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Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

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Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#21
Just a year ago B2 couldn't do server-side file copying.[1] If you wanted to rename or move a file you had to re-upload the whole thing (not great for large multi-gigabyte files)! That ruled them out of consideration for storing my personal backups.

Glad to see they've since fixed that, and with this update are clearly continuing to improve ergonomics. I'll have to give B2 a fresh look.

[1]: https://github.com/Backblaze/B2_Command_Line_Tool/issues/175

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#22
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how did they manage to get rid of those hidden costs? Or is the new S3 compatible API more expensive?

It's possible they're eating the cost of the load balancing necessary to multiplex from their backends to client requests, which should theoretically stoke an increase in business due to reduced switching costs (and what timing, with an economic contraction likely pushing cost reductions at those needing cloud storage). Disclaimer: Happy Backblaze Mac client and B2 customer, no other affiliation. EDIT: @yev: I took t…

From Gleb (CEO) comment on the blog. "Yes - B2 is still a more cost efficient API as it allows customers to connect directly to the final storage location. However, we have built a highly cost efficient load balancing system as we always have - using software to optimize inexpensive hardware - and are swallowing the additional costs for our customers."

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#23
post #13
post #3

Here is the reasoning why they didn't have "s3 compatibility" before: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/design-thinking-b2-apis-the-h...

>It requires Amazon to have a massive and expensive choke point in their network: load balancers. When a customer tries to upload to S3, she is given a single upload URL to use. For instance, s3.amazonaws.com/ . Now that Amazon has deprecated the single URL version and replaced it with region-specific URLs (e.g. s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com) and tooling has been mostly updated, this huge reason for not suppor…

[deleted]

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#24
post #14

Great. How about rsync.net-compatible (i.e. bog-standard, vendor-neutral) "APIs"?

Yev here -> Anyone can write to the B2 Native API or our S3 Compatible API, we have tons of integrations that do it, here's a list -> https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html

I don't think that's what gp meant. Why not use a standard protcol like SFTP?

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#25
post #5

I have a decent sized music collection consisting a lot of lossless vinyl rips that I've made from my record collection. It totals around 200gigs at the moment but is growing weekly. I've been looking for somewhere to back this all up in the cloud and backblaze is looking most promising at the moment. Anyone here have any thoughts on where I should go with this?

I would recommend restic with B2. Really simple to set up. I use it for nightly homedir backups for multiple machines. Currently at ~400GB and it's costing me < $3/month.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#26
post #9

Actually excited by this. I was benchmarking S3 vs B2 vs others 2 years ago and I had to give up on B2 because its implementation for performance was so much more difficult. (88 lines vs 36 lines for all others in Ruby)

So how many times a month do you have to implement this to be reasonable compared to the cost of the storage?

This is not an implementation cost issue.

It was just super hard to make the code perform well. Like you have to manage client sessions on your side and chose optimizations on your side. Like you have to spread things manually. Which is hard to do. Whereas S3 is maximising your bandwidth with no custom code required. It's not really S3 compatibility that was needed but B2 API wasn't good.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#27
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how did they manage to get rid of those hidden costs? Or is the new S3 compatible API more expensive?

It's possible they're eating the cost of the load balancing necessary to multiplex from their backends to client requests, which should theoretically stoke an increase in business due to reduced switching costs (and what timing, with an economic contraction likely pushing cost reductions at those needing cloud storage). Disclaimer: Happy Backblaze Mac client and B2 customer, no other affiliation. EDIT: @yev: I took t…

Yev here -> saw my Yev-signal. That's right, Gleb actually answered that question on our blog (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-b2-s3-compatible-ap...) but we're eating the cost. Om nom nom.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#28
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible they're eating the cost of the load balancing necessary to multiplex from their backends to client requests, which should theoretically stoke an increase in business due to reduced switching costs (and what timing, with an economic contraction likely pushing cost reductions at those needing cloud storage). Disclaimer: Happy Backblaze Mac client and B2 customer, no other affiliation. EDIT: @yev: I took t…

Yev here -> saw my Yev-signal. That's right, Gleb actually answered that question on our blog ( https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-b2-s3-compatible-ap... ) but we're eating the cost. Om nom nom.

[deleted]

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#29

Just a year ago B2 couldn't do server-side file copying.[1] If you wanted to rename or move a file you had to re-upload the whole thing (not great for large multi-gigabyte files)! That ruled them out of consideration for storing my personal backups. Glad to see they've since fixed that, and with this update are clearly continuing to improve ergonomics. I'll have to give B2 a fresh look. [1]: https://github.com/Backbl…

Yev here -> thanks! We're constantly working on making the platform better, and copy-file was definitely a widely requested feature! That plus S3 Compatibility, for folks who wanted to integrated with B2 Cloud Storage but didn't have the resources to write code to our B2 Native API.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#30
post #4

S3 is now the standard for cloud storage APIs? Not sure if that's good or bad. I guess competitors have to reduce switching costs.

I think it essentially always has been. It was there first, [GCP copied it](https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/xml-api/overview), [OpenStack has compatibility middleware](https://docs.openstack.org/swift/latest/middleware.html#modu...).
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