• "Floods, Viruses, and Volcanoes: Managing Supply Chain in Uncertain Tim

    From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to All on Tue Aug 4 13:44:02 2020
    "Floods, Viruses, and Volcanoes: Managing Supply Chain in Uncertain Times"

    https://www.backblaze.com/blog/managing-supply-chain-in-uncertain-times/

    "At the most basic level, our services and products rely on a singular
    building block: the hard drive. And today, we’re going to discuss how
    our team has ensured that, as more businesses and individuals turn to
    cloud storage to solve their rapidly evolving data storage and
    management needs, we’ve had what we need to care for the petabytes of
    inbound data."

    "We’re no strangers to navigating an external threat to business as
    usual. In 2011, flooding in Thailand impacted nearly 50% of the world’s
    hard drive manufacturing capability, limiting supply and dramatically
    raising hard drive prices. At the time, Backblaze was only about four
    years into providing its computer backup service, and we needed to find
    a way to keep up with storage demand without going broke. We came up
    with a hack that became internally known as “drive farming.”"

    I have this mental image of farmers on tractors planting hard drive
    seeds and harvesting full grown 3.5 inch hard drives a couple of months
    later.

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mark Perkins@21:1/5 to All on Tue Aug 4 18:11:43 2020
    On Tue, 4 Aug 2020 13:44:02 -0500, Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    "Floods, Viruses, and Volcanoes: Managing Supply Chain in Uncertain Times"

    https://www.backblaze.com/blog/managing-supply-chain-in-uncertain-times/

    "At the most basic level, our services and products rely on a singular >building block: the hard drive. And today, were going to discuss how
    our team has ensured that, as more businesses and individuals turn to
    cloud storage to solve their rapidly evolving data storage and
    management needs, weve had what we need to care for the petabytes of
    inbound data."

    "Were no strangers to navigating an external threat to business as
    usual. In 2011, flooding in Thailand impacted nearly 50% of the worlds
    hard drive manufacturing capability, limiting supply and dramatically
    raising hard drive prices. At the time, Backblaze was only about four
    years into providing its computer backup service, and we needed to find
    a way to keep up with storage demand without going broke. We came up
    with a hack that became internally known as drive farming."

    I have this mental image of farmers on tractors planting hard drive
    seeds and harvesting full grown 3.5 inch hard drives a couple of months >later.

    But you remember what happened back then, right? With their usual
    purchasing channels drying up, they had a bunch of employees drive from
    store to store, buying whatever they could find on store shelves.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to Mark Perkins on Tue Aug 4 19:31:55 2020
    On 8/4/2020 6:11 PM, Mark Perkins wrote:
    On Tue, 4 Aug 2020 13:44:02 -0500, Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

    "Floods, Viruses, and Volcanoes: Managing Supply Chain in Uncertain Times" >>
    https://www.backblaze.com/blog/managing-supply-chain-in-uncertain-times/

    "At the most basic level, our services and products rely on a singular
    building block: the hard drive. And today, we’re going to discuss how
    our team has ensured that, as more businesses and individuals turn to
    cloud storage to solve their rapidly evolving data storage and
    management needs, we’ve had what we need to care for the petabytes of
    inbound data."

    "We’re no strangers to navigating an external threat to business as
    usual. In 2011, flooding in Thailand impacted nearly 50% of the world’s
    hard drive manufacturing capability, limiting supply and dramatically
    raising hard drive prices. At the time, Backblaze was only about four
    years into providing its computer backup service, and we needed to find
    a way to keep up with storage demand without going broke. We came up
    with a hack that became internally known as “drive farming.”"

    I have this mental image of farmers on tractors planting hard drive
    seeds and harvesting full grown 3.5 inch hard drives a couple of months
    later.

    But you remember what happened back then, right? With their usual
    purchasing channels drying up, they had a bunch of employees drive from
    store to store, buying whatever they could find on store shelves.

    Yup. And they had customers buy drives and send to them.

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)