Wow. Backblaze is now storing 100 petabytes of customer data in our cloud storage.
100 petabytes is a hard number to wrap our heads around, so…
How much data is 100 petabytes?
100 petabytes
100,000 terabytes
100,000,000 gigabytes
100,000,000,000 megabytes
Here are a few comparisons to help contextualize 100 petabytes:
- One quarter as much data as Facebook stores today for its over one billion users.
- 11,415 years of HD video watched 24×7 could be stored.
- $51,600,000 spent annually to store this much data on Amazon S3.
- 3 billion songs stored, or all of the songs iTunes has 1,270 times over.
All of this data is stored on Backblaze’s custom built and open-sourced Storage Pods, filled with approximately 30,000 hard drives (many of which were “farmed” and from which we analyzed “which hard drive you should buy“), and all to provide unlimited online backup.
What’s also crazy is that in January 2011, Backblaze had just 10 petabytes:
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- It took two and a half years to get from zero to 10 petabytes.
- It took three and a half years to get from 10 petabytes to 100 petabytes.
Wondering where these comparisons came from?
- June 2013, Facebook announced it stored 250 petabytes of data and was adding 15 petabytes per month. 10 months have passed, so Facebook should be storing:
250 petabytes + (15 petabytes/month * 10 months) = 400 petabytes. - HD takes up about one gigabyte per video-hour:
100 petabytes is 100,000,000 gigabytes, or 100,000,000 hours = 11,415 years. - In Northern California, Amazon S3 is priced at $0.094/GB/month to start:
100,000,000 gigabytes * $0.094/GB/month * 12 months = $112,800,000/year.
However, as you store more data, S3 gets cheaper and other regions cost less. Picking the lowest cost region and the lowest cost tier of pricing, we get:
100,000,000 gigabytes * $0.043/GB/month * 12 = $51,600,000/year. - An average song takes up three megabytes, resulting in 33 billion songs fitting into 100 petabytes. iTunes has 26 million songs available, or:
1/1270th of the number that can fit in Backblaze’s current cloud storage.
