. Ending 12 years of productivity and ease of use just to be "hip" and go with the latest fashion despite slowing down development and a very odd and obscure syntax and work flow. In all the years of use, Subversion never failed us, never lost a file, never corrupted anything, and always worked as advertised. I sincerely hope Git will take care of us even half as well.
12/13/2018 - a better picture of the whole entire engineering team at
Backblaze at lunch together (Dim Sum) because the "remote engineers" are in town.
From left to right back row:
Jyotsna Saini (QA), Billy Ng (founder and Java backend), Tim Johnson (core Java storage
engineering), Steven Peniche (in beard and hat), Tina Cessna
(director/manager/adult supervision), Marjorie Ready (web back end and GUI),
Doug Fults (billing and groups back end), LeAnn Sucht (QA manager).
From left to right middle row: Allen Ingling (Mac client team in bright red
jacket), Jeannine Smith
(Data warehouse, data analytics), Brian Wilson (founder and Windows client team), Brian Beach
(Distinguished Engineer - in yellow shirt), Brian Guzman (Java security and
generalist), Anthony Alexander (QA), Damon Uyeda (Demi-Founder and head of Mac
Client team - partially obscured behind Vlad.
Three in front: Adam
"AB" Feder (Architect), John Shimek (Java and GIT), and in Backblaze hoodie and
beard in front of Damon is Vlad Bolshakov (Windows client team).
12/13/2018 - Thursday - drinks at the end of the day. Colin Weld (left) recently turned 21 years old and so could legally have an alcohol drink. Brian Wilson (right) is 51 years old but acts like a child as much as possible. Colin's parents (Sarah and Wayne) requested this picture of the two of us together because Brian (me) is usually behind the camera.
12/14/2018 - Friday - Backblaze Holiday Party in San Francisco. Click here for pictures.
12/28/2018 - Backblaze receives a "Terms Sheet" from "Realization Capital Partners" to purchase 20% of the company for about $22 million. Click here to read the terms sheet.
12/29/2018 - c002_v0001107_t0000 drops to 4 drives offline -
Alex Marchevskiy throws a red alert. Click the links below to read the
Slack Channel.
-
12/29/2018 - Sat - Red Alert Thrown, Day 0-1
- Red Alert thrown at 9:27am over the Holidays.
- 12/30/2018 - Sun - Day 2
- 12/31/2018 - Mon - Day 3
- 1/1/2019
- Tue - Day 4
-
1/2/2019 - Wed - Day 5
- 1/3/2019 - Thu - Day 6
- 1/4/2019
- Fri - Day 7 - Red Alert Downgraded at 7:42pm
- 1/5/2019 - Sat - KC2 comes
into office to physically pick up the failed drives.
- 1/6/2019
- Sun - KC2 flies to Japan hand carrying the failed drives to Toshiba.
12/31/2018 - Monday - End of month December, end of 2018. This month's revenue was $2,723,875 and the lifetime Backblaze revenue up to this point totals $119.610 million (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015, and $17,729,325 of that was in 2016, and $22,418,301 was in 2017, and $31,812,708 was in 2018). Below is a lifetime revenue chart showing a breakdown by product:
Here is a graph of storage over time:
The $31,812,708 Gross Sales in 2018 broken down by category:
$22,306,512 (71.0%) - B1C (Personal Backup)
$ 5,076,974 (15.2%) - B1B (Biz Groups)
$ 3,961,684 (12.4%) - B2 (storage API)
$ 398,448 (1.3%) - USB Restores
$ 69,091 (0.1%) - Fireball
(rental, no deposits)
B1 compared with B2 Dec 2017:
- B1 has about 233 billion files' metadata in bz_done files (over 3 clusters) -
up from 201 billion in 2017
- B1 metadata takes about 149.6 TBytes (so 639 bytes per file) - up from 90 TBytes
in 2017
- B1 average file size (not metadata) is 1.85 MBytes
- B1 makes about $75,000 per day gross revenue (up from $59,000 in 2017 - 27%
growth)
- B2 has 34 billion files (up from 13 billion a year ago) files metadata in
Cassandra
- B2 metadata takes about 45 TByte (so about 1,300 bytes per file)
- B2
requires 45 total Cassandra servers (up from 9 a year ago). Each Cassandra
server costs $3,505 so this is $157,725 worth of Cassandra.
- B2 average file size (not metadata) is 2.9 MBytes
- B2 makes about $17,400 per day gross revenue (up from $4,800 in 2017 -
increase by 363%)
USB Restore Trends:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear on 12/31/2018:
Total User Accounts ever created: 340,407 + 642,395 + 169,543 = 1,152,345
Total HGUIDs ever created: 705,677 + 1,093,078 + 194,266 = 1,993,021
Number HGUIDs deleted: 529,013 + 607,868 + 48,372 = 1,185,253
Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 117,067 + 275,068 + 91,207 = 483,342
month_to_month_hguids: (35,086 + 77,902 + 16,761) * $5 = $648,745 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: (330 + 670 + 814) * $5 = $9,070 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: (71,277 + 172,479 + 42,407) * $50/12 = $1,192,346 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: (2,014 + 3,986 + 1,881) * $50/12 = $32,838 per month
two_year_hguids: (29,421 + 66,140 + 14,494) * $95/24 = $435,634 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: (644 + 1,364 + 643) * $95/24 = $ 10,494 per month
---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------
Total: 541,307 paid licenses $2,333,280 per month
PrepaidCodes Total Created: 420,130
PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 402,598
PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 1,442
PrepaidCodes Expired: 1,994
PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 14,095
And some info on Backblaze Groups:
Groups Specific Summary (Note: these are already part of above numbers):
Groups month_to_month_hguids: (2,819 + 14,930 + 3,028) * $5 = $103,885 per month
Groups month_to_month_unused_licenses: (43 + 230 + 109) * $5 = $1,910 per month
Groups one_year_hguids: (12,724 + 49,467 + 8,885) * $50/12 = $296,150 per month
Groups one_year_unused_licenses: (1,234 + 3,063 + 1,170) * $50/12 = $22,779 per month
Groups two_year_hguids: (2,058 + 6,907 + 2,499) * $95/24 = $45,378 per month
Groups two_year_unused_licenses: (215 + 568 + 340) * $95/24 = $4,445 per month
------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------
Groups Total: 110,289 paid group licenses $474,542 per month
Graph of B1 (Consumer Backup) Churn rates over the years (courtesy of Jeannine and Tableau):
NOTES: the largest number of files in a B2 bucket is bucketId=f3cb77c250a19efe51d10619 and as of 12/31/2018 it has 2 billion files - 2,006,301,904 Files/ 40,825 GB.
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes
unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives, 214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214
Petabytes unformatted).
2016 SUMMARY: 73,653 hard drives, 322,191,216,469,722,112 bytes (322
Petabytes unformatted).
2017 SUMMARY: 93,240 hard drives, 533,305,794,474,639,360 bytes (533
Petabytes unformatted).
2018 SUMMARY: 106,916 hard drives,
804,885,584,069,664,768 bytes (804 Petabytes unformatted)
Business ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 51% (533 PBytes grew to 804 PBytes)
2) Revenue grew by 42% ($22,418,301 grew to $31,716,285)
3) B1 Paying customers grew by 27% (425,406 paying customers grew to 541,307)
4) B2 Paying customers grew ... ?
4) Employee # grew by 49% (55 grew to 82)
5) Monthly payroll grew by 41% ($684,000 to $967,280)
6) Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs increased by 20%
($240k/month increased to $288 k/month)
7)Total USB restores grew by 48% (4,049 drives and flash keys grew to xxxx?
drives and flash keys)
Datacenter Expenses (Power/Space/Bandwidth):
Some observations on the B2 product line 12/31/2018:
B2 Totals (as of 12/31/2018)
-----------------------------
- B2 bills for 98.14 PBytes as of 12/31/2018
- B2 bills $517,068 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2018
- B2 bills $28,855 per month additional in transactions and downloads as of
12/31/2018
- B2 bills $ 9,896 per month in downloads (included in
the above number)
- B2 contains about 34 Billion (33,937,974,344) customer files as of
12/31/2018
- There are 67,921 Backblaze accounts that have had some B2
files stored in them
- There are 40,191 Backblaze accounts that have
incurred B2 fees (gone over the "free" limit)
- There are 38,150
Backblaze accounts that incurred a B2 fee in December of 2018.
