Backblaze, one of the last remaining reasonably-priced cloud-based backup solutions, has revealed how it provides storage so cheaply: instead of using commercial hard drive enclosures, Backblaze makes its own. Last year it showed us the first Backblaze Storage Pod — 67TB for a build price of $7,867 — and now it has developed the Storage Pod 2.0, which uses Hitachi’s new 3TB drives to create a 135TB RAID6 storage array for just $7,384.

For a start, bear in mind that building your own 135TB array isn’t exactly easy: you’re going to have to wire together 45 hard drives — and you’ll need a case to put them in (Backblaze uses an $875 custom case (ZIP) from Protocase). You’ll only need one motherboard, an Intel i3 540 CPU, and 8GB of RAM — but you’ll also need three PCIe 4-port SATA II cards, nine port multiplier backplanes, and two (!) 760W power supplies to provide the juice. You’ll obviously need lots of little bits, too, like fans, SATA cables, screws, and so on. For a complete list of the components, scroll down to Appendix A in Backblaze’s blog post. You might want to build the Storage Pod in situ as it will weigh no less than 143lbs (64kg) when complete.

Once you’ve got all the parts and slotted everything together, it’s time to install an operating system and filesystem that can actually handle 135TB of storage. Backblaze opted for the 64-bit version of Debian 5 and ext4. Groups of 15 hard drives are grouped together using RAID6 to create a single volume of 39TB (RAID6 uses two drives for parity-checking redundancy). There’s a 16TB limit on ext4 partitions, so a logical volume manager (LVM) is also part of the stack. On top of all that, Backblaze’s proprietary software on top of Apache Tomcat runs the show — but unlike Pogoplug, Backblaze has sadly not made their software free to download. Instead, you’ll probably have to start from scratch and use FreeNAS to power your Storage Pod — or follow Backblaze’s Storage Pod 1.0 guide and try to cobble together your own software solution.

Beyond detailing the creation of Storage Pod 2.0, Backblaze also provides some interesting insights into the world of cloud storage. In terms of raw hardware, 1 petabyte now only costs about $57,000. Using Storage Pods, Backblaze can provide 1PB with power, rack space, and bandwidth for three years, for just $95,000. By comparison, 1PB of storage using Dell’s PowerVault arrays costs no less than $502,000 over three years. If you want to store 1PB in Amazon’s S3 cloud, it will cost you just under $2.5 million.

Backblaze attributes its ongoing success to its ultra-frugal Storage Pods. While competitors in the online backup space are closing down or hoiking prices up wildly, Backblaze still manages to offer unlimited, secure backup for $5/month.

Read more at Backblaze