{"id":41391,"date":"2015-09-17T13:15:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T20:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=41391"},"modified":"2025-12-11T14:09:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:09:42","slug":"storage-pod-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/storage-pod-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Highlights in Storage Pod Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-pod-recap-header\"<\/p>\n

In September 2009, we introduced the Backblaze Storage Pod to the storage community. We then open-sourced the Storage Pod’s hardware design, and included a parts list, assembly instructions, and a cool 3D Storage Pod model<\/a>. This enabled anyone with the desire and ability to create their own storage system. Over the past six years, we’ve continued to invest in our Storage Pods, and here are some of the highlights.<\/p>\n

1) The Beginning: Petabytes on a Budget<\/h2>\n

We thought our Storage Pod 1.0 blog post, \u201cPetabytes on a Budget: How to Build Cheap Cloud Storage<\/a>,\u201d would be read by a few thousand storage enthusiasts. We were wrong. Over one million people have read that post; it seems that open-sourcing the hardware design of a storage system was pretty popular.<\/p>\n

2) The Storage Pod Idea Catches On<\/h2>\n

The “Petabytes on a Budget” post showed that it was possible to build reliable, yet economical, data storage. Almost immediately, individuals and organizations began building their own Storage Pods. Here are a few examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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In early October 2009, Don Honabach reported that he had built his very own Storage Pod<\/a> which he used as an extreme media server.<\/span><\/td>\nChloe and Greg built a couple of Storage Pods<\/a> for the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) to hold satellite imagery data.<\/span><\/td>\nThe Vanderbilt University Institute of Image Science modified the Storage Pod design to economically store medical images<\/a>.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

3) More Secrets Revealed with Storage Pod<\/a> 2.0<\/h2>\n

After nearly two years and many lessons learned, we announced Storage Pod 2.0 in \u201cPetabytes<\/a> on a Budget v2.0: Revealing More Secrets.\u201d Pod 2.0 doubled the amount of storage to 135TB and doubled the speed, while lowering the overall cost of the system. And Storage Pod 2.0 was still five times cheaper than other data storage systems.<\/p>\n

4) Lights, Camera, Action<\/h2>\n

Over the years, we’ve tried to give folks a look behind the scenes here at Backblaze, even if it wasn’t very pretty. Here are a couple of videos that demonstrate our commitment to openness.<\/p>\n