Submission + - Petabytes On A Budget - How To Build Cheap Storage
sarkeizen writes: "Backblaze, another addition to the growing list of online backup services has posted some pretty detailed information about the hardware they use. Following the tradition of Google they build almost exclusively from commodity parts but unlike the big 'G' they have placed all of this into a spiffy 4U enclosure of their own design. This fire-engine red casing houses 45 1.5 TB hard drives. The drives are combined through port multiplier backplanes which are in turn connected into four SATA controllers. 64 Bit Ubuntu's software RAID 6 is used to expose a JFS filesystem via HTTP. According to them each device costs them $7,867 in parts which yields 67 TB of raw storage. Although they don't sell these things they freely invite hackers to create their own 'storage pods', providing a full bill of goods and even solidworks files to fabricate the casing."