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BackBlaze's business organisation is selling online backup solutions, but it has too been and then kind as to release data on hard drive failure rates and the design/specs of its storage hardware. Today is a big day for BackBlaze equally it's announcing a new version of its 4U rack-mounted storage pods. The Storage Pod 5.0 crams an astonishing 480TB into a single 4U case. This makes BackBlaze's online storage platform more efficient, but you can besides purchase a Storage Pod 6.0 of your very own if you've got the cash.

The first Storage Pod pattern was appear and released dorsum in 2009. Information technology consisted of 45 hard drives at the maximum mainstream chapters bachelor at the time, a mere 1.5TB. All told, the Storage Pod 1.0 could hold 67.5TB of data. BackBlaze has been working always since to increase the capacity of its pods without expanding the footprint. The Storage Pod 6.0 can accommodate threescore drives, an entire extra 15-drive row compared with past 45-drive designs. Information technology hits the theoretical 480TB ceiling by taking advantage of the latest 8TB drives.

BackBlaze did have to brand a few sacrifices to get to this point. A standard 4U case is 29-inches deep, but the Storage Pod 6.0 is longer at a little over 35-inches. It'll fit fine in an open rack, but information technology's not like you desire to put a door on it anyway with all those hard drives gasping for air. Information technology still runs on the same Ivy Bridge Xeon and 32GB of RAM as previous pods.

BackBlaze itself doesn't sell the pods, but the blueprint is freely available with CAD files and parts lists. It recommends Backuppods as a skilful source of the same hardware it uses if you desire your own pod. Backuppods volition soon offer the Storage Pod half dozen.0 assembled for $v,950 sans drives. BackBlaze was kind plenty to pause down exactly how much it volition toll y'all to gather your own backup pod with diverse drives.

The most cost-effective general use configuration has 60 4TB Seagate drives for a total capacity of 240TB and a cost of $10,364. BackBlaze is pretty proud of the per gigabyte cost of this configuration, which is only $0.043/GB. With 8TB drives the total toll is $22,595, only that'southward merely $0.047 per gigabyte. If you want the best bang for your buck and don't mind using slower archival drives, an array of 8TB Seagate SMR drives (480TB) works out to $16,364 for a toll of $0.034 per gigabyte.

Odds are you probably don't need a 4U Storage Pod with almost half a petabyte of storage, merely there are people who do. Or at least they think they practice. Either way, at present they've got an choice.