Cluster 000 B2 Usage/Billing
--------------------------------------
- B2 on ca000 bills for 15.07 PBytes as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca000 bills $76,000 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca000 bills $4,547 per month additional in transactions and
downloads as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca000 contains about 3.8 Billion (3,790,908,820) customer files
Cluster 001 B2 Usage/Billing
--------------------------------------
- B2 on ca001 bills for 64.37 PBytes as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca001 bills $324,526 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca001 bills $12,892 per month additional in transactions and
downloads as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca001 contains about 25 Billion (24,921,459,659) customer files
Cluster 002 B2 Usage/Billing
--------------------------------------
- B2 on ca002 bills for 18.7 PBytes as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca002 bills $87,781 per month run rate for storage as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca002 bills $11,416 per month additional in transactions and
downloads as of 12/31/2018
- B2 on ca002 contains about 5 Billion (5,225,605,865) customer files
Backblaze BLOG Blog blog performance:
Blog Performance in 2018
2.6 million Pageviews (2.5 million Unique)
2,069,174 million Sessions
1,604,646 million Users
82.92% New Visitors
17.08% Returning Visitors
Posts in 2016: 94
Posts in 2017: 106
Posts in 2018: 151
Blog home page as landing page: 4.16% (3 pages ranked higher: 2 drive stats
pages and the "How
to Wipe A Mac Hard Drive" post)
(this is from https://drivestats.backblaze.com/) but the link only works inside of Backblaze
|==============================================================| | drive_size | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.2TB | 23 | 3 | 3680963371008 | | 0.3TB | 5 | 1 | 1460337500160 | | 0.5TB | 1949 | 886 | 974710223069184 | | 1.0TB | 1 | 1 | 1000204886016 | | 10.0TB | 1220 | 11097 | 12201014245457920 | | 12.0TB | 32424 | 353878 | 389092494777778176 | | 14.0TB | 1205 | 15344 | 16870626169978880 | | 2.0TB | 1 | 2 | 2000398934016 | | 4.0TB | 42761 | 155594 | 171077654190514176 | | 5.0TB | 45 | 205 | 225044148510720 | | 6.0TB | 1931 | 10539 | 11588269168336896 | | 8.0TB | 25351 | 184489 | 202847629241327616 | | TOTAL | 106916 | 732039 | 804885584069664768 | |==============================================================|
|==============================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ST12000NM0007 | 12.0TB | 31146 | 8.83 | | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 23236 | 39.65 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 14550 | 30.17 | | ST8000NM0055 | 8.0TB | 14383 | 18.12 | | ST8000DM002 | 8.0TB | 9874 | 27.48 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 4676 | 41.98 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 1524 | 44.91 | | HGST HUH721212ALN604 | 12.0TB | 1278 | 1.92 | | ST10000NM0086 | 10.0TB | 1210 | 15.41 | | TOSHIBA MG07ACA14TA | 14.0TB | 1205 | 2.97 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 1045 | 14.82 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 604 | 34.65 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050 | 0.5TB | 528 | 18.17 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 382 | 47.78 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050M | 0.5TB | 354 | 12.11 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 272 | 44.65 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 145 | 44.12 | | ST500LM030 | 0.5TB | 111 | 1.88 | | ST4000DM005 | 4.0TB | 58 | 11.32 | | WDC WD5000LPCX | 0.5TB | 56 | 28.31 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 50 | 34.54 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA500V | 5.0TB | 45 | 45.79 | | HGST HUS726040ALE610 | 4.0TB | 28 | 12.06 | | ST8000DM005 | 8.0TB | 25 | 5.04 | | TOSHIBA HDWF180 | 8.0TB | 20 | 9.81 | | WDC WD1600AAJS | 0.2TB | 19 | 69.96 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 14 | 58.71 | | ST6000DM001 | 6.0TB | 13 | 20.85 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA500CM10002 | 0.5TB | 13 | 1.28 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 11 | 64.29 | | TOSHIBA HDWE160 | 6.0TB | 10 | 7.32 | | HGST HUH721010ALE600 | 10.0TB | 10 | 1.85 | | ST8000DM004 | 8.0TB | 4 | 5.91 | | ST3160316AS | 0.2TB | 3 | 87.16 | | WDC WD40EFRX | 4.0TB | 2 | 22.52 | | ST6000DM004 | 6.0TB | 2 | 8.74 | | Hitachi HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 1 | 47.84 | | WDC WD3200BEKX | 0.3TB | 1 | 53.70 | | ST250LM004 HN | 0.3TB | 1 | 32.42 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA2000CM10002 | 2.0TB | 1 | 0.31 | | ST320LT007 | 0.3TB | 1 | 71.44 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE641 | 4.0TB | 1 | 2.04 | | ST1000LM024 HN | 1.0TB | 1 | 24.65 | | WDC WD3200AAJS | 0.3TB | 1 | 66.53 | | ST3160318AS | 0.2TB | 1 | 96.55 | | WDC WD2500AAJS | 0.3TB | 1 | 66.01 | |==============================================================================|
A screenshot of the B1 client stats at the end of 2018, for the record (notice it is wide and has ca002 to the far right as well!):
1/8/2018 - 2018 annual bonus is $1,939.80 per employee. Bonus = ((Total Gross Sales cash receipts) * 0.005) / (Number of Employees). TotalGross=$31,812,708, numberOfEmployees=82
1/17/2018 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
6.0.0.287 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Public release of SSO (Single
Sign On) for Individual users, only tested with Gmail.
b. Larger USB Restores
(8 TBytes up from 4 TBytes), and doubled USB Thunb to 256 GBytes.
c. Save B1
files to B2 Snapshots, and "Keep B1 Restores Longer in Snapshots"
d. More
backup threads (up from 20 threads to 30 threads)
e. Downloader has 30
threads also (up from 20 threads).
f. Ability to block a certain WiFi network
so your backup won't go across that WiFi.
g. Increase the max size of mobile
files for iOS and Android. Max file size is now 100 MBytes, but more
coming soon!
h. Ability to name your Snapshot at creation time.
i. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
6.0.0.288 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
Press Articles about the 6.0 release:
Hacker News Ycombinator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18969264
Backblaze Blog Post - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-cloud-backup-v6/
TechCrunch - https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/backblaze-updates-its-backup-service/
Lifewire - https://www.lifewire.com/backblaze-review-2617894
Tom's Guide - https://www.tomsguide.com/us/backblaze,review-5403.html
9to5Mac - https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/17/backblaze-update-mac/
TidBits - https://tidbits.com/2019/01/18/backblaze-6-0-promises-larger-longer-faster-better-backups/
1/30/2019 - Graph of current B1 customer's backup sizes, courtesy Jeannine (graph below cut off after 2 TBytes):
Click HERE showing the entire graph with the whole long tail.
2/12/2019 - Tuesday - Backblaze Personal Backup B1 Price Increase Announcement. Price change from $5/month to $6/month. Below are some press articles responding to the price increase.
Backblaze Blog Post - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-computer-backup-pricing-change/
9 to 5 Mac - https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/12/backblaze-backup-mac/
CNET - https://www.cnet.com/news/backblaze-raises-online-backup-prices-dollar-month-but-still-cheaper/
TidBITS - https://tidbits.com/2019/02/12/backblaze-increases-pricing-for-unlimited-backup/
LifeWire - https://www.lifewire.com/backblaze-review-2617894
The Verge - https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/13/18223278/backblaze-cloud-backup-storage-price-increase
Extreme Tech - https://www.extremetech.com/computing/285735-backblaze-cloud-backup-gets-first-ever-price-hike-to-6-per-month
Price increase summary on 3/12/2019 when it went into effect
(from Jeannine): 8.7% of individual accounts bought extensions (30,296 of 347k
active B1C accounts), total of 36,605 licenses extended, avg 1.21 licenses per
acct).
5% of groups bought extensions (958 of 19,166 groups with B1B licenses, total of
4463 licenses extended, avg 4.66 licenses per group)
2/28/2019 - Close out February, 2019 - highest cash bookings of all time so far at $4,809,765.19 in cash bookings. That's $4.8 million in a month. This is explained by customers pre-buying a "one year extension" at the old price.
3/11/2019 - Monday - All the remote engineers came to the office this week, a picture of the engineering room:
3/11/2019 - Monday - 5pm - B1 Price Increase (Backblaze Personal Backup Price Increase) went into effect.
3/16/2019 - Saturday - BrianW bumped the dividing line between small files and large files from 30 MBytes to 100 MBytes in the client version 6.0.0.323. Not released to field yet.
4/4/2019 - Thursday - at 6am Backblaze got ENTIRELY off of old classic pods and is now 100% vault based. Ken Manjang writes "Hello Backblazers! As of 6am this morning we no longer rely on classic pods in production!... When I started at Backblaze 8 years ago there were something along the lines of ~200 classics and that number quickly grew to 936 production machines. (We also had many other test units or pods that were in some state of repair.) And, although we've been migrating off of smaller drives for quite some time we only began migrating with purpose some 2 years ago or so."
4/18/2019 - Thursday - released and pushed client version
6.1.0.331 (Windows). The changes include:
a. SSO (Single
Sign On) for Inherit Backup State.
b. Error messages for Password Ping login
failures in various places.
c. Increased the cutoff for large files up from
30 MBytes to a new 100 MBytes to increase performance.
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
6.1.0.330 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
6/14/2019 - Friday - Backblaze Family Fun day in San Mateo park. Click here for pictures.
7/17/2019 - Wednesday - First vault in Europe comes alive 031-2000.
8/27/2019 - Tuesday - ca003 European datacenter goes live! Click here for email and blog post.
9/11/2019 - Wednesday - 2019 Backblaze Company Boat Trip. Click here for pictures and videos.
9/13/2019 - Friday - released and pushed client version
6.1.0.369 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Full final support for Version
History Rollback (both 1 year and infinite forever rollback).
b. Microsoft
Office 365 SSO support
c. Various HackerOne Security Fixes
d. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
6.1.0.370 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Full Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina support.
c. Mac Catalina - top level
"boot drive" .bzvol and external volume selection support changes.
d. Mac Catalina - new uninstaller in Swift that is Catalina compatible
e. New
uninstaller
d. Misc other small fixes.
9/19/2019 - The 6 founders (Gleb, BrianW, BillyNg, CaseyJ, TimN,
and Damon) who are also the Backblaze board of directors met alone in a special
meeting and unanimously
agreed to attempt a Backblaze IPO with a timeframe of late 2020 or possibly
early 2021. A couple weeks later eStaff agreed on trying for
"late 2020", click here
for meeting notes. This is an official "shift" from the previous official stance
decided upon unanimously on Wed, Dec 5th, 2018 of "Try and build a
strong/valuable company that could go IPO in 2-3 years."
Click here for a screenshot
of the email in 2018 of the meeting recap where this occurred and was written
down formally.
Click here for 5 month IPO Roadmap. The change is
that we went from "become IPO ready with fuzzy timeline" to "definitely try to IPO
with a timeline of when". TimN
points out that we shouldn't IPO if we find out it hurts the company (unanimously agreed
upon also - but we will "try as default" and if will hurt the company
stop). Also, TimN pointed out we might fail to IPO (unanimously agreed
upon also - but we will "try as default" and if we fail to IPO then we fail).
Also, TimN pointed out we might get a an offer to purchase Backblaze that is too
good to turn down (unanimously agreed upon also - but we will "try as default"
and if we get even one offer before we IPO we will consider it and decide
at that point which path to take). Also remember this line from the
Backblaze Timeline earlier which says: "9/29/2014 - Monday - In the founders
meeting, the founders finally unanimously admitted out loud Backblaze could
theoretically go public (IPO) eventually in about 5 years."
9/22/2019 - Sunday - KC2 (Casey Christensen) moved to Utah to work remotely for Backblaze. This was found on his desk:
10/8/2019 - Tuesday - released and pushed client version
7.0.0.383 (Windows). The changes include:
a. Full final OFFICIAL support for Version
History Rollback (both 1 year and infinite forever rollback).
b. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
7.0.0.386 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. More Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina support. Catalina was officially released
by Apple the day before this release (Monday).
The press events for the 7.0 release:
Backblaze Blog Post: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-7-0-version-history-and-beyond/
Storage Review: https://www.storagereview.com/backblaze_releases_cloud_backup_70
TidBits: https://tidbits.com/2019/10/08/backblaze-7-0-extends-version-history-supports-catalina/
Tom's Hardware: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/backblaze-7-unlimited-version-history-backup-service
iMore: https://www.imore.com/backblaze-updated-macos-catalina-support-and-unlimited-version-history
HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21193497
The MacObserver: https://www.macobserver.com/news/backblaze-cloud-backup-7-0/
PenguinPunk: https://www.penguinpunk.net/blog/backblaze-announces-version-7-0/
Apple Insider: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/08/backblaze-updates-cloud-backup-70-with-macos-catalina-support
TechTarget: https://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/252472827/Backblaze-cloud-backup-extends-version-history
11/5/2019 - Backblaze does the final cut-over for ca001 from using the EMC for "bzmetadata001" (customer accounts and bz_comb files - the list of what files the customer has backed up and where to find them in the datacenter) that was first brought online on 8/27/2013. The "head unit" (CPU computer) was also cut over which allowed ca001 to go from 1 Gbit/sec networking to 10 Gbit/sec networking. It immediately rose up to be using 2.76 Gbits/sec of traffic as of this moment. The EMC lasted as the customer drive shelf for 6 years 2 months and 9 days without ever causing any issues and never losing or corrupting a file. Since we still own the EMC and it shows no signs of issues, we continue to use the EMC after this point for various types of backups. But the EMC no longer containing the primary customer file lists or accounts.
