# What are the best practices to store data in zarr and how scalable is zarr?

**URL:** <https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/what-are-the-best-practices-to-store-data-in-zarr-and-how-scalable-is-zarr/5573>\
**Category:** Data\
**Created:** [April 28, 2026, 4:16pm UTC](https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/what-are-the-best-practices-to-store-data-in-zarr-and-how-scalable-is-zarr/5573 "2026-04-28T16:16:45Z")\
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**Author:** ![TomNicholas](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.pangeo.io/tomnicholas/32/3189_2.png) [@TomNicholas](https://discourse.pangeo.io/u/TomNicholas)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 6:05pm UTC](https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/what-are-the-best-practices-to-store-data-in-zarr-and-how-scalable-is-zarr/5573/3 "2026-06-02T18:05:06Z")

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@Kaboom_Official Zarr / Icechunk can scale pretty large.

This GOES-16 archive has 7 billion chunks

> [@GOES-16 as a single virtual Zarr store](https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/goes-16-as-a-single-virtual-zarr-store/5721):
>
> I stress-tested VirtualiZarr and Icechunk by ingesting all of the GOES-16 Cloud and Moisture Imagery Product archive into a single store. As far as I know this is the biggest virtual Zarr store ever (by number of chunks - 7.1 billion).

and there are several copies of ERA5 in Zarr, each at Petabyte-scale

> **[Low Latency Icechunk ERA5 Now Available on the Earthmover Data Marketplace |...](https://www.earthmover.io/blog/low-latency-era5-icechunk-marketplace)**
>
> We released Icechunk-ERA5, a performance-optimized, daily updating ERA5 data cube available now in the Earthmover data marketplace.

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