www.ukblazers.com

Test Build, Easier Than I Thought

thattommyhall — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:18:47 +0000

Well, John told me what “fixings” I needed to buy, but then went on holiday!

Dirk at Skye-IT called and said the screws looked like allen key shape so I got a screwdriver set from Maplins and headed to Kent to do a test build.

Anyone who knows me knows I am not very dexterous, in fact I’m mechanically backwards so I think me building one is a very good test.

Here are the pieces.

Then I fitted them together without screws

Then with the screws (the nylon spacers take ages!)

Lessons learned

do the spacers and port multipliers first, with SATA and power cables.
add the drive cage as the sides go on, not at the end

Otherwise it is a doddle, the Backblaze guys and the factory that made them did a great job.

We made a few additions to the design, adding holes for 2×2.5″ disks and option to drop the drive cages to let the disks sit straight on the bottom (John recommended some anti-vibration gel to put on the bottom and potentially replace the rubber bands in the backblaze design) with the hope that we can run without port multipliers. Obviously this would require an obscene amount of cabling in that tiny space at the top, but its worth a try I think. We could then use a fast SATA card well supported in OpenSolaris and get some ZFS goodness on there.

Tom

Help With Logistics, Getting it Right

thattommyhall — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:40:47 +0000

I am a freelance Infrastructure Architect by trade and have been finding the logistics of organising this quite difficult as I am out of the UK a lot. In the last 12 months I have quit full time work, gone to India for a month, worked in Libya, Dubai, Holland and Kent, moved to Manchester from Liverpool and am now working in London, not to mention a US road trip and holidays in the Czech Republic and Russia.

Fortunately a client of mine has allowed me to use their office for the test build and will be arranging shipping for the pods. I am heading over there tomorrow to do the test build and will be shipping in the days after.

In future I am going to:

Charge a bit more for the cases
Move away from the no-profit consortium approach
Not take payment in advance of the fabrication
Prep some in advance and sell them with all bar disks
Still allow custom runs of cases if people want quite a few

I will have a think about a pricing structure and update people here soon.

Here are the pods on the pallet:-

Tom

First Run Complete

thattommyhall — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:49:39 +0000

Well, it has taken a while as I have had some logistical problems trying to organise everything from Holland where I have been working but the first run has been made, I am just getting the fixings sorted and then we are good to go.

Still some cases left, they will be £450 and will be available next week with fixings.

Port multipliers can be had from Protocase or storage4mac or (if you time it right) direct from Chun Fan.

Tom

First Run Due 28th, Few Pods Spare

thattommyhall — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:12:16 +0000

The first run is due to be fabricated on the 28th, we will have 4 or 5 spare if anyone wants some.

Tom

Updated Backblaze Storage Pod Design Sent To Be Fabbed In The UK

thattommyhall — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:16:48 +0000

We have collected the moneys and the 2D manufacturing diagram are with the factory now. It will be in “Fine texture black” and I will be printing some UKBlazers labels to stick on mine to jazz it up a bit.

We made a few additions to the design to accommodate lowering the hard drive cage to run without the port multipliers (more on that later, hoping for Thumper-like performance!) allow for the manufacture to be punch only rather than requiring laser cutting and holes for 2×2.5″ disks for the OS. You can get the files here and a viewer for them at this site . I hope these files are of some use if someone else is going to do this.

We will have a few spare so if anyone wants to get some, please email me at tom@tthuk.com

Well the time has come, scheduling the first run

thattommyhall — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:31:49 +0000

Sorry for the delay everyone, things have been really hectic with a friends wedding in the US and a job in Libya for a big telco.

I have just sent invoices to the people who have confirmed their orders and will now be scheduling the first run. If you want to join in please get in touch in the next 14 days and I will include you. The price for all the “bits” mentioned here (ie all bar CPU/RAM/Mobo and disks) is £810 so the price for case and bits is £1210.

Tom

UK Sources For The Other BackBlaze Storage Pod Parts

thattommyhall — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:19:17 +0000

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in updating the site, I have been in Dubai deploying VMware View 4 for a client there.

We are going to schedule a run of 10 of the Storage Pods in Matt Black as a proof of concept so they will be at the £400+P&P previously announced. If you want to get involved please get in touch. The timing is dependent on the lead time for the Port Multipliers from Chun Fan, I will keep you posted.

