---
created_at: '2014-10-26T15:03:31.000Z'
title: 'Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage (2010)'
url: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage-2/
author: Oculus
points: 142
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 125
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1414335811
_tags:
- story
- author_Oculus
- story_8511219
objectID: '8511219'
year: 2010

---
![Backblaze 67 Terabyte
Server](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/backblaze-cheap-cloud-server-storage2.jpg)

  
on ALL of the Storage Pod versions. 

To get the latest updates and informationon ALL of the Storage Pod
versions. [Click Here](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/storage-pod.html)

At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5
per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of
customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After
looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build
our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for
$7,867.

What we actually provide for our customers is [online
backup](https://www.backblaze.com) for home and [business online
backup](https://secure.backblaze.com/business.htm) for work. However, in
this post, we’ll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you’re
welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can
benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back
to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success
at Backblaze.

Below is a video that shows a 3-D model of the Backblaze Storage Pod.
Continue reading to learn the exact details of the design.

[You can download the full 3-D model of the Backblaze Storage Pod
here.](https://www.backblaze.com/files/backblaze-storage-pod-3d-design.zip)  
  

#### Backblaze Needs Plenty of Reliable, Cheap Storage

To say that Backblaze needs lots of storage is an understatement. We’re
a backup service, so our datacenter contains a complete copy of all of
our customers’ data, plus multiple versions of files that change. In
rough terms, every time one of our customers buys a hard drive,
Backblaze needs another hard drive. A long time ago we stopped measuring
storage in our datacenter in gigabytes or terabytes and started
measuring in petabytes.

To get a sense of what this looks like, here is a shot of me deploying
new pods in our datacenter. The small stack of six pods in the rack I’m
working on contains just under half a petabyte of storage.  
[  
![Tim in
Datacenter](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tim-backblaze-datacenter-servers.jpg)](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tim-datacenter-servers.jpg)

To offer our service at a reasonable price, we need affordable storage
at a multi-petabyte scale.