11/20/2019 - Wednesday, Backblaze deploys some vaults, and
passes over an Exabyte of storage deployed in pods as follows:
From
https://drivestats.backblaze.com/
The number in red says Backblaze has up and running and spinning 1.048 Exabytes of data. Andy Klein added it up, and since 2009 Backblaze has spent $32,386,488.74 on hard drives to build up this Exabyte.
12/12/2019 - Thursday - 2019 Backblaze Holiday Party in San Francisco. Click here for pictures.
12/23/2019 - Monday - Brian Wilson's predictions say we can avoid rolling out a cluster in 2020, but should plan on it for 2021:
12/31/2019 - Tuesday - End of month December, end of 2019. This month's revenue was $3.94 million and the lifetime Backblaze cash sales up to this point totals $164 million (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015, and $17,729,325 of that was in 2016, and $22,418,301 was in 2017, and $31,812,708 was in 2018, and $44,401,841 was in 2019). Below is a lifetime "cash sales" chart showing a breakdown by product:
Here is a graph of storage over time:
The $44,401,841 Gross Cash Sales in 2019 broken down by category:
$28,221,512 (63.6%) - B1C (Personal Backup)
$ 8,310,997 (18.7%) - B2 (storage API)
$ 7,258,762 (16.3%) - B1B (Biz Groups)
$ 610,570 (1.4%) - Physical Media (USB Restores
& Fireballs)
B1 compared with B2 on Dec 31, 2019:
- B1 has about
295 billion files' metadata in bz_done files (over 4 clusters) - up from 233
billion in 2018
- B1 metadata takes about 207.1 TBytes (so 702 bytes per file) - up from 149.6
TBytes in 2018
- B1 average file size (not metadata) is 2.2 MBytes
- B1 makes about $104,000 per day gross revenue (up from $75,000 in 2018 - 39%
growth)
- B2 has 60 billion files (up from 34 billion a year ago) files metadata in
Cassandra
- B2 metadata takes about 78
TBytes (so about 1,300 bytes per file) up from 45 TByte a year ago
- B2 requires 87 total Cassandra servers (up from 45 a year ago). Each Cassandra
server costs $3,505 so this is $304,935 worth of Cassandra.
- B2 average file size (not metadata) is 3.1 MBytes
- B2 holds 185 PBytes
of customer data total
- B2 makes about $30,800 per day gross
revenue (up from $17,400 in 2018 - increase by 78%)
USB Restore Trends (found on spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jCMwKpI2z8H8GgcKuMCHd2c2pKfP-6Fj-P5aAIcqNDo/edit#gid=76120191
)
Support ticket trends over 2019:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear on 12/31/2019:
Total User Accounts ever created: 420,465 + 644,363 + 323,415 + 4,272 = 1,392,515
Total HGUIDs ever created: 825,944 + 1,215,057 + 417,790 + 6,951 = 2,465,742
Number HGUIDs deleted: 592,189 + 717,817 + 135,265 + 770 = 1,446,041
Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 144,125 + 249,236 + 144,928 + 1,089 = 539,378
month_to_month_hguids: (39,298 + 74,222 + 32,550 + 218) * $6 = $877,728 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: (569 + 685 + 293 + 3) * $6 = $9,300 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: (81,231 + 162,860 + 75,824 + 316) * $60/12 = $1,601,155 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: (2,282 + 3,439 + 2,512 + 7) * $60/12 = $41,200 per month
two_year_hguids: (32,786 + 63,402 + 26,758 + 108) * $110/24 = $563,998 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: (808 + 986 + 1,062 + 0) * $110/24 = $13,090 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Total: 602,219 paid licenses $3,106,471 per month
PrepaidCodes Total Created: 420,739
PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 402,845
PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 1,030
PrepaidCodes Expired: 2,212
PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 14,651
And some info on Backblaze Groups:
Groups Specific Summary (Note: these are already part of above numbers):
Groups month_to_month_hguids: (4,749 + 17,129 + 9,043) * $6 = $185,526 per month
Groups month_to_month_unused_licenses: (150 + 131 + 38) * $6 = $1,914 per month
Groups one_year_hguids: (14,853 + 46,639 + 17,055) * $60/12 = $392,735 per month
Groups one_year_unused_licenses: (1,572 + 2,793 + 1,778) * $60/12 = $30,715 per month
Groups two_year_hguids: (3,289 + 6,919 + 5,306) * $110/24 = $71,106 per month
Groups two_year_unused_licenses: (304 + 431 + 598 + 0) * $110/24 = $6,110 per month
------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------
Groups Total: 132,777 paid group licenses $688,106 per month
Graph of B1 (Consumer Backup) Churn rates over the years (courtesy of Jeannine and Tableau):
NOTES: the largest number of files in a B2 bucket is bucketId=f3cb77c250a19efe51d10619 in cluster 001 and as of 12/31/2019 it has 3.5+ billion files - 3,583,404,315 Files / 105,715 GBytes (up from 2 billion files at the end of 2018 - 2,006,301,904 Files/ 40,825 GBytes). The next two buckets down the list have 1.5 billion and 0.7 billion files in them.
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes
unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives, 214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214 Petabytes
unformatted).
2016 SUMMARY: 73,653 hard drives, 322,191,216,469,722,112 bytes (322 Petabytes
unformatted).
2017 SUMMARY: 93,240 hard drives, 533,305,794,474,639,360 bytes (533 Petabytes
unformatted).
2018 SUMMARY: 106,916 hard drives, 804,885,584,069,664,768 bytes (804 Petabytes
unformatted).
2019 SUMMARY: 124,896 hard drives, 1,091,332,693,688,492,032
bytes (1.09 Exabytes
unformatted).
Business Ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 36%
(804 PBytes grew to 1,091 PBytes)
2)
Cash Sales grew by 40% ($31,716,285 grew to $44,401,841)
3)
B1 Paying customers grew by 11% (541,307 paying customers grew to 602,219)
4)
B1 Revenue grew by 27% ($22,306,512 grew to $28,221,512)
5)
Employee # grew by 54% (82 grew to 126)
6)
Monthly payroll grew by 54% ($967,280 to $1,488,342)
7)
Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs increased by 25% ($240k/month
increased to $288 k/month increased to $360 k/month)
8)Total USB
restores grew by 13% (5,891 drives and flash keys grew to 6,661 drives and flash
keys)
Datacenter Expenses (Power/Space/Bandwidth):
(this is from https://drivestats.backblaze.com/) but the link only works inside of Backblaze
|==================================================================| | drive_size_TB | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |------------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.30 | 259 | 59 | 64765371654144 | | 0.50 | 1994 | 906 | 996010815995904 | | 1.00 | 1 | 1 | 1000204886016 | | 2.00 | 4 | 7 | 8001595736064 | | 4.00 | 34978 | 127274 | 139939528735899648 | | 6.00 | 898 | 4901 | 5389055263162368 | | 8.00 | 25305 | 184154 | 202479557333114880 | | 10.00 | 1220 | 11097 | 12201014245457920 | | 12.00 | 56577 | 617485 | 678931842987982848 | | 14.00 | 3620 | 46095 | 50681881108152320 | | 16.00 | 40 | 582 | 640036026449920 | | TOTAL | 124896 | 992561 | 1091332693688492032 | |==================================================================|
|==============================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ST12000NM0007 | 12.0TB | 36947 | 18.21 | | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 19211 | 50.30 | | ST8000NM0055 | 8.0TB | 14447 | 29.62 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 12746 | 38.48 | | HGST HUH721212ALN604 | 12.0TB | 10859 | 8.99 | | ST8000DM002 | 8.0TB | 9810 | 39.26 | | ST12000NM0008 | 12.0TB | 7211 | 1.53 | | TOSHIBA MG07ACA14TA | 14.0TB | 3620 | 6.16 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 2826 | 44.81 | | HGST HUH721212ALE600 | 12.0TB | 1560 | 7.72 | | ST10000NM0086 | 10.0TB | 1200 | 27.16 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 1000 | 25.26 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 886 | 56.83 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 488 | 40.59 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050 | 0.5TB | 456 | 30.19 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050M | 0.5TB | 414 | 20.20 | | ST500LM030 | 0.5TB | 253 | 10.60 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 208 | 55.07 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA250CM10002 | 0.3TB | 152 | 1.66 | | Seagate SSD | 0.3TB | 107 | 4.81 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 99 | 55.25 | | WDC WD5000LPCX | 0.5TB | 54 | 40.21 | | ST16000NM001G | 16.0TB | 40 | 1.60 | | ST4000DM005 | 4.0TB | 39 | 23.16 | | ST500LM021 | 0.5TB | 33 | 8.37 | | HGST HUS726040ALE610 | 4.0TB | 28 | 23.45 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 26 | 39.97 | | ST8000DM005 | 8.0TB | 25 | 16.52 | | TOSHIBA HDWF180 | 8.0TB | 20 | 20.99 | | HGST HUH721010ALE600 | 10.0TB | 20 | 11.97 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA500CM10002 | 0.5TB | 18 | 12.58 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 10 | 76.40 | | TOSHIBA HDWE160 | 6.0TB | 4 | 18.83 | | ST6000DM001 | 6.0TB | 4 | 33.87 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA2000CM10002 | 2.0TB | 4 | 9.73 | | ST8000DM004 | 8.0TB | 3 | 17.60 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 3 | 55.94 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 2 | 55.37 | | ST6000DM004 | 6.0TB | 1 | 15.65 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE641 | 4.0TB | 1 | 14.01 | | ST1000LM024 HN | 1.0TB | 1 | 36.61 | |==============================================================================|
A screenshot of the B1 client stats at the end of 2019, for the record (notice it is wide and has ca003 to the far right as well!):
1/13/2020 - Monday - released and pushed client version
7.0.0.409 (Windows) to files.backblaze.com (within 1 week on default download). The changes include:
a.
Now has libcurl attribution in the "About...." dialog
b. plus some
better exclusions around Chrome and others to reduce file churn.
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
7.0.0.410 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Allen's new exclusions to reduce version churn.
c. More Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina support - a pop up dialog was popping up on the
wrong .
2/5/2020 - Wednesday - opened up a wall to find an old drywall'ed up room with no entrances hiding some old equipment, a suit ironing press:
2/9/2020 - Sunday - opening up an entrance and pass-thru airways into the new sales and marketing expansion. The "suit ironing room" in the picture above is being turned into a small conference room.
