Backblaze Completes 500 Petabyte Data Center update from February 2014

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Rows of storage units inside the new Backblaze data center in the Sacramento market. (Photo: Backblaze)

Online backup provider Backblaze has completed a 500 petabyte data center, at the Sungard Availability facility just outside of Sacramento, California, the company said in a blog post. After out growing its 40 Petabytes of storage in a caged facility in Oakland, the company set out in 2012 to find a new home. After reviewing proposals from all over the nation, Sungard was selected, and the staff went to work installing the company's signature Storage Pods. The data center also has SAS 70 Type II and ISO 9001 certifications and is PCI-DSS compliant.

The Sacramento data center has been quietly receiving customer data, and by September of last year all new customer accounts were being serviced there. Backblaze expects to store 500 petabytes of customer data at the new facility.

The extremely cost-efficient Backblaze Storage Pod 1.0 caught the interest of many in 2009, and its current 3.0 Pod packs 180 terabytes in a redesigned 4U chassis with many upgraded components. Having shared their design ideas on the Storage Pod architecture, other companies such as Netflix were inspired to design their own custom storage appliances. The complete story of Storage Pod 3.0, the architecture, specs, and economics are in this February 2013 blog post.