
Is the NSA Using Backblaze Storage Pods for PRISM Surveillance Data? - nantes
http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/06/09/is-the-nsa-using-backblaze-storage-pods-for-prism-surveillance-data-heres-what-we-know/
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liotier
Backblaze knows how to milk an entirely unrelated event for attracting
attention on themselves !

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RossM
> When SGI bought super-computer maker Cray in 1996, our CTO who worked there
> at > the time said the running joke was, "SGI sold no units this quarter,
> but made > a healthy profit." That wasn’t magic accounting. It was the NSA
> requiring > purchases not be disclosed.

Love this quote; when this kind of thing happens does it prove for some
difficult finances/auditing? Can you even report the units sold (SKUs,
quantities)?

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stox
There are/were Supercomputer manufacturers that you have never heard of
because their sole clients are the NSA and/or DOD. It has been a joke, in
Supercomputing circles for some time, that the real top 10 machines are
missing from the top 500 list for this very reason.

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ancarda
Are those calculations taking in a healthy amount of redundancy? BlackBlaze
Storage Pods were designed without any redundancy as it's done purely in
software by the company. They just let the hardware fail and replace the
drives. The data is then copied from a near-by, healthy pod.

I'm sure the NSA has redundancy in their design but I wonder to what extent.
Are there off-site backups? Could a physical disaster cause them to lose most
or all of their data?