Another angle:
2/28/2020 - Friday - 4pm - First email sent out to company saying employees are encouraged to work from home do to the upcoming Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic.
3/9/2020 - Monday - Backblaze main office is now officially "closed" and all
employees stay away except critical USB restore functions. Backblaze is
following the lead of Apple and Google in doing the same:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-latest-updates-outbreak.html
(The meetings were held by eStaff Friday at 1pm March 6, email went out at
3:24pm Friday, March 6th announcing office closure.) To help employees
plan, they were told to plan to stay away until the end of March, because the
"shutdown" was promised by the government to be about 2 - 3 weeks to stop the
Coronavirus/COVID-19 from spreading.
Specifically Related to the Covid-19 Pandemic and Backblaze, here are aome interesting
dates:
- 12/15/2019 - The "Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrom Coronavirus 2" or "SARS-CoV-2" or "2019 Novel Coronavirus"
or "COVID-19" virus is identified.
-
1/10/2020 - The company BioNTech began developing a vaccine based on mRNA
technology that eventually becomes the Pfizer vaccine. Human trials began
2 months later in March, approved by FDA on December 11, 2020.
- 1/20/2020 - The company "Moderna" began developing a vaccine based on mRNA technology.
Human trials began 2 months later in March of 2020, approved by the FDA
on December 18, 2020.
- 1/30/2020 - The World Heath Organization (WHO) declares the outbreak an
emergency
- 3/6/2020 - Backblaze employees
all sent home, office is shut down for more than an entire year with 3 hours
warning. That same day Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter did the same.
-
3/11/2020 - The WHO declares it a "pandemic"
- 12/11/2020 - The first vaccine is approved by the FDA (Pfizer). The
second vaccine (Moderna) is approved 7 days later. The third vaccine
(Johnson & Johnson) was approved on February 28, 2021.
- 1/28/2021 - The very first Backblaze employee (Michael Marques) receives first dose of a vaccine. He received "Moderna mRNA-1273".
- 2/13/2021 - The second Backblaze employee (Cameron Urnes) receives first
dose of vaccine (Pfizer).
- 3/4/2021 - Brian Wilson
(Founder and CTO of Backblaze) receives his first dose of vaccine. Brian
received the Pfizer vaccine.
Click here for pictures, videos, explanation. (Texas)
- 3/5/2021 - Annalisa Penhollow receives her first dose of vaccine. (California)
- 3/6/2021 - On the one year anniversary of the Backblaze San Mateo headquarters
being closed, Brian suggests re-opening the San Mateo office for fully
vaccinated employees to return IF THEY WANT.
-
3/8/2021 - Linus Bondesson receives his first dose. (Texas)
- 3/10/2021 - Frank Patchel receives his SECOND dose. (California)
Frank got his first dose 3 weeks earlier as part of "they have extra doses" got
lucky situation.
- 3/10/2021 - Emily Fairbank
receives her first dose. (California)
-
3/11/2021 - Toren Ajk receives his first dose. (California)
- 3/12/2021 - Tim Lucas receives his first dose. (Texas)
- 3/12/2021 - Jason Knight receives his first dose. (California)
- 3/13/2021 - Derman Uzunoglu receives his first dose. Johnson and
Johnson. (California)
- 3/13/2021 - Kyle Wood (Oklahoma)
- 3/15/2021
- Allen Ingling (Texas)
- 3/17/2021 - Cody
Leal (California - in Sacramento made trek to Merced, second dose will be in
Davis)
- 3/31/2021 - Zack Miller (California)
- 7/6/2021 - Backblaze office is open first the first time to
employees who really want to use it. Before this it was locked.
Special permission had to be granted to go in.
- 8/3/2021 - San Mateo (where Backblaze's office is) mandates masks
inside, even for fully vaccinated people.
-
5/12/2022 - Backblaze San Mateo office official re-opening party! The San
Mateo office was closed for 798 days. That's 2 years, 2 months, and 7
days. Now open for business again.
4/9/2020 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 7.0.1.433 (Windows)
with unlimited inherit backup state sizes blog here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-cloud-backup-release-7-0-1/ The changes include:
a. "clump" design for Inherit Backup State supports up to 999 clumps, each can
be 4 GBytes in size.
b. remove and clean up older files from other inherits
to save customer disk space.
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
7.0.1.444 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
c. fixed bug with .bzvol which made no files appear selected in some cases.
5/4/2020 - Monday - Backblaze announces and releases the S3 compatible APIs, blog here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-b2-s3-compatible-api/
5/10/2020 - Sunday - Christine Empie passes away. :-(
8/14/2020 - Friday - Backblaze Board of Directors meets (by Google Hangout due to working from home in the Covid-19 Pandemic) and presents our IPO timeline to the board with these attendees: Billy Ng (Founder), Brian Beach (DEST - Distinguished Engineer), Brian Wilson (CTO and Founder), Casey Jones (Founder), Damon Uyeda (Demi-Founder), Frank Patchel (CFO), Gleb Budman (CEO and Founder), Igor Shoifot (TMT Investments), Tim Nufire (CCO - Chief Cloud Officer and Founder), and Tom MacMitchell (General Counsel - Backblaze's Attorney) presenting. Click on the picture below to see a zoomed in timeline. This is now the official plan of record as of this moment, although external forces like a market crash could prevent Backblaze from actually going public on this date.
Below is a screenshot of a meeting with an analyst from Canaccord on 9/18/2020 trying to figure out a possible valuation of Backblaze at the time of Backblaze's future IPO. It is extremely hard to figure out even an estimated valuation of Backblaze at time of IPO because it has been so long since Backblaze raised any venture money (which would establish a valuation). This analyst's estimate was $592 million total market cap for Backblaze at the time of IPO. The slide shows what are called "comparables" - companies that are enough like Backblaze to establish how businesses in our area are valuated. In the meeting was Gleb (CEO), Tom MacMitchell (General Council), Frank (Backblaze CFO), and Scott Card from Canaccord.
8/17/2020 - Monday - released and pushed client version 7.0.2.463 (Windows), log here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-cloud-backup-release-7-0-2/ The changes include:
a. A fix for the "two C:\ drives" issue affecting 1% - 2% of Backblaze
customers.
b. A fix to stop mysterious safety freezes (like the one that
froze Yev's office computer for no reason).
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
7.0.2.464 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. now we do not query location services when "Locate My Computer" is disabled,
which prevents a warning dialog from happening.
10/10/2020 - Friday - first change of Backblaze board. This is the new makeup that we will IPO with. Picture below:
11/12/2020 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 7.0.2.473
(Windows). The changes include:
a. A fix for generating bzinfo.xml during InheritBackupState if the Inherit
would have failed for lack of one.
c. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version
7.0.2.470 (Macintosh) on same codebase as above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Important Mac OS X 10.15 "Big Sur" support that Apple released about this
same day.
11/19/2020 - Natalie produced the slide below showing Backblaze currently has 186 Backblaze employees, I thought it was interesting, click on the image below for a higher resolution version:
12/31/2020 - Thursday - End of month December, end of 2020. This month's cash sales was $5.1 million and the lifetime Backblaze cash sales up to this point totals $220 million (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015, and $17,729,325 of that was in 2016, and $22,418,301 was in 2017, and $31,812,708 was in 2018, and $44,401,841 was in 2019, and $55,765,587 was in 2020). Below is a lifetime "cash sales" chart showing a breakdown by product:
Here is a graph of storage over time:
The $55,765,587 Gross Cash Sales in 2020 broken down by category:
$31,276,548 (56.1%) - B1C (Personal Backup)
$14,625,728 (26.2%) - B2 (storage API)
$ 9,215,077 (16.5%) - B1B (Biz Groups)
$ 648,234 ( 1.2%) - Physical Media (USB
Restores & Fireballs)
B1 compared with B2 on Dec 31, 2020:
- B1 has about 330 billion files' metadata in bz_done files (over 4 clusters) -
up from 295 billion in 2019
- B1 metadata takes about 207.7 TBytes (so
560 bytes per file) - up from 207.1 TBytes in 2019 Explanation:
some cleanup was done
- B1 average file size (not metadata) is 2.36
MBytes - up slightly from 2.2 MBytes in 2019
- B1 Extended Version History makes about $95,000
per month gross revenue
- B1 makes about $115,000 per day gross revenue including Extended Version
History (up from $104,000 in 2019 - 11% growth)
- B2 has 103 billion files (up from 60 billion a year ago) files metadata in
Cassandra (numbers from:
https://ca000.backblaze.com/bzadmin/bzadmin_cluster_usage.htm)
- B2 metadata takes about 57 TBytes (so about 553 bytes per file) down
from 78 TByte a year ago Explanation: some cleanup was done
- B2 requires 99 total Cassandra servers serving customers (up from 87 a year
ago), also 21 in "staging". Each Cassandra server costs $2,900 so this is
$313,200 worth of Cassandra.
- B2 average file size (not metadata) is 2.9 MBytes (slightly down from 3.1
MBytes in 2019)
- B2 holds 301 PBytes of customer data total (up from 185 PBytes in 2019 -
increase by 63%)
- B2 makes about $50,167 per day gross revenue (up
from $30,800 in 2019 - increase by 63%)
USB Restore Trends (found on spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jCMwKpI2z8H8GgcKuMCHd2c2pKfP-6Fj-P5aAIcqNDo/edit#gid=76120191 )
Support Ticket Trends for the last 5 years:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear on 12/31/2020:
Total User Accounts ever created: 562,681 + 644,433 + 405,469 + 17,341 = 1,629,924
Total HGUIDs ever created: 1,032,300 + 1,327,404 + 585,326 + 34,062 = 2,979,092
Number HGUIDs deleted: 683,711 + 813,179 + 214,369 + 4,805 = 1,716,064
Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 179,465 + 227,119 + 162,226 + 4,113 = 572,923
month_to_month_hguids: (48,336 + 68,320 + 38,921 + 772) * $6 = $938,094 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: (608 + 614 + 320 + 11) * $6 = $9,318 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: (105,129 + 153,920 + 91,524 + 1,333) * $60/12 = $1,759,530 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: (2,950 + 3,178 + 1,613 + 19) * $60/12 = $38,800 per month
two_year_hguids: (38,742 + 59,749 + 30,663 + 472) * $110/24 = $594,119 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: (1,320 + 1,030 + 898 + 5) * $110/24 = $14,910 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Total: 650,447 paid licenses $3,354,766 per month (Extended Version History is an additional $95,000 per month)
PrepaidCodes Total Created: 444,001
PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 424,608
PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 286
PrepaidCodes Expired: 2,280
PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 16,826
And some info on Backblaze Groups:
Groups Specific Summary (Note: these are already part of above numbers):
Groups month_to_month_hguids: (8,346 + 15,610 + 11,982) * $6 = $215,628 per month
Groups month_to_month_unused_licenses: (108 + 74 + 56) * $6 = $1,428 per month
Groups one_year_hguids: (22,651 + 44,296 + 21,348) * $60/12 = $441,475 per month
Groups one_year_unused_licenses: (2,001 + 2,458 + 1,022) * $60/12 = $ 27,405 per month
Groups two_year_hguids: (5,117 + 6,118 + 5,918) * $110/24 = $ 78,618 per month
Groups two_year_unused_licenses: (870 + 538 + 511) * $110/24 = $ 8,795 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Groups Total: 149,024 paid group licenses $773,349 per month
Graph of B1 (Consumer Backup) Churn rates over the years (courtesy of
Jeannine and Tableau):
NOTES: the largest
number of files in a B2 bucket is bucketId=f3cb77c250a19efe51d10619 in cluster
001 and as of 12/31/2020 it is slightly down from the year before to
3,048,877,084 Files / 99,841 GBytes. Last year on 12/31/2019 it had 3.5+ billion files - 3,583,404,315 Files /
105,715 GBytes (up from 2 billion files at the end of 2018 - 2,006,301,904
Files/ 40,825 GBytes). The next two buckets down the list have 1.5 billion and
0.7 billion files in them.
