StorageMojo has a post on Backblaze’s most recent open source storage solution.

2 years ago Backblaze, an online backup provider, open-sourced their storage pod design: 45 drives in a box (see Build a RAID 6 array for $100/TB). Now they’re back with v2: 45 3TB drives in a box with higher performance.

Backblaze uses this device for their storage service, and compare their costs vs. AWS S3.

And the savings over renting cloud storage can be substantial as this Backblaze chart suggests:

True, Amazon provides many more services, but if you need petabytes for mini-bucks, this is hard to beat.

Backblaze blog discusses its own savings.

Density Matters – Double the Storage in the Same Enclosure

We upgraded the hard drives inside the 4U sheet metal pod enclosure to store twice as much data in the same space. After the cost of filling a rack with pods, one datacenter rack containing 10 pods costs Backblaze about $2,100 per month to operate, roughly divided equally into thirds for physical space rental, bandwidth, and electricity. Doubling the density saves us half of the money spent on both physical space and electricity. The picture below is from our datacenter, showing 15 petabytes racked in a single row of cabinets. The newest cabinets squeeze one petabyte into three-quarters of a single cabinet for $56,696.

Our online backup cloud storage is our largest cost, and we are obsessed with providing a service that remains secure, reliable and, above all, inexpensive. We’ve seen competitors unable to react to these demands who were forced to exit the market, like Iron Mountain, or raise prices, like Mozy and Carbonite. Controlling the hardware design has allowed us to keep prices low