As we know, Backblaze publishes the specifications its product – Storage Pods, and recently it has announced its sixth generation design, with the number of disks rising from 45 to 60 while reducing costs down even further.
Their first design was equipped with 45 1.5TB disks in a 4U rackable box for a cost of about 12¢ per gigabyte. Later on, Backblaze used different internal designs varying in usage of port multipliers and PCIe cards packed with SATA controllers, but it could not surpass the 45 disk-per-box limit.
The new system can be seen as the first break from that setup. It has Ivy Bridge Xeon processor, 32GB RAM of the version 5, extra controllers and port multipliers to handle another 15 disks for 60 in total. As the result it became a little long overhanging the back of the rack by about four inches.
As a bulk purchaser Backblaze gets significant discount on disks. For a Pod with 4TB Seagate disks the company pays $8,734 to arrive at a per gigabyte price of 3.6¢, whereas retail price would put the cost up to $10,364 (4.3¢/GB). 8TB disks would increase the storage density but at a higher cost per gigabyte.
The company doesn’t sell the empty Storage Pods itself, but publishes CAD diagrams and all the other design information needed to manufacture the pods.
As we know, Backblaze publishes the specifications its product – Storage Pods, and recently it has announced its sixth generation design, with the number of disks rising from 45 to 60 while reducing costs down even further.
Their first design was equipped with 45 1.5TB disks in a 4U rackable box for a cost of about 12¢ per gigabyte. Later on, Backblaze used different internal designs varying in usage of port multipliers and PCIe cards packed with SATA controllers, but it could not surpass the 45 disk-per-box limit.
The new system can be seen as the first break from that setup. It has Ivy Bridge Xeon processor, 32GB RAM of the version 5, extra controllers and port multipliers to handle another 15 disks for 60 in total. As the result it became a little long overhanging the back of the rack by about four inches.
As a bulk purchaser Backblaze gets significant discount on disks. For a Pod with 4TB Seagate disks the company pays $8,734 to arrive at a per gigabyte price of 3.6¢, whereas retail price would put the cost up to $10,364 (4.3¢/GB). 8TB disks would increase the storage density but at a higher cost per gigabyte.
The company doesn’t sell the empty Storage Pods itself, but publishes CAD diagrams and all the other design information needed to manufacture the pods.
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Source: arstechnica.com