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes
unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives, 214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214 Petabytes
unformatted).
2016 SUMMARY: 73,653 hard drives, 322,191,216,469,722,112 bytes (322 Petabytes
unformatted).
2017 SUMMARY: 93,240 hard drives, 533,305,794,474,639,360 bytes (533 Petabytes
unformatted).
2018 SUMMARY: 106,916 hard drives, 804,885,584,069,664,768 bytes (804 Petabytes
unformatted).
2019 SUMMARY: 124,896 hard drives, 1,091,332,693,688,492,032
bytes (1.09 Exabytes
unformatted).
2020 SUMMARY: 164,929 hard drives, 1,626,544,280,252,030,976
bytes (1.63 Exabytes unformatted).
Business Ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 49%
(1,091 PBytes grew to 1,626 PBytes)
2)
Cash Sales grew by 26% ($44,401,841 grew to $55,765,587)
3)
B1 Paying customers grew by 8% (602,219 paying customers grew to 650,447)
4)
B1C Revenue grew by 11% ($28,221,512 grew to $31,276,548)
5) B1 Overall
Revenue (B1C + B1B) grew by 14% ($35.480 million grew to $40.492 million)
5)
Employee # grew by 52% (126 grew to 191)
6)
Monthly payroll grew by 67% ($1,488,342 to $2.495 million)
7)
Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs increased by 17% ($360k/month
increased to $420 k/month)
8) Total USB
restores grew by 2% (6,661 drives and flash keys grew to 6,792 drives and flash
keys)
9) Total number of Storage Pods grew by 32% (2,280 pods to 3,000 pods)
10) Total number of Vaults grew by 32% (112 Vaults grew to 150 vaults)
Datacenter Expenses (Power/Space/Bandwidth):
From:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I7Igwz-Ut8fsmPviEs1807jJxxNmOFA8BG0cQd2tuWY/
Bandwidth Graph of Total Bandwidth Flowing into Backblaze during 2020:
(this is from https://drivestats.backblaze.com/) but the link only works inside of Backblaze
|===================================================================| | drive_size_TB | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.20 | 40 | 9 | 9602296381440 | | 0.30 | 1071 | 244 | 267813563867136 | | 0.50 | 1843 | 836 | 919691688255488 | | 1.00 | 1 | 1 | 1000204886016 | | 2.00 | 4 | 7 | 8001595736064 | | 4.00 | 34917 | 127052 | 139695480727068672 | | 6.00 | 898 | 4901 | 5389055263162368 | | 8.00 | 25297 | 184096 | 202415544827338752 | | 10.00 | 1221 | 11106 | 12211015076806656 | | 12.00 | 65398 | 713758 | 784785065799319552 | | 14.00 | 33560 | 427333 | 469857439223644160 | | 16.00 | 619 | 9008 | 9904557509312512 | | 18.00 | 60 | 982 | 1080012476252160 | | TOTAL | 164929 | 1479333 | 1626544280252030976 | |===================================================================|
|=================================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ST12000NM0007 | 12.0TB | 23036 | 29.78 | | TOSHIBA MG07ACA14TA | 0.0TB | 21046 | 7.65 | | ST12000NM0008 | 12.0TB | 19285 | 9.76 | | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 18884 | 62.35 | | ST8000NM0055 | 8.0TB | 14408 | 41.34 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 12744 | 50.43 | | HGST HUH721212ALN604 | 12.0TB | 10831 | 21.01 | | ST8000DM002 | 8.0TB | 9772 | 51.07 | | ST12000NM001G | 12.0TB | 7130 | 6.08 | | ST14000NM001G | 14.0TB | 5987 | 2.89 | | WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 | 0.0TB | 5903 | 1.68 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 3095 | 56.65 | | HGST HUH721212ALE600 | 12.0TB | 2600 | 15.04 | | HGST HUH721212ALE604 | 12.0TB | 2506 | 3.78 | | ST10000NM0086 | 10.0TB | 1201 | 38.73 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 1074 | 34.85 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 886 | 68.84 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA250CM10002 | 0.3TB | 558 | 9.68 | | TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY | 16.0TB | 520 | 2.14 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 454 | 50.45 | | Seagate BarraCuda 120 SSD ZA250CM10003 | 0.3TB | 405 | 4.15 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050M | 0.5TB | 383 | 31.69 | | ST14000NM0138 | 14.0TB | 360 | 1.56 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050 | 0.5TB | 353 | 42.72 | | ST500LM030 | 0.5TB | 241 | 22.54 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 198 | 67.12 | | TOSHIBA MG07ACA14TEY | 14.0TB | 160 | 1.22 | | Seagate SSD | 0.3TB | 108 | 16.72 | | WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 | 14.0TB | 99 | 1.68 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 99 | 67.29 | | ST18000NM000J | 18.0TB | 60 | 3.27 | | ST16000NM001G | 16.0TB | 59 | 12.93 | | WDC WD5000LPCX | 0.5TB | 53 | 52.27 | | TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TA | 16.0TB | 40 | 7.92 | | ST4000DM005 | 4.0TB | 38 | 35.17 | | MTFDDAV240TCB | 0.2TB | 38 | 1.88 | | ST500LM021 | 0.5TB | 33 | 20.42 | | HGST HUS726040ALE610 | 4.0TB | 28 | 35.49 | | ST8000DM005 | 8.0TB | 25 | 28.56 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 25 | 52.41 | | HGST HUH721010ALE600 | 10.0TB | 20 | 24.01 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA500CM10002 | 0.5TB | 18 | 24.61 | | TOSHIBA HDWF180 | 8.0TB | 17 | 32.90 | | ST12000NM0117 | 12.0TB | 10 | 5.18 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 10 | 88.43 | | ST14000NM0018 | 14.0TB | 5 | 0.77 | | TOSHIBA HDWE160 | 6.0TB | 4 | 30.88 | | ST6000DM001 | 6.0TB | 4 | 45.91 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA2000CM10002 | 2.0TB | 4 | 21.77 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 3 | 67.97 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 3 | 64.63 | | MTFDDAV240TDU | 0.2TB | 2 | 2.22 | | ST6000DM004 | 6.0TB | 1 | 27.70 | | ST8000DM004 | 8.0TB | 1 | 28.09 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE641 | 4.0TB | 1 | 26.06 | | ST1000LM024 HN | 1.0TB | 1 | 48.65 | |=================================================================================|
A screenshot of the B1 client stats at the end of 2020, for the record (notice it is wide and has ca003 to the far right as well!):
2/10/2021 - Wednesday - Backblaze files the very first confidential filing (it takes several revisions) of Form S-1 to go IPO. Click here to read the Backblaze S-1. This is a "confidential filing", only the SEC knows about this. [Update after IPO: You can get the historical doc "DRS - Draft Registration Statement" S-1 here on the SEC website] Of that document, I feel that only 34 pages are interesting: pages 0-15, pages 52-56, and pages 69-83. Those are the creative writing portion. Pages 16-51 are "risk factors" which are just enumerated OBVIOUS risks to our business like "if drive prices increase it might impact our business" (no kidding). Pages 57-68 and pages 84-F26 are essentially just financial tables and facts like the age of the officers at Backblaze. Below are the first two main pages:
2/11/2021 - Thursday - eStaff meeting presenting the upcoming IPO schedule and what is involved:
3/9/2021 - SEC responds to the Backblaze S-1 with this letter. Click here for the SEC pdf. It came as an attachment to the email below:
4/2/2021 - Backblaze completes it's "ring network", here is a diagram from Rich Rivest:
4/26/2021 - Monday - Engineering week! This is from a slide in an AB (Adam Feder) talk on numbers of pods and number of vaults in each cluster, updated to be current:
Current Numbers of B1 customers as of 4/26/2021:
cluster 000 - 217,507 B1
customers causing load
cluster 001 - 282,071 B1 customers causing load
cluster 002 - 163,943 B1 customers causing load
cluster 003 - 3,351 B1 customers causing load (Europe is small for B1)
5/11/2021 - Tuesday - Backblaze files the SECOND confidential filing of Form S-1 to go IPO. Click here to read SECOND confidential filing of the Backblaze S-1. This is a "confidential filing", only the SEC knows about this. [Update after IPO: You can get the historical doc "DRS/A - Draft Registration Statement" S-1 here on the SEC website] Below are the first two main pages:
5/25/2021 (slightly out of order in the timeline to group it with the above second confidential filing of the S-1) - SEC responds to the Backblaze second filing of the S-1 with this letter. Click here for the SEC pdf. It contains exactly 1 question from the SEC about splitting out revenue between our B1 and B2 product lines, which we ended up wanting to do anyway. Screenshot below:
5/14/2021 - Friday - Ironically, this was the original planned day of IPO,
but the schedule had slipped by 1 month already at this point. On this
day, Bank of America (BofA) which was the left lead bank for the Backblaze IPO
announces in a meeting with Backblaze "the market has softened, we're not sure
the Backblaze IPO is possible on time".
7/30/2021 - Friday - Backblaze chooses Oppenheimer as lead left for ANOTHER run
at an IPO. New target date is
mid-October, 2021. The new schedule is seen below:
7/6/2021 - Wednesday - released and pushed client version 8.0.0.520
(Windows), log here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/announcing-backblaze-computer-backup-8-0/ The
changes include:
a. Increase maximum threads to 100
b. Many many fixes for performance.
c. New "shared memory" so a local copy is
not made before backing up using threads
d. In all future releases (checked
into the tree at this moment but not released yet) no copy is made for large
files either
e. New rebranded graphics.
f. Misc other small fixes.
