No Earthquakes, No Locust

You know your terabyte external hard drive that sits on your desk? Backblaze's newest data center essentially has 500,000 of those. Here's why it chose to place it in Sacramento.

Backblaze just unveiled its new 500 Petabyte data center after a high-profile search for a second center to offset its 40 Petabyte facility in Oakland that was “bursting at the seams,” says CEO Gleb Budman. The storage amount is gratuitous, but Gleb says it's necessary to meet growing demand for its backup services. Backblaze targets consumers and small companies to completely backup everything on a personal computer hard drive. And with today's exponential growth in data needs (think of all your music, Vines, documents, online game files), “most people really don't know where everything is on their computer,” he says. 

Gleb likes Sacramento for its low power costs and the fact it's outside many natural disaster zones, including the much-feared Big One (as seen in this company graphic) and according to a company blog, “to the best of our knowledge the data center has never experienced a plague of locusts.” The company is hiring for local staff in Sacramento.

Backblaze already is planning for future expansion, possibly even outside California. “I think we're probably two years out from needing another space,” Gleb says. “I swear I think we have every wedding photographer and videographer on the planet.” Backblaze's average customer data use is growing up to 50% each year, so it's growth can be attributed to existing customers as well as new business.