Dropbox announces new gen server hardware for higher efficiency and scalability(dropbox.tech)
dropbox.tech
Dropbox announces new gen server hardware for higher efficiency and scalability
https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/seventh-generation-server-hardware
66 comments
It would be sick if they could leverage this increased efficiency to reduce how frequently they bother already paying customers with annoying upsells
I think their former head of growth (Elena Verna), stated on LinkedIn that everybody in the company hates those black patterns too, yet every single experiment in removing them and providing alternatives resulted in unacceptable revenue losses.
I hope this analysis does not factor in the brand damage, lower user satisfaction and the risk of losing customers to an emerging competitor without these dark patterns.
honestly it might very well be optimal (if you optimize for money).
optimal does not have to be pleasant.
optimal does not have to be pleasant.
Well honestly it's hard to sell a feature as a product.
In case you are wondering this was a Steve jobs quote
Yesterday they sent me an email inviting me to use "Dropbox Passwords".
A service that they decided to abandon: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/dropbox-passwords-disconti...
A service that they decided to abandon: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/dropbox-passwords-disconti...
These kinds of upsell decisions aren't coming from the same people who work on technical topics.
Out of curiosity, do people here still use Dropbox? I've had an account for over a decade, but haven't used it since ~2014; Google Drive and Syncthing have largely replaced it for me.
My 2 to Dropbox is my primary storage location. I can freely access it everywhere, move countries at a whim and don't need lousy drives with me.
(I do backup my Dropbox occasionally to s3).
Google drive is okay but im not trusting my entire file history on top of my email history to Google only to find it locked up one day. It gives me calm that my files arent entrusted solely to one Google account.
(I do backup my Dropbox occasionally to s3).
Google drive is okay but im not trusting my entire file history on top of my email history to Google only to find it locked up one day. It gives me calm that my files arent entrusted solely to one Google account.
Never stopped. I save some semi-sensitive data as well now, but inside Cryptomator.
It still works few times better than Google Drive and, if I could pick a safe estimate, some 100…000 times better than i-bloody-Cloud. The latter is not really a compliment. The latter is just an empirical example of a mammoth company churching out subpar software year after year to a captive fanbase (distinct from a customer base) in its infinite arrogance and non-h/w incompetence.
I did try alternatives like Mega, Tresorit (my god, this solid snappy native app sucks in functionality!) et cetera but nothing came close in reliability, smooth operation and consistency. So there I am still tolerating one of those few last remaining non-native apps on my devices. I have Syncthing but that has a different role and usecase and I reckon not just for me.
It still works few times better than Google Drive and, if I could pick a safe estimate, some 100…000 times better than i-bloody-Cloud. The latter is not really a compliment. The latter is just an empirical example of a mammoth company churching out subpar software year after year to a captive fanbase (distinct from a customer base) in its infinite arrogance and non-h/w incompetence.
I did try alternatives like Mega, Tresorit (my god, this solid snappy native app sucks in functionality!) et cetera but nothing came close in reliability, smooth operation and consistency. So there I am still tolerating one of those few last remaining non-native apps on my devices. I have Syncthing but that has a different role and usecase and I reckon not just for me.
I interned there a decade ago and still have 1TB free from that; I would have switched away a LONG time ago if not for that. I hate how sending anybody a link spams them with a million pop ups, i think the intrusive ads almost make it seem like they need a dropbox account to view my file. Sending files to my friends is embarrassing, sending files to my grandparents impossible.
I do. It Just Works(tm), has never given me any issue, and it gives me a space to have my personal files my own way. My Google Drive is full of files and folders shared by others so not sure I would be able to organize it without making a mess. And OneDrive just doesn't work, half the time I want a file I don't have stored locally I am faced with obscure errors and have to fight the software for a while.
I bet some people do. Nobody has "apps" and that many integrations like Dropbox. Plus, it runs on all major platforms, and integrate many services. So you don't have to pay for a bunch of services if you pay for Dropbox.
I do. Backup all my stuff using Duplicati to OneDrive, as it integrates quite well. Works best with that software IMHO. Quite cheap for 2TB, also use it for my parents PC back-up.
Enjoyed 20GB for free for some years thanks to a deal with Samsung when I bought a phone. Once that expired it was free 5GB or 1TB, with the 1TB being way too expensive in my view. So rather than paying them a little I paid them none.
Due to other reasons I ended up paying for a family subscription to Office 365, and after that there was zero point in paying the same for just storage with Dropbox.
Due to other reasons I ended up paying for a family subscription to Office 365, and after that there was zero point in paying the same for just storage with Dropbox.
