multipetabyte

Multipetabyte is a descriptive term for data storage at the scale of several petabytes (PB). It is used in IT, data science, and archives to describe datasets too large for small storage systems but not yet at exabyte scale. There is no formal SI unit named multipetabyte; the standard units remain PB (decimal) and PiB (binary).

Typical deployments begin at a few PB and extend into tens, hundreds, or more PB. An exabyte is about 1,000 PB, so multipetabyte data sits below that threshold but represents substantial scale for many organizations, such as national laboratories, large research consortia, and major media archives.

Applications include large-scale scientific experiments (genomics, astronomy, climate modeling), public or enterprise archives, and large media libraries. Datasets such as raw telescope images, genome catalogs, video repositories, and backup archives often reach this scale.

Infrastructure and architectures rely on distributed file systems and object storage, often deployed in data centers or cloud environments. Techniques include data deduplication, compression, tiered storage, and robust metadata management to support durability, scalability, and parallel access.

Management challenges include high capital and operating costs, energy use, network bandwidth requirements, and data governance. Effective data lifecycle policies, indexing, and search capabilities are essential for usable access at multipetabyte scales.