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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

#151

Post by mahesh_rm »

brianwski wrote: post #115
mikehearn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a previous HN post [1] where someone wrote up how to use B2 as an image host, the Cloudflare CEO chimed in and addressed rule 2.8 specifically, saying if Cloudflare workers are used for URL prettifying and redirecting, a different ToS is applied and that use-case would be fine. Does that mean your video use-case would also be fine? I have no idea. An HN comment from the CEO doesn't seem like it would hold up if Cl…

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze so I'm biased. :-) > B2, as a storage service, is not really intended for "serving web pages and websites" — it's for larger files, binaries, etc It might be missing a couple features (which is a pet peeve of mine) but we SURELY intend for it to be used for serving web pages. That's one of the largest differences between "Backblaze Personal Backup" (our original product line) and Backb…

Please be inspired by how Netlify handles url rewriting through their netlify.toml file, in doing so, if it will be possible. :-)

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#152

Post by unilynx »

I've looked at B2 from time to time, but doing database blob storage over S3 or to disk and backing up database and files over rsync made us stick to our existing technology (eg Transip cloud storage which also charged 10 EUR/month per 2TB). One thing we didn't look forward to was having to reimplement cataloging and garbage collection for all of disk, S3 and B2, so we just stuck to a rsync hardlinking solution (which makes incremental backups painless)

having access to primary storage and cheap backup storage using the same S3 API will make us reconsider that and will probably make it worth the effort to dump our rsync-based solution for B2.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#153

Post by ksec »

rochester46 wrote: post #88
wrkronmiller wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudfront costs a non-trivial amount of money per GB: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/

How does that compare to Cloudflare? Is Cloudflare completely free for CDN? I can't find a clear pricing page.

https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/

Cloudflare dont charge per GB. They are more like per "feature" CDN.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#154

Post by brianwski »

brian_herman__ wrote: post #75

There is no mention of the durability guarantees that s3 has.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> There is no mention of the durability guarantees that s3 has.

I wrote this blog post doing some of our math around this: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-storage-durability/

But here is the thing: if you value your data, like if you will really go out of business if you lose it, then you should store three copies with AT LEAST two separate vendors. No matter how reliable any one vendor is, "stuff can happen" like your credit card is declined and the vendor deletes all of it.

I would recommend you use two separate vendors like Amazon S3 and Backblaze B2, and use two separate credit cards that expire on different cycles. I believe the credentials for login should be different on those two accounts, and the same one employee shouldn't have the credentials to both. Because one disgruntled employee should NOT have the ability to put you out of business. If you want some other thoughts, here is a blog post Backblaze wrote called the "3-2-1 Backup Strategy": https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#155

Post by throw_away »

tyingq wrote: post #108
IvanK_net wrote: post #104

It reminds me a moment three years ago, when I asked Dropbox to make their API similar to Google Drive, as they basically provide the same service. https://github.com/dropbox/dropbox-api-spec/issues/3#issueco... It is just awful to see, how everyone tries to reinvent the wheel and not to be compatible with anyone else.

Fear of lawsuits related to copying APIs may also be a factor. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America

Backblaze is clearly violating Oracle's copyrighted copy of Amazon's S3 API: https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Task...

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#157

Post by jcampbell1 »

derefr wrote: post #122
georgyo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but they cap out the file size they will cache on the free plan to be 512MB. So you would need to chunk up your videos to get free bandwidth.

> So you would need to chunk up your videos to get free bandwidth. Having a functional video player on your site or in your app (e.g. one where you can skip to arbitrary times without requiring the video be buffered up to that point; or where a video can be "resumed" from the middle if you leave it and come back) already requires that you use MPEG-DASH or HLS; which in turn implies/necessitates pre-chunking, no? Is t…

You don’t need DASH or HLS to seek to an arbitrary point quickly. The mp4 container format has an index which stores playhead time -> byte. This index is either at the end of the file or beginning, and tools like qt-faststart move the index to the beginning, which makes videos start much quicker when serving over http. Browsers will use the index to issue range get requests an be able to seek just fine.

Serving a 400mb video via a CDN is highly dependent on the CDN. Some will construct a cache entry from a slop of range get requests and translate them to get the missing pieces and work brilliantly and other CDNs should be avoided.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#158

Post by jjice »

I was actually looking at B2 vs S3 literally 2 days ago and went S3 for the universal API. Luckily, it was a personal project and I I can probably migrate everything very quickly. This is a killer feature, and I bet this will convince a lot of people to move to Backblaze.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#159

Post by john-shaffer »

brianwski wrote: post #115
mikehearn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a previous HN post [1] where someone wrote up how to use B2 as an image host, the Cloudflare CEO chimed in and addressed rule 2.8 specifically, saying if Cloudflare workers are used for URL prettifying and redirecting, a different ToS is applied and that use-case would be fine. Does that mean your video use-case would also be fine? I have no idea. An HN comment from the CEO doesn't seem like it would hold up if Cl…

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze so I'm biased. :-) > B2, as a storage service, is not really intended for "serving web pages and websites" — it's for larger files, binaries, etc It might be missing a couple features (which is a pet peeve of mine) but we SURELY intend for it to be used for serving web pages. That's one of the largest differences between "Backblaze Personal Backup" (our original product line) and Backb…

S3's use of separate servers for website hosting is actually very sensible. Options like usage of index.html and error.html only apply on the website servers and won't cause any surprises for people using the service as a key-object store.

That said, I would absolutely not consider using B2 without support for index.html, error.html, and Website-Redirect-Location.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

#160

Post by ksec »

hangonhn wrote: post #143
ksec wrote: post #38

Backblaze is also the founding member of Bandwidth Alliance, meaning getting those B2 via Cloudflare is essentially free. So you are only paying for Storage. ( Correct me if I am on this one ) I wonder why doesn't ALL non HyperScale Cloud Vendors, like Linode and DO provide one click third party backup to B2. You should always store offsite backup somewhere. And B2 is perfect.

This is so mind-blowing-ly crazy and awesome. I've always loved the idea of Backblaze but never tried it. But this combination is so insanely good and valuable. When an efficient market/economy works correctly, the results are just amazing: Cloudflare and Backblaze essentially got their unit costs for their respective products so low that for just a small money fee, I can do something that would have been prohibitive…

On the note of unit cost I doubt it will be much lower in the near future. Cost / GB isn't falling much if at all, and their Load balancer are already eating into their margin which means any further reduction in unit cost are only gaining back what they took in with the S3 API. Hopefully the new S3 compatible API means they could make all that back with volume.

But this is also a sad realisation that storage tech aren't getting cost reduction any further.

( Of course Blackblaze can always prove me wrong :D )

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