ALSO release of Mac client version 8.0.1.520 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
8/5/2021 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 8.0.1.533
(Windows), log here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/announcing-backblaze-computer-backup-8-0/ The
changes include:
a. No longer make a copy of large files before backing them up. With this,
Backblaze now does a millionth of the disk writing it did in 7.0.2.
b. New code to not go back to the cluster authority and API servers for one
upload failure, but instead use the existing thread to retry on a different
upload URL. This lowers upload failures to less than 1%.
c. Misc other small fixes including improved logging and other performance
enhancements.
ALSO release of Mac client version 8.0.1.534 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
8/5/2021 - Backblaze gets keys for our new office. We will keep the old office also, this is expansion room across the street. In the picture below you can see Gleb, Tom, and Derman Uzunoglu.
Also, You can see our old office building in the lower left of this picture from the new office space.
8/9/2021 - Monday - Damon ran the "scc" program on the "bzapp" repository and it generated this report of source code written at Backblaze:
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Language Files Lines Blanks Comments Code Complexity ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Java 7151 1396443 189809 213004 993630 95443 C Header 979 294601 36925 81855 175821 4252 Python 614 180742 9266 13080 158396 7832 JavaScript 391 53740 5887 2345 45508 5796 Plain Text 319 35459 5815 0 29644 0 JSX 192 17815 2776 1096 13943 580 C 190 150326 19516 26568 104242 21427 JavaServer Pages 188 55379 5102 837 49440 5870 Swift 174 41506 5363 7910 28233 3223 JSON 161 169043 113 0 168930 0 CSS 88 26361 3324 775 22262 0 C++ 85 424703 40928 60737 323038 37286 BASH 77 4744 792 685 3267 289 Objective C 61 9983 1713 1529 6741 1068 Objective C++ 59 33791 5314 5819 22658 4181 XML 55 14805 563 258 13984 0 Sass 36 2135 333 84 1718 0 Makefile 29 811 174 165 472 5 Properties File 25 35522 3147 1896 30479 0 Shell 24 2527 338 384 1805 210 Markdown 21 1262 315 0 947 0 SQL 11 320 16 0 304 0 Autoconf 10 4209 966 1345 1898 712 HTML 7 1454 203 28 1223 0 SVG 5 824 0 1 823 0 Batch 4 637 139 1 497 81 CMake 4 1560 417 473 670 307 Gradle 4 49 10 6 33 0 License 4 56 10 0 46 0 MSBuild 4 281 27 36 218 2 Ruby 4 2630 276 289 2065 283 Perl 3 1258 119 147 992 115 C# 2 108 10 22 76 5 Go Template 2 9 0 0 9 0 Meson 2 11 2 0 9 0 YAML 2 25 2 2 21 0 gitignore 2 100 17 17 66 0 C Shell 1 36 12 7 17 12 Docker ignore 1 4 1 0 3 0 Dockerfile 1 33 7 8 18 5 Fish 1 76 16 13 47 8 Xcode Config 1 76 8 59 9 0 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Total 10994 2965454 339771 421481 2204202 188992 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Estimated Cost to Develop (organic) $87,500,248 Estimated Schedule Effort (organic) 75.227666 months Estimated People Required (organic) 103.335041 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Processed 130468816 bytes, 130.469 megabytes (SI) ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Schedule of An Interesting Few Months of Price Increasing:
- 6/14/2021 - Mon - Enable Price Increase and Buying "Old Price 1 year
Extension" on staging, QA it.
Subpoint: 6/22/2021 - Tue - rebranding launches
- 7/7/2021 - Wed - Release 8.0 on Wednesday morning after 4th of July weekend
- on 7/6/Tue at 10pm the 8.0 client becomes default download (Damon's
responsibility)
- on 7/7/Wed at 8am the blog post goes out
- on 7/7/Wed at 9am the emails start blasting out to Customers and Press
Goes Wild. HackerNews picks it up.
- 7/13/2021 - Tue - Price Increase Announced and customer can purchase "Old
Price 1 year Extension" for next 30 days
- 8/6/2021 - Fri - Release client 8.0.1 because it contains a popup that occurs
on the 7th day of trial with a price (DEV-9140)
- 8/13/2021 - Fri (13th) - Price Increase Goes into Effect upon new purchases,
and for old customers whenever their renewal happens
8/5/2021 - Thursday - released and pushed client version 8.0.1.545
(Windows). Changes include:
a. The main thing is code that sometimes finds and fixes inconsistencies between
bztrans_thread and bztrans64_thread executables that come up when upgrading from
7.0.2 to 8.0.0 and 8.0.1.
c. Misc other small fixes including improved logging and other performance
enhancements.
ALSO release of Mac client version 8.0.1.546 (Macintosh) on same codebase as
above. Contains:
a. All fixes listed above, plus:
b. Misc other small fixes.
8/30/2021 - Monday - In a board meeting we brought on two new independent board members for the first time: Evelyn D'An, and Earl.Fry:
9/2/2021 - Backblaze passes 2 exabytes of disk space deployed in the datacenter. From https://drivestats.backblaze.com/#drive_population
|===================================================================| | drive_size_TB | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.00 | 29 | -0 | -29 | | 0.20 | 90 | 20 | 21605166858240 | | 0.30 | 1598 | 363 | 399594841325568 | | 0.50 | 1805 | 817 | 898479777914880 | | 1.00 | 1 | 1 | 1000204886016 | | 2.00 | 3 | 5 | 6001196802048 | | 4.00 | 34979 | 127278 | 139943529522929664 | | 6.00 | 898 | 4901 | 5389055263162368 | | 8.00 | 25270 | 183899 | 202199502620344320 | | 10.00 | 1221 | 11106 | 12211015076806656 | | 12.00 | 59418 | 648492 | 713024236821676032 | | 14.00 | 57722 | 734997 | 808137994841096192 | | 16.00 | 9218 | 134147 | 147496302295384064 | | 18.00 | 60 | 982 | 1080012476252160 | | TOTAL | 192312 | 1847009 | 2030808330105438208 | |===================================================================|
So that is 2,030,808,330,105,438,208 bytes of storage deployed. 2.0308 Exabytes.
9/9/2021 - from a presentation we gave to our banking syndicate, I distilled this org chart of Backblaze (click on the image below for the higher quality version):
Also from that same presentation on 9/9/2021:
and:
9/17/2021 - The 3rd confidential filing of the Backblaze S-1. Click here for the S-1. [Update after IPO: You can get the historical doc "DRS/A - Draft Registration Statement" S-1 here on the SEC website]
9/22/2021 - Wednesday - Got this network diagram of the Backblaze network from Rich Rivest and Mike Farace (click on it for big diagram):
10/1/2021 - Friday. A very very long time ago (10+ years?)
I (BrianW typing this here) learned that the minimum recommended criteria for an
IPO was $50 million/year in revenue and profitable. So I always thought if
Backblaze got 1 million B1 customers each paying $50/year we could IPO.
I just updated the bzhelper on the cluster authorities to update the math using
$7/month instead of $6/month at the top of this page:
https://ca000.backblaze.com/bzadmin/stats_summary.htm
B1 revenue is currently at $49.78 million/year AND
RISING. We're good to go IPO.
B1 has 687,913 licenses at $7/month and $70/year and $130/two year. So we're a
little bit shy of the 1 million customers but the price increases helped us get
to that magic $50 million/year.
10/7/2021 - Thursday.
The Backblaze Board of directors had a 4 and a half hour board meeting where the
bankers (mainly Oppenheimer) presented the feedback from the TTWs (Testing The
Waters) meetings. In the TTWs, Gleb and Frank talk to possible future
investors to judge interest in purchasing Backblaze stock during the IPO.
The feedback from investors was good, the bankers want to move forward with a
valuation range of $620 million - $720 million. Two slides below on that
calculation:
In the slide above, the red bracket (added by BrianW) is what the total market
cap of Backblaze would be 1 minute after IPO if Backblaze is valued at 2022
revenue levels. Since it is late in the year, some investors are starting
to give credit for 2023 revenue levels which is the column to the right of the
red box on the same row as the red box (so between $646 million and $786.7
million if given credit for 2023 forward revenue).
And this slide below...
Then the bankers left the meeting and the board voted unanimously to "flip"
(make the S-1 readable by the world) and proceed with the IPO. We are
still waiting for final SEC comments so that may delay the IPO, but here are the
new target dates:
Friday 10/15/2021 - Flip the S-1 to be readable by the world
Monday 11/1/2021 - Start the 6 day Backblaze road show to pitch
investors
Tuesday 11/9/2021 - 24 hour bidding for what the final IPO
valuation will be
Wednesday 11/10/2021 - Backblaze rings the bell and this is the
first day we are publicly traded
On a slide from Oppenheimer this looks like:
10/15/2021 - Friday - Backblaze receives comments from the SEC on the previous filing of the S-1. Answers were quickly produced. Click here to read the quoted SEC questions and the Backblaze answers, and a condensed screenshot it included inline below:
10/18/2021 - Monday - Backblaze Flip of the S-1. This is the 4th filing of the Backblaze S-1 and flipped so the whole world can read. The SEC calls this officially "Form S-1 Registration Statement". Click here for a stand alone copy of the S-1. This is referred to officially in the SEC timeline as "S-1" (future amended versions are called "S-1/A") You can also click this link to see the filing the whole world can now read as of this moment: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1462056/000119312521301141/d62601ds1.htm
Here are some articles that came out following this first time the world can read our financials:
TechCrunch: "Backblaze's IPO shows it's possible to go
public sans mountains of VC cash":
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/20/backblazes-ipo-shows-its-possible-to-go-public-sans-mountains-of-vc-cash/
CNBC: "Amazon Cloud storage challenger Backblaze files to go
public":
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/cloud-object-storage-company-backblaze-files-to-go-public.html
Hacker News: "Backblaze S-1 IPO":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28912799
Reddit Thread: "Backblaze IPO Incoming":
https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/qb3qxm/ipo_incoming/
Reddit Thread: "Have you been invited to participate in the
Backblaze IPO?":
https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/qi8nw6/have_you_been_invited_to_participate_in_the/
Reuters: "Cloud storage provider Backblaze files for U.S.
IPO":
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cloud-storage-provider-backblaze-files-us-ipo-2021-10-18/
10/29/2021 - Friday - Got the SEC's next round of comments to
the version of the S-1 we flipped. Click here to read the original PDF.
Screenshots below:
11/2/2021 - Tuesday - Backblaze files the S-1 "Red Herring". Click here to see that. This is where there are numbers and price ranges filled into the S-1. Here is one news article about it: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/blackblaze-eyes-100-million-in-ipo-proceeds-2021-11-02
Backblaze also released this "Road Show Video": https://www.netroadshow.com/custom/IPO/Backblaze//retail/agenda.html
11/4/2021 - Thursday - Backblaze files another amended S-1 called "Amendment No 2 to Form S-1". Click here to see that.