I need to use Dropbox it because a) I need a Linux client b) I need a server in the cloud.
I used to use Nextcloud, but the software was very poor.
I used to use Nextcloud, but the software was very poor.
I use it for smaller side businesses where I need an easy way to have a shared file repository. There may be other ways to accomplish it, like what you've described, but it works well with little configuration on my part.
Yes. I’ve been paying for Dropbox for years.
I also have iCloud for photos and Google Drive from my Gemini subscription.
iCloud sync really doesn’t work well for files. I tried using it for logseq once and it messed it up.
Google Drive I have no idea. I’ve never been motivated to use it.
Dropbox has been solid — super low latency sync and I’ve never lost data. Also like most people here I use Dropbox because it the one major sync providert that has a maintained Linux client that works well.
I also have iCloud for photos and Google Drive from my Gemini subscription.
iCloud sync really doesn’t work well for files. I tried using it for logseq once and it messed it up.
Google Drive I have no idea. I’ve never been motivated to use it.
Dropbox has been solid — super low latency sync and I’ve never lost data. Also like most people here I use Dropbox because it the one major sync providert that has a maintained Linux client that works well.
No I now use Google drive, Dropbox is arguably 'better', but it's far far easier to just use drive nowadays.
I would say though that I know some power-users such as design houses working with big 3D files still use it heavily. I assume that a dedicated tool gets to offer bigger file size support or something.
I would say though that I know some power-users such as design houses working with big 3D files still use it heavily. I assume that a dedicated tool gets to offer bigger file size support or something.
I do. Google Drive is not an option to me because I don't trust Google at all, ie when some Google robot decides to lock me out of my account for unspecified reasons, I can't talk to a human to resolve it etc. The idea of putting anything important to me life in Google's hands scares me, so I try not to.
I have mail with Fastmail for similar reasons.
I guess I could be using Syncthing or the myriad of other competitors as well, but Dropbox still Just Works, and has for a long time. They've not enshittified their product as much as one might expect, so I remain a paying customer.
I have mail with Fastmail for similar reasons.
I guess I could be using Syncthing or the myriad of other competitors as well, but Dropbox still Just Works, and has for a long time. They've not enshittified their product as much as one might expect, so I remain a paying customer.
I still do and I mainly use it for backups of important photos and docs. I also trust it more over Google Drive because the latter has given me poor first impressions when sharing links and file size limits
Still the best cloud service for me for my Windows. But I'm interested to hear how you set up Drive and Syncthing. Is the UI as familiar to use as the the standard Windows folder?
They are losing tons of customers each quarter.
Source?
Their quarterly reports.
Let's look at them. Their presentations [0] are giving us "paid users":
Oh maybe, what we see is the effects of the election, which is also plausible.
[0]: https://investors.dropbox.com/financial-information/earnings...
- Q1-2024: 18.16M
- Q2-2024: 18.22M
- Q3-2024: 18.24M
- Q4-2024: 18.22M
- Q1-2025: 18.16M
- Q2-2025: 18.13M
Oh maybe, what we see is the effects of the election, which is also plausible.
[0]: https://investors.dropbox.com/financial-information/earnings...
Sorry, "tons of" was an overstatement, but still they've been losing customers overall (and revenue, although they manage to grow earnings through price increases).
Google drive for private stuff, One Drive and Box at work.
Last time I used Dropbox was for a project around 2011.
Last time I used Dropbox was for a project around 2011.
Still using it every day. Works on every device I have. Not expensive. I've only had one problem in the past 10 years that required technical assistance, and I was able to get a human to help me in a reasonable time.
One reason I stick with them over Drive, iCloud, or OneDrive is that file sync is 99% of their revenue. They have every incentive to keep it running as smoothly and reliably as possible. More incentive than companies where files are just one of several services.
One reason I stick with them over Drive, iCloud, or OneDrive is that file sync is 99% of their revenue. They have every incentive to keep it running as smoothly and reliably as possible. More incentive than companies where files are just one of several services.
I switched to Google Drive and plan on switching to Syncthing once I get off my lazy ass. I already have some stuff on Syncthing and so far so good.
I've used dropbox for quite a long time (and still use), with a 10Gb free account (bumped up from the base by various deals, and things like the old summer treasure hunt when they still did that).
I still prefer it for automated backups off my phone (which is one reason that Google's incessant, dark-patterns-y, nagging to use Google Photos is so infuriating), before clearing them down to a NAS periodically, usually keeping the most recent couple of months available in dropbox.
Beyond that use, it's just occasional use to share files with people.