Port Multipliers
Chun Fan have bulk pricing on the Port Multipliers as follows:
200pcs US40
150pcs US41
100pcs US42
50pcs US43
40pcs US43.5
30pcs US44
20pcs US44.5
10pcs US45
5pcs US45.5
1pc US46
So if people want us to organise those as well, its 9*$43+P&P+Tax (total TBC) on top of the case price.

We have looked around for UK suppliers for the other parts to build the Pods and if people want us to handle the purchase of all the components, please let us know and we can bulk order.

Power Switch
Bulgin Orange Dot Lighted Vandal Proof Switch

PSU / PSU Molex Cable
Enermax Modu82+ 525W
Modular Molex x3
I am tempted to go for a 1250 Watt one to save space and have less to go wrong (obviously peak draw might be a problem), also I cant find a mobo stub to allow a second PSU to power on without a mobo.

2 Port PCIe SATA II Card
Unbranded from Span – £14.10

4 Port PCI SATA II Card
Unbranded from Span – £49.70

I think depending on the chipset, this 4-port PCI-e card could be a good alternative.

SATA II Cable
100cm Akasa AK-CB056 Right angle connector SATA II cable inc Latch connector – Red/Black, scan £1.87

Incidentals
I will be sourcing a bulk load of these from the US and can pass them along to people :
Nylon Screws
HD Anti-Vibration Sleeves
Nylon Backplane Standoffs

Vibration / Noise
120mm x 38mm Fan (x6)
Scythe Ultra Kaze 2000RPM 120 x 38mm Cooling Fan
(Backblaze use Mechatronics G1238M12B1-FSR 120 x 38 mm 2,800 RPM 12V Fan, but I could not find one, pretty sure this will shift as much air)

Power Supply Vibration Dampener
Vantec VDK-PSU Power Supply Vibration Dampener (2) – Tekheads, £1.76

Fan Mount (front)
Acousti Ultra Soft Anti-Vibration Fan Mount AFM02

Fan Mount (middle)
Acousti Ultra Soft Anti-Vibration Fan Mount AFM03

Foam Rubber Pad
16″ x 17″ x 1/8″ Foam Rubber Pad, ~£1.50 from twfoam

Mobo/CPU/RAM
To your own taste really, Id like to get one with 5xPCI-e to avoid the 4x PCI card.

Hard Disks
Sticking with the Backblaze recommendation and getting the low power Seagate drives is probably a good idea
Seagate ST32000542AS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 5900rpm 32MB Cache – OEM (Ebuyer) £109.95 inc VAT **UPDATE 12 APRIL**

Hope this saves people some time searching the net.
Tom

Ready to buy a Backblaze Storage Pod in the UK / EU ?

thattommyhall — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:43:08 +0000

We have had contact from a few people so far and will be scheduling the first run in April.
The colour of the first run will be “Black fine texture powdercoated” as that was the default and cheapest. Custom runs can be a different colour if you are prepared to pay more.

Please get in touch if you want to get in on this initial run.

- Tom

Prices For Cases

thattommyhall — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:28:01 +0000

We have just got those prices for the cases, if you want to have a run of your own we can schedule separately for the prices below.
I assumed that people would want to club together and try to access the lower prices for a combined bulk order, I would like to do the first in 1 month (deadline to join is April 1st)

10 = £400
20 = £350
50 = £300
100 = £275

(These may shift down slightly but I am assured they will not go up and they do not include postage. They are all less than the $700 BackBlaze listed for Protocase)

Please send mail to tom@tthuk.com with

Who you are
How many cases you want
At what price you would buy in at (ie if you want some but only if we reach a certain price point)

I have a VAT registered, UK limited company I will be invoicing from for these and can arrange shipping anywhere in the EU.

Backblaze Manufacture

John — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:43:25 +0000

Having looked at the backblaze pod they have done a very god job of making the unit affordable and functional. It is hard to find anywhere to remove cost.

I have made only 1 change so far which is more for manufacture than anything else. The company we will be using for manufacture primarily use punching machines rather than laser cutters. To allow for this i have removed the Backblaze Logo and removed the venting pattern from the fan mounts. For ease these will be replaced with after market wire grills.

Removing the laser detail and adapting the design for punching does have other advantages. The punching machines can work a lot faster than the Laser cutters. This means that it costs less to produce each item once the initial set up has been completed.

On orders of about 10 units plus we should see a cost saving over the price from Protocase listed on the backblaze blog.

I will upload solid models soon to show the changes made to the fan grills (even though this is only a very minor change)

I have completed the manufacturing 2D manufacturuing drawings and we should have final prices for the units within the next 2 weeks.