11/8/2021 - Monday - Backblaze files another amended S-1
called "Amendment No 3 to Form S-1".
Click here to see
that.
11/8/2021 - Monday - Backblaze receives a letter from Nasdaq saying it got Form
8-A 12(b) for the stock.
Click here to see
that.
All three of the above related to this chart of events (created later by the SEC):
11/10/2021 - Wednesday - Backblaze receives the "Ok" from NASDAQ. Click here for that letter, screenshot below.
(This is the whole thing.)
11/11/2021 - Thursday - Backblaze trades publicly on NASDAQ at around 11am for the first time. Some pictures and videos from the New York Trip can be found here: https://www.ski-epic.com/2021_backblaze_ipo/index.html
Total shares that exist for BLZE after the IPO: 42,479,176 Backblaze shares (this includes the 6,250,000 printed and sold as part of the IPO). So the IPO diluted Backblaze by 14.7%
Some articles below:
Backblaze Blog -
"Backblaze Announces Launch of Initial Public Opening"
CNBC - "Backblaze
takes opposite IPO route to Rivian, going public on small valuation and
minimal funding"
Business Insider - "Cloud
Storage Startup Backblaze IPOs on Little VC and Revenue"
Silicon Valley Business Journal -
"Backblaze's CEO said his company is ready to accelerate its growth after
its stock jumped 24% in its first day on Wall Street"
Seeking Alpha - "Backblaze
fires up another winning session, taking cloud stock up some 100% since
Thursday"
11/12/2021 - Friday - Times Square NASDAQ Take Over - for 10 minutes the day after the IPO the largest billboards in Times Square including the NASDAQ MarketSite tower (far left in the picture below) were simultaneously taken over by Backblaze logos, it looked like this:
11/15/2021 - Monday - NASDAQ tweeted out this video: https://twitter.com/Nasdaq/status/1460361904061362176 Also preserved here if the tweet disappears.
11/17/2021 - Wednesday - the fifth day of trading after the IPO Backblaze crosses over a $1 Billion valuation for the whole company (total market capitalization). This is often called the moment a company becomes a "Unicorn".
The history of Backblaze officially filed documents with the SEC can be found here: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1462056&owner=exclude and here is a screenshot with numbered explanations of what each form means:
Here are some rough costs of what the IPO cost. Some of this is complicated because it doesn't kick in until and after the IPO, but it is absolutely required the moment after IPO:
$2.5 million - paid to Backblaze's audit company
BDO in 2021. We had always been
audited, it's required for a 409a valuation, but much to my surprise (I'm a
programmer, not an accountant) there are only "certain select firms" that
can audit a publicly traded company and the audits seem to be "different".
We were getting audited by a Mountain View firm "Young,
Craig & Co" that I'd recommend to anybody, but they were not legally
allowed to audit an S-1 or audit a publicly traded company. That's reserved
for audit firms with names like
PricewaterhouseCooper. Backblaze picked the audit company "BDO". You
need two years of "audited financials" to IPO, so they have to go back in
time (this is fully expected), so this represents going back 2 years,
adjusting our books to be compliant according to what they found, get them
to audit and agree it's all ship-shape, BDO has to sign off on the S-1
financials, etc.
$50,000/year - Software changes. Before attempting to
go public, Backblaze used
QuickBooks online for about $500/year total subscription cost. We moved
to use NetSuite for
something like $50,000/year. This isn't technically required (there are
companies that have IPO'ed still using QuickBooks), but we want to "match
the pattern" of other public companies and not raise any questions, so yay,
we changed.
$1.8 million - paid to Backblaze's external lawyers
Gunderson Dettmer in 2021.
Backblaze went IPO Nov 10th, 2021, so this includes fees having to do with
the IPO, prepping the S-1, and some fees were charged after we raised the
IPO money into the company to make it easier on us. Now some of that $1.8
million was simply running the regular business, I have no idea the
breakdown but think more like $100,000/year (or less) under regular business
conditions without an IPO.
$2.5 million/year - D&O Insurance (Directors and Officers
Liability Insurance) - this premium kicks in only if you succeed at IPO,
it's insurance for "Directors and Officers" and it's expensive since lawyers
troll public companies if the stock drops, they don't even care why.
$200,000 - "The Printer" - this one cracks me up, because
you no longer really ever print the S-1 (the document you file to IPO). But
you have to have a "printer". We chose "Donnelley
Financial" (I believe). What do they do? I have no friggin' idea,
but it is $200,000. I think they uploaded the S-1 PDF you hand them to the
SEC website.
$7 million - paid to the "syndicate of bankers" that took
Backblaze public. These are listed on the bottom of the second page on
any S-1. Backblaze's list is: Oppenheimer & Co (they were "lead left"
bank), William Blair, Raymond James, JMP Securities, B. Riley Securities,
and Lakes Street. Now this fee is very interesting in that none of the
banks get even $1 if the IPO fails, and the fee is paid out of "the money
raised", and by law they get not more than 7% of "the amount raised" which
in Backblaze's case was $100 million. Really big IPOs like Facebook
can negotiate this, but at our size we had the opposite problem. We
couldn't pay more than 7% of the amount raised, and these banks splitting $7
million where almost half goes to the "lead left bank" of Oppenheimer meant
prestigeous banks like JP Morgan weren't interested because it was too
little money for the same amount of work that other companies raised $1
billion and JP Morgan could make $70 million (for the same amount of work).
$1 million/year (?) - Increased Staff - this is where it
gets REALLY fuzzy. Maybe a company already has a CFO that has taken
companies public before, and maybe they already have general counsel.
Backblaze did not, so I'm adding in those two salaries because we SURE as
heck need them to be public. We also added a few more staff in the
accounting department that knew/know how to prepare the forms that public
companies are required to file every quarter. Then there are "consultants"
to help "implement NetSuite" and "guide you through the IPO process".
So I have no idea, maybe toss in $1 million/year extra for this? That's a
really super totally rough guess when you include salary, benefits, etc.
If we had delayed the IPO by even two weeks, we would never have been allowed to IPO. I find this situation ridiculous and a market inefficiency because Backblaze wants to be publicly traded for the next 50 years, so the timing should not matter, but the economy and "IPO sentiment" changed a few weeks after our IPO, the graph of "money raised" looks like this:
A quote from an analyst: "The US IPO market had its slowest first quarter in six years as just 18 IPOs raised $2.1 billion. Plummeting returns at the end of 2021 effectively put an end to the past year’s IPO boom." And below is the "number of IPOs" by year with 2013 - half way through 2022:
That's it! That is what it looks like to take a startup tech company from starting at the beginning with 1 employee and $0 in revenue up through IPO with 263 employees and annual recurring revenue of $71 million. this was 14 years, 9 months, and 27 days of my life. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed living the experience.
12/31/2021 - Friday - End of month December, end of 2021. Each year I have summarized approximately how we're doing, here is one last entry to summarize where we are at just post IPO by 1.5 months... End of month December, end of 2021. This month's cash sales were $6.2 million and the lifetime Backblaze cash sales up to this point totals $291 million (and of that $2,085,806.74 was in 2010, $3,963,325.68 was in 2011, and $6,056,170.67 was in 2012, and $8,103,664.95 was in 2013, and $12,058,000 was in 2014, and $15,174,468.00 was in 2015, and $17,729,325 of that was in 2016, and $22,418,301 was in 2017, and $31,812,708 was in 2018, and $44,401,841 was in 2019, and $55,765,587 was in 2020, and $71,428,764 was in 2021). Below is a lifetime "cash sales" chart showing a breakdown by product:
Here is a graph of storage over time:
The $71,428,764 Gross Cash Sales in 2021
broken down by category:
$37,883,728 (53.0%) - B1C (Personal Backup)
$22,112,545 (30.9%) - B2 (storage API)
$10,743,052 (15.0%) - B1B (Biz Groups)
$ 689,439 ( 1.1%) - Physical Media (USB Restores & Fireballs)
B1 compared with B2 on Dec 31, 2021:
- B1 has about 361 billion files' metadata in bz_done files (over 5
clusters) - up from 330 billion in 2019
NOT FINAL THESE NUMBERS ARE FROM LAST YEAR -> - B1 metadata takes about 207.7 TBytes (so 560 bytes per file) - up
from 207.1 TBytes in 2019 Explanation: some cleanup was done
- B1 average file size (not metadata) is 2.82 MBytes - up slightly from 2.36
MBytes in 2020
- B1 Extended Version History makes about $169,000 per month gross
revenue (up from $95,000 per month in 2020)
- B1 makes about $135,000 per day gross revenue including Extended Version
History (up from $115,000 per day in 2020 - 17% growth)
- B2 has 212 billion files (up from 103 billion a year ago) files
metadata in Cassandra (numbers from: https://ca000.backblaze.com/bzadmin/bzadmin_cluster_usage.htm)
- B2 metadata takes about 210 TBytes (so about 990 bytes per file) up from
57 TByte a year ago.
- B2 requires 210 total Cassandra servers serving customers (up from 99 a year ago), also 21 in "staging". Each Cassandra server costs $2,900 so this
is $670,000 worth of Cassandra.
