I'm also inspired by how open Backblaze has been, one might even say they're "blazing" a trail. :) I have a lot of experience with using the Supermicro chassis

I'm also inspired by how open Backblaze has been, one might even say they're "blazing" a trail. :) I have a lot of experience with using the Supermicro chassis for storage. The question to ask yourself when deciding between "Supermicro or Backblaze pod" is: "Is storage density important to me?" The final costs of a loaded Supermicro chassis vs a loaded Backblaze chassis are pretty close. In fact, the Supermicro may be a better option if storage density is not important to you (e.g home/office or inexepensitve city - http://imgur.com/gallery/QfD6qIw http://imgur.com/gallery/QfD6qIw) But if your server is in a location where square-footage is expensive, the storage density is the primary metric you're looking to optimize for, since rent (and electricity) is your primary ongoing cost. To run a scalable storage solution with the Backblaze pods you need GREAT SOFTWARE. Maybe a really well configured ZFS pool/custom software/and great sysops? As far as I can tell that's Backblaze's secret sauce. For a company that wants to run a server that's going to be "pretty good" for what they need, using a Supermicro chassis with hardware RAID is definitely going to get you by for up to 96 TB.