I still prefer it for automated backups off my phone (which is one reason that Google's incessant, dark-patterns-y, nagging to use Google Photos is so infuriating), before clearing them down to a NAS periodically, usually keeping the most recent couple of months available in dropbox.
Beyond that use, it's just occasional use to share files with people.
Closed my account after the Mission SF soccer field incident and never looked back.
“Who gives a shit about the neighborhood?”
“Who gives a shit about the neighborhood?”
To be clear, that altercation was definitely taken out of context and there was bad behavior on both sides.
As reported at the time [1], the kids who didn't have a reservation knew there were reservations, but wanted to highlight that they didn't like the new system and the Mission was gentrifying:
> Kai told me that he had heard over the summer that pickup-soccer players were regularly being kicked off the field in the evening by adults who had paid to reserve the field through the city’s Recreation and Park Department. Having grown up playing soccer on that field, Kai decided to try to help the neighborhood kids make a stand for the existing rules. “I’ve also felt kind of exiled from the community, because of my eviction, and I didn’t want to see the same thing happening,” he said.
The Dropbox employees effectively took the blame for a Rec and Park policy that was (temporarily) changed in response [2].
So sure, they said something clumsy in a heated argument. But if they'd more politely said "The courts are reservable, why should it matter which neighborhood I'm from?" would you still be so angry at them?
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/dropbox-...
[2] https://abc7news.com/amp/tech-workers-mission-district-teens...
As reported at the time [1], the kids who didn't have a reservation knew there were reservations, but wanted to highlight that they didn't like the new system and the Mission was gentrifying:
> Kai told me that he had heard over the summer that pickup-soccer players were regularly being kicked off the field in the evening by adults who had paid to reserve the field through the city’s Recreation and Park Department. Having grown up playing soccer on that field, Kai decided to try to help the neighborhood kids make a stand for the existing rules. “I’ve also felt kind of exiled from the community, because of my eviction, and I didn’t want to see the same thing happening,” he said.
The Dropbox employees effectively took the blame for a Rec and Park policy that was (temporarily) changed in response [2].
So sure, they said something clumsy in a heated argument. But if they'd more politely said "The courts are reservable, why should it matter which neighborhood I'm from?" would you still be so angry at them?
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/dropbox-...
[2] https://abc7news.com/amp/tech-workers-mission-district-teens...
TIL: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/12/27/373284989...
Never heard of this before, disgusting behaviour.
Never heard of this before, disgusting behaviour.
Doubling the PDUs seems shockingly wasteful as apposed to just reducing equipment per rack slightly, there's no way you can consistently cool 30KW/rack with air (well, OK, you could but it's much more inefficient or would require RDHX). Best case you're looking at about 20KW, so they've doubled the power infra to deliver up to 30% more power?
Lower rack densities are also more efficient overall (down to about 6KW/Rack where they start getting more in-efficient again) as you're able to move air more slowly over the severs, it's much better for example to have two racks of 20X2U 500W servers than one rack of 40X1U 500W servers, as you can use bigger fans in the servers which are more efficient, and handle air in the room more easily.
Lower rack densities are also more efficient overall (down to about 6KW/Rack where they start getting more in-efficient again) as you're able to move air more slowly over the severs, it's much better for example to have two racks of 20X2U 500W servers than one rack of 40X1U 500W servers, as you can use bigger fans in the servers which are more efficient, and handle air in the room more easily.
I always thought dual socket systems would be good for storage and vps based systems, but here we see that inter socket latency was hampering them. Good read!
This has been known for quite a while, in distributed systems single socket for storage is both far cheaper and typically faster. I remember building these with E3-v5 a good while back.
I'm surprised Dropbox is not just 'own data centre' but 'teams designing custom hardware for our own data centre' scale tbh? Although I also would not have guessed that (even after laying off ~500 in each of 2023 and '24) it had a headcount of about 2100.
It's not really designing to be honest here, what they describe is more "specifying". These will just be fairly off the shelf designs with thier own choice of ram/disk/CPU and so on.
I'm wondering how Oxide Computer racks can look so clean (for example in this picture: https://bsky.app/profile/oxide.computer/post/3lvdw7mdwms2i) compared to Dropbox's racks, and if there is a technical advantage beyond the aesthetic advantage.
The pictures of Dropbox is from the rear of the rack, oxide is the front.
Oxide may well have a neater 'rear' though as they sell it as a whole system so will have bus bars and similar rather than PDUs and cables I imagine.
Oxide may well have a neater 'rear' though as they sell it as a whole system so will have bus bars and similar rather than PDUs and cables I imagine.
You're right. Here is a picture of the back: https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e...
Interesting, still cabled power, slightly neater but not really.