- B2 average file size (not metadata) is 2.2 MBytes (slightly down
from 2.9 MBytes in 2020)
- B2 holds 472 PBytes of customer data total (up from 301 PBytes in
2020 - increase by 57%)
- B2 makes about $71,900 per day gross revenue (up from $50,167 in
2020 - increase by 43%)
USB Restore Trends (found on spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jCMwKpI2z8H8GgcKuMCHd2c2pKfP-6Fj-P5aAIcqNDo/edit#gid=76120191
)
<Support Volume Over Time graph here>
Support Ticket Trends for the last 6 years:
Breakdown of Monthly vs Yearly vs TwoYear on 12/31/2021:
Total User Accounts ever created: 662,614 + 644,787 + 548,035 + 31,545 + 35,775 = 1,922,756
Total HGUIDs ever created: 1,267,676 + 1,430,806 + 819,143 + 68,758 + 10,506 = 3,596,889
Number HGUIDs deleted: 797,421 + 916,254 + 305,897 + 11,115 + 349 = 2,031,036
Unique HGUIDs Calling Home in last 24 days: 195,568 + 204,204 + 182,113 + 6,469 + 4,419 = 592,773
month_to_month_hguids: (53,553 + 66,407 + 43,381 + 1,181 + 334) * $7 = $1,153,992 per month
month_to_month_unused_licenses: (218 + 197 + 305 + 11 + 80) * $7 = $ 5,677 per month
includes >3month PrpaidC-> one_year_hguids: (124,593 + 145,916 + 106,705 + 2,285 + 719) * $70/12 = $2,217,938 per month
one_year_unused_licenses: (3,012 + 2,925 + 3,036 + 24 + 31) * $70/12 = $ 52,663 per month
two_year_hguids: (43,974 + 56,962 + 36,258 + 966 + 219) * $130/24 = $ 749,553 per month
two_year_unused_licenses: (1,504 + 862 + 1,335 + 26 + 16) * $130/24 = $ 20,275 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Total: 697,035 paid licenses $4,200,090 per month (Extended Version History is an additional $169,000 per month)
PrepaidCodes Total Created: 796,030
PrepaidCodes Not Used Yet: 773,527
PrepaidCodes In Live Use: 2,020
PrepaidCodes Expired: 2,603
PrepaidCodes Voided by Using CreditCard: 17,879
And some info on Backblaze Groups:
Groups Specific Summary (Note: these are already part of above numbers):
Groups month_to_month_hguids: (11,717 + 17,078 + 13,842 + 0 + 1) * $7 = $298,466 per month
Groups month_to_month_unused_licenses: (88 + 101 + 189 + 0 + 80) * $7 = $ 3,206 per month
Groups one_year_hguids: (29,472 + 42,524 + 27,828 + 0 + 0) * $70/12 = $582,306 per month
Groups one_year_unused_licenses: (2,048 + 2,221 + 2,230 + 0 + 5) * $70/12 = $ 37,940 per month
Groups two_year_hguids: (6,489 + 5,730 + 6,745 + 0 + 2) * $130/24 = $102,732 per month
Groups two_year_unused_licenses: (957 + 409 + 744 + 0 + 0) * $130/24 = $ 11,429 per month
------------------------------------------------------ --------------------
Groups Total: 170,420 paid group licenses $1,035,514 per month
Graph of B1 (Consumer Backup) Churn rates over the years (courtesy of Jeannine and Tableau):
B1 Extended Version History (EVH) Revenue Graph for 2020
and 2021
below:
10 Year ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) Graph below:
NOTES: here are 4 buckets with the largest number of files in a B2 bucket:
A screenshot of bzadmin's summary of space:
2014 SUMMARY: 41,037 hard drives, 150,529,843,666,944 bytes (150 Petabytes
unformatted).
2015 SUMMARY: 57,606 hard drives, 214,372,724,682,204,160 bytes (214 Petabytes
unformatted).
2016 SUMMARY: 73,653 hard drives, 322,191,216,469,722,112 bytes (322 Petabytes
unformatted).
2017 SUMMARY: 93,240 hard drives, 533,305,794,474,639,360 bytes (533 Petabytes
unformatted).
2018 SUMMARY: 106,916 hard drives, 804,885,584,069,664,768 bytes (804 Petabytes
unformatted).
2019 SUMMARY: 124,896 hard drives, 1,091,332,693,688,492,032 bytes (1.09
Exabytes unformatted).
2020 SUMMARY: 164,929 hard drives, 1,626,544,280,252,030,976 bytes (1.63
Exabytes unformatted).
2021 SUMMARY: 199,608 hard drives, 2,138,922,434,498,396,160 bytes (2.14 Exabytes unformatted).
Business Ratios:
1) Storage in the datacenter grew by 31% (1,626 PBytes grew to 2,139 PBytes)
2) Cash Sales grew by 28% ($55,765,587 grew to $71,428,765)
3) B1 Paying customers grew by 7% (650,447 paying customers grew to
697,035)
4) B1C Revenue grew by 21% ($31,276,548 grew to $37,883,728)
5) B1 Overall Revenue (B1C + B1B) grew by 20% ($40.492 million grew
to $48.627 million)
5) Employee # grew by 43% (189 grew to 270)
NOT FINAL -> 6) Monthly payroll grew by 67% ($1,488,342 to $2.495 million)
NOT FINAL -> 7) Monthly datacenter space/power/bandwidth costs increased by 17%
($360k/month increased to $420 k/month)
NOT FINAL -> 8) Total USB restores grew by 2% (6,661 drives and flash keys grew
to 6,792 drives and flash keys)
9) Total number of Storage Pods grew by 25% (3,000 pods to 3,740
pods)
10) Total number of Vaults grew by 25% (150 Vaults grew to 187
vaults)
Datacenter Expenses (Power/Space/Bandwidth):
From:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I7Igwz-Ut8fsmPviEs1807jJxxNmOFA8BG0cQd2tuWY/
<Graph of DC Expenses here>
Bandwidth Graph of Total Bandwidth Flowing into Backblaze during 2021:
Drive Population on 2021-12-31
(this is from https://drivestats.backblaze.com/) but the link only works inside of Backblaze
By Drive Size |===================================================================| | drive_size_TB | drive_count | total_TiB | total_bytes | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 0.00 | 29 | -0 | -29 | | 0.20 | 90 | 20 | 21605166858240 | | 0.30 | 1757 | 400 | 439354277978112 | | 0.50 | 1789 | 809 | 889675211546624 | | 1.00 | 1 | 1 | 1000204886016 | | 2.00 | 3 | 5 | 6001196802048 | | 4.00 | 34946 | 127158 | 139811503550939136 | | 6.00 | 898 | 4901 | 5389055263162368 | | 8.00 | 25266 | 183870 | 202167496367456256 | | 10.00 | 1222 | 11115 | 12221015908155392 | | 12.00 | 60262 | 657703 | 723152353821196288 | | 14.00 | 59430 | 756746 | 832050882391572480 | | 16.00 | 13855 | 201628 | 221692478661591040 | | 18.00 | 60 | 982 | 1080012476252160 | | TOTAL | 199608 | 1945339 | 2138922434498396160 | |===================================================================| By Model |=================================================================================| | model | size_tb | drives | avg_age_in_months | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | TOSHIBA MG07ACA14TA | 14.0TB | 38186 | 14.28 | | ST12000NM0008 | 12.0TB | 20201 | 21.13 | | ST4000DM000 | 4.0TB | 18611 | 74.37 | | ST8000NM0055 | 8.0TB | 14334 | 52.82 | | HGST HUH721212ALE604 | 12.0TB | 13138 | 9.40 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4.0TB | 12703 | 62.37 | | ST12000NM001G | 12.0TB | 12171 | 13.84 | | HGST HUH721212ALN604 | 12.0TB | 10818 | 32.95 | | ST14000NM001G | 0.0TB | 10738 | 11.10 | | ST8000DM002 | 8.0TB | 9718 | 62.63 | | WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 | 0.0TB | 8271 | 12.80 | | ST16000NM001G | 0.0TB | 7260 | 7.74 | | HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 3429 | 66.92 | | HGST HUH721212ALE600 | 12.0TB | 2600 | 27.04 | | TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TE | 0.0TB | 2396 | 3.57 | | TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY | 16.0TB | 2367 | 8.52 | | WDC WUH721816ALE6L0 | 16.0TB | 1701 | 5.06 | | ST14000NM0138 | 14.0TB | 1611 | 12.86 | | ST12000NM0007 | 12.0TB | 1324 | 25.80 | | ST10000NM0086 | 10.0TB | 1192 | 50.07 | | HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8.0TB | 1124 | 44.85 | | Seagate BarraCuda 120 SSD ZA250CM10003 | 0.3TB | 989 | 11.12 | | ST6000DX000 | 6.0TB | 886 | 80.85 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA250CM10002 | 0.3TB | 562 | 21.68 | | TOSHIBA MG07ACA14TEY | 14.0TB | 462 | 11.81 | | ST500LM012 HN | 0.5TB | 422 | 58.89 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050M | 0.5TB | 297 | 42.63 | | TOSHIBA MQ01ABF050 | 0.5TB | 281 | 55.52 | | ST500LM030 | 0.5TB | 232 | 33.52 | | WDC WD5000LPVX | 0.5TB | 195 | 79.12 | | WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 | 14.0TB | 137 | 12.85 | | Seagate SSD | 0.3TB | 107 | 28.73 | | TOSHIBA MD04ABA400V | 4.0TB | 97 | 79.32 | | MTFDDAV240TCB | 0.2TB | 90 | 13.13 | | WDC WUH721816ALE6L0 | 16.0TB | 66 | 5.08 | | CT250MX500SSD1 | 0.0TB | 61 | 0.52 | | ST18000NM000J | 18.0TB | 60 | 15.21 | | WDC WD5000LPCX | 0.5TB | 52 | 64.27 | | ST8000NM000A | 8.0TB | 42 | 8.69 | | TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TA | 16.0TB | 39 | 17.65 | | ST4000DM005 | 4.0TB | 38 | 47.20 | | WDC WDS250G2B0A | 0.3TB | 38 | 1.24 | | HGST HUS726040ALE610 | 4.0TB | 34 | 39.21 | | ST500LM021 | 0.5TB | 33 | 32.46 | | ST16000NM005G | 16.0TB | 26 | 12.08 | | HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 26 | 62.73 | | ST8000DM005 | 8.0TB | 25 | 40.60 | | ST14000NM0018 | 14.0TB | 25 | 8.93 | | HGST HUH721010ALE600 | 10.0TB | 20 | 36.05 | | TOSHIBA HDWF180 | 8.0TB | 18 | 40.48 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA500CM10002 | 0.5TB | 18 | 36.65 | | ST12000NM0117 | 12.0TB | 10 | 17.22 | | ST10000NM001G | 10.0TB | 10 | 4.67 | | WDC WD5000BPKT | 0.5TB | 9 | 99.90 | | Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630 | 4.0TB | 6 | 70.30 | | HGST HUH728080ALE604 | 8.0TB | 5 | 37.19 | | TOSHIBA HDWE160 | 6.0TB | 4 | 42.90 | | ST6000DM001 | 6.0TB | 4 | 57.95 | | WDC WD60EFRX | 6.0TB | 3 | 79.99 | | Seagate BarraCuda SSD ZA2000CM10002 | 2.0TB | 3 | 32.96 | | ST6000DM004 | 6.0TB | 1 | 39.74 | | HGST HMS5C4040BLE641 | 4.0TB | 1 | 38.09 | | ST1000LM024 HN | 1.0TB | 1 | 60.70 | | HGST HDS724040ALE640 | 4.0TB | 1 | 55.07 | |=================================================================================|
A screenshot of the B1 client stats at the end of 2021, for the record (notice it is wide and has ca004 to the far right as well!):
December 6, 2022 - Post Mortem, 1 year after IPO, Backblaze has "beat earnings" for an entire year post IPO. Every quarter.
Friday, January 13, 2023 - Post Mortem - of the 5 original founders, Casey Jones and Tim Nufire depart this day to pursue different things. Not together, they just happened to line up in departure date. After 16 years.
Tuesday, February 28, 2023 - Post Mortem - this was Brian Wilson's last day as an employee. Brian was the first person at Backblaze.
Friday, March 31, 2023 - Post Mortem - this was Damon Uyeda's last day as an employee.
Friday, June 9, 2023 - Post Mortem - Billy Ng (one of the 5 original founders) last day as an employee.
That's it!