I think his 'DC-3' analogy is valid - BB has a decent system if you don't mind the risks, Sun is selling peace of mind.
Right upto the point where they are sold to a database company that isn't interested in selling disks.
the nice thing about the blaze is that if seagate decide to double their prices or much you to a new expensive platform - you just buy toshiba instead.
I see Backblaze will learn a lot from building their storage systems and future versions may be much better, but this one cuts too many corners for me to feel confident it will have the same kind of reliability I would recommend.
What amazes me most is the use of desktop-grade hard drives. Not because they are sloppily built, but because their performance requirements are so different from a server environment.
This makes for some nice reading: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/6/28493-hard-disk-drives-...