Found some explanation on their blog:
> Anyone accustomed to a datacenter will note the missing mass of cold-aisle cabling that one typically sees at the front of a rack. But moving to the back of the rack reveals only a DC busbar and a tight, cabled backplane. This represents one of the bigger bets we made: we blindmated networking. This was mechanically tricky, but the payoff is huge: capacity can be added to the Oxide cloud computer simply by snapping in a new compute sled — nothing to be cabled whatsoever! This is a domain in which we have leapfrogged the hyperscalers, who (for their own legacy reasons) don’t do it this way. This can be jarring to veteran technologists. As one exclaimed upon seeing the rack last week, "I am both surprised and delighted!" (Or rather: a very profane variant of that sentiment.)
https://oxide.computer/blog/the-cloud-computer#_where_are_th...
> Anyone accustomed to a datacenter will note the missing mass of cold-aisle cabling that one typically sees at the front of a rack. But moving to the back of the rack reveals only a DC busbar and a tight, cabled backplane. This represents one of the bigger bets we made: we blindmated networking. This was mechanically tricky, but the payoff is huge: capacity can be added to the Oxide cloud computer simply by snapping in a new compute sled — nothing to be cabled whatsoever! This is a domain in which we have leapfrogged the hyperscalers, who (for their own legacy reasons) don’t do it this way. This can be jarring to veteran technologists. As one exclaimed upon seeing the rack last week, "I am both surprised and delighted!" (Or rather: a very profane variant of that sentiment.)
https://oxide.computer/blog/the-cloud-computer#_where_are_th...
> a new band of storage areal density has finally arrived
Surely 'density' is a measure of stuff per area? Does 'areal density' have an additional meaning?
Surely 'density' is a measure of stuff per area? Does 'areal density' have an additional meaning?
> Surely 'density' is a measure of stuff per area?
Not really, the normal definition of density is mass per volume. If you mean something else (like storage capacity per area), it needs to be specified.
Not really, the normal definition of density is mass per volume. If you mean something else (like storage capacity per area), it needs to be specified.
You get linear density (for density along a line) and also volumetric density (scales with volume). So you're basically making it clear how many dimensions are important to your measurement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_density
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_density
Areal is the adjective form of area.
Dropbox Storage is a MUCH easier problem to solve than S3. They don't have the mix of high perf vs cold backup storage, so design is much, much simpler.
Its the same design. Actually, S3 is easier, because of the bigger scale, making it easier to support high perf.
The bigger the scale the easier it is to support high perf on HDDs.
The bigger the scale the easier it is to support high perf on HDDs.
How is Dropbox doing by the way? Are they in good shape?
They seem to be "out of headlines" for some time, which of course is not necessarily a bad thing...
They seem to be "out of headlines" for some time, which of course is not necessarily a bad thing...
Aren't they out of the headlines because they cut ties with the tech community? Hired Condoleezza rice, spammed notifications, made sharing without account impossible (or hard?), broke shared links on purpose, bought and shut down mailbox. And all of that plus very high prices.
They do claim to be profitable though, if I read that correctly.
They do claim to be profitable though, if I read that correctly.
You can share without an account no problem. Condi hasn’t been on their board in years. Haven’t heard about this broken shared links.
Their earnings were released last week. Their pre-GAAP margin is like 40%.
Their earnings were released last week. Their pre-GAAP margin is like 40%.
Pretty sure they lost to rsync ;)
Recently moved all my stuff from iCloud to DB - worth every penny.
Curious why? I'm considering doing the opposite since I have to pay for iCloud anyway.
You can actually keep it offline (permanently) and their sync is more immediate. iCloud gave me issues when downloading many (large files) and you couldn't really prioritise certain files. That, and a few other smaller things - like a much better web app experience, etc.
I actually still pay for iCloud - but mainly for the Photos storage space.
I actually still pay for iCloud - but mainly for the Photos storage space.
I pay for both.
iCloud for photos and Mac backup.
Dropbox for files. iCloud is somehow not good for low latency file syncs.
Even for photos it’s not excellent. It takes a while for photos on my phone to show up on my macOS Photos app. But I’m less sensitive to photos lagging than actual files lagging.
Dropbox is instantaneous.
iCloud for photos and Mac backup.
Dropbox for files. iCloud is somehow not good for low latency file syncs.
Even for photos it’s not excellent. It takes a while for photos on my phone to show up on my macOS Photos app. But I’m less sensitive to photos lagging than actual files lagging.
Dropbox is instantaneous.
I have a few qualms with this server hardware
1. You can already build such a system yourself quite trivially
2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating
1. You can already build such a system yourself quite trivially
2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating