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Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

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Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#21

Post by aroch »

venomsnake wrote: post #11
rgoodwintx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Details? I don't work for BB, but have worked in the backup industry for some time in my past, and always curious.

Not the OP, have used BB for 5 years (and still using, the service is totally fine): Initial sync is a nighmare. The upload is on the slow side. Biggest gripe so far is that I just cannot tell the client that some files are more important than the others. I would love my pdf invoices and changed KDBX files to be synced before uploading the uncompressed blu ray of Guardians of the galaxy. On the other hand there are p…

What's the point of backing up a bluray rip? Either you have the source material, in which case its almost always going to be faster to rerip than restore from backup, or you downloaded it once already (for, ahem, free) so why not download it again and not pay the cost of storing that data?

Also, I would hope no one doing mastering is uploading their raws, in real time, to a service like backblaze. On-site thunderbolt / NAS solutions are almost exclusively used in RAW backups in studios. With offsite copies stored at regular intervals via good old sneaker-net.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#22

Post by kbenson »

gnufied wrote: post #19
atYevP wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ -> Gleb is Backblaze's CEO. (I too, work for Backblaze).

Please make a Linux version of your client. Even a CLI based tool that works in background will do. From afar it looks very compelling, but unfortunately I can't use it, because no Linux :(

Didn't they mention in the B2 announcement discussion that there's a linux client for that? Or, more accurately, it's a python library used by a simple python CLI?

I just found this[1], which looks like what you want. It's not a library, but it is only 245 lines of python, so I doubt it's that complex.

1: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/b2-python-pusher.html

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

atYevP wrote: post #14
masonhipp wrote: post #4

I find these breakdowns fascinating. As an enthusiast PC builder I occasionally consider running my own data-systems or servers... In the end though I'm glad I have guys like you putting these together: clearly an enormous amount of thought going into it. Thanks for the write-up.

Yev from Backblaze here -> You're welcome! We're always pretty stoked to do these, even though it does indeed take a lot of man-power to put together. The nice thing is, it's actually helpful! A lot of organizations, companies, and research labs use them, and that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

I use a Backblaze box as an Archive Team staging environment! Thank you!

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#24

Post by mikeash »

atYevP wrote: post #14
masonhipp wrote: post #4

I find these breakdowns fascinating. As an enthusiast PC builder I occasionally consider running my own data-systems or servers... In the end though I'm glad I have guys like you putting these together: clearly an enormous amount of thought going into it. Thanks for the write-up.

Yev from Backblaze here -> You're welcome! We're always pretty stoked to do these, even though it does indeed take a lot of man-power to put together. The nice thing is, it's actually helpful! A lot of organizations, companies, and research labs use them, and that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

Do you find any internal benefits from this stuff as well? For example, having it be better documented, or finding areas of improvement as you go through the write-up, or things like that? Not that you need it to be directly helpful, warm and fuzzy can certainly be enough....

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#25

Post by atYevP »

gnufied wrote: post #19
atYevP wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ -> Gleb is Backblaze's CEO. (I too, work for Backblaze).

Please make a Linux version of your client. Even a CLI based tool that works in background will do. From afar it looks very compelling, but unfortunately I can't use it, because no Linux :(

We've got that coming up with Backblaze B2, we have APIs and CLIs that you'll be able to use for Linux builds and servers! If you go to: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/ you can read our docs!

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#26

Post by venomsnake »

aroch wrote: post #21
venomsnake wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, have used BB for 5 years (and still using, the service is totally fine): Initial sync is a nighmare. The upload is on the slow side. Biggest gripe so far is that I just cannot tell the client that some files are more important than the others. I would love my pdf invoices and changed KDBX files to be synced before uploading the uncompressed blu ray of Guardians of the galaxy. On the other hand there are p…

What's the point of backing up a bluray rip? Either you have the source material, in which case its almost always going to be faster to rerip than restore from backup, or you downloaded it once already (for, ahem, free) so why not download it again and not pay the cost of storing that data? Also, I would hope no one doing mastering is uploading their raws, in real time, to a service like backblaze. On-site thunderbol…

I just needed to think of something big. Anyway there is big stuff that is not that important - lets say couple of gigabytes of logs but nice to have.

BB folder and file type structure makes it relatively hard to back up just some files of given type. And some stuff like tars and zips could be arbitrary in size and importance.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#27

Post by atYevP »

mikeash wrote: post #24
atYevP wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yev from Backblaze here -> You're welcome! We're always pretty stoked to do these, even though it does indeed take a lot of man-power to put together. The nice thing is, it's actually helpful! A lot of organizations, companies, and research labs use them, and that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

Do you find any internal benefits from this stuff as well? For example, having it be better documented, or finding areas of improvement as you go through the write-up, or things like that? Not that you need it to be directly helpful, warm and fuzzy can certainly be enough....

Good question! As part of the process for developing these we spend months and months using AGILE/SCRUM to iterate and come up with a "final answer" (though we're constantly still iterating). So it's not so much that we gain anything from writing the posts, the posts are more of a culmination of months of effort. We do end up talking about the pods more closely when we're writing the posts and as part of that some minor changes do happen, but not that many.

The sinister benefit is that the more folks read the posts, the more it gets shared (presumably) and we hope that can lead to some new folks finding out about our online backup service, and therefore signing up. Which would make our finance department feel warm and fuzzy too!

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#28

Post by atYevP »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23
atYevP wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yev from Backblaze here -> You're welcome! We're always pretty stoked to do these, even though it does indeed take a lot of man-power to put together. The nice thing is, it's actually helpful! A lot of organizations, companies, and research labs use them, and that makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

I use a Backblaze box as an Archive Team staging environment! Thank you!

Awesome! <3

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#29

Post by mikeash »

atYevP wrote: post #27
mikeash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find any internal benefits from this stuff as well? For example, having it be better documented, or finding areas of improvement as you go through the write-up, or things like that? Not that you need it to be directly helpful, warm and fuzzy can certainly be enough....

Good question! As part of the process for developing these we spend months and months using AGILE/SCRUM to iterate and come up with a "final answer" (though we're constantly still iterating). So it's not so much that we gain anything from writing the posts, the posts are more of a culmination of months of effort. We do end up talking about the pods more closely when we're writing the posts and as part of that some mi…

I imagine the marketing angle must be pretty big. Not only making people aware of your service, but convincing people to use it. A big question when selecting any online backup service is, "are these people I'm trusting with my data complete idiots?" Your posts should really help convince a lot of people that you are, in fact, not complete idiots.

For what it's worth, I've been a happy customer for years and try to spread the love whenever I can. My mantra is: data that's not backed up doesn't exist, and data that's not backed up off-site is not backed up. Thanks for providing a great service for cheap.

Re: Backblaze Storage Pod 5.0

#30

Post by jonknee »

merb wrote: post #6
atYevP wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ -> Gleb is Backblaze's CEO. (I too, work for Backblaze).

the bad thing about your good mission is that big guys starting to buy cheap hdds which means that prices will go up :(

If anything, the added volume is probably good for keeping prices down.
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