Subscription Changes for Computer Backup • Hacker News Board

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#61

Post by 1123581321 » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #46

kyrra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know its probably not your fault, but this is a sysadmin best practice (though, if you read /r/sysadmin, you'll see they regularly don't do this either). Backups are useless unless you regularly validate them. Backups can break in many different ways, and you don't want to find out that they broke when you truly need them. This obviously increases cost/time for using a service/solution, but its good to do to hope i…

The whole value proposition of Backblaze and similar services is that I don't have to have sysadmin levels of knowledge. It just works. If I wanted to deal with regular validation of backups and similar sysadmin tasks, I'd just run the whole thing myself.

It takes like an hour a year to request a USB stick from Backblaze, browse through it and return it. Validating backups on top of rolling your own would take a lot more time (i.e. the value proposition is more complex.) There’s really no “it just works” in backups of data you care about unless you have people you can delegate the restore testing to.

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#62

Post by dannyw » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

hundchenkatze wrote: post #59

dannyw wrote: post #38

I have a NAS running Synology with like 5TB. Is there a way to back this up with end to end encryuption?

https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/231668907-Encry...

That's backblaze B2, not personal backup.

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#63

Post by ac29 » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

fletchowns wrote: post #47

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #31

I had backblaze on a laptop that was stolen. The thief uploaded all of their criminal activities to my backblaze account. I was able to inform five federal agencies on their wrongdoings as a result. Thanks Backblaze for adding the forever hold feature! You helped prevent more victims of a very bad human.

How was the thief even able to login to your laptop?

Probably just extracted the credentials from an unencrypted drive.

Seems a bit more savvy than I'd expect a typical laptop-snatcher would be, but with the possibility of finding a cryptocurrency wallet these days, maybe more thieves go to the trouble (or sell them to people who would).

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#64

Post by vxNsr » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #56

Uh... can this be abused to backup CCTV footage from a old DVR ? The data would be at once just 1 tb but the CCTV reuses the space so its 1tb each month. I know it would be ethically "bad" but if I had to do it, maybe set up a cron to push data from DVR to a PC which then uses backblaze software to backup and keep old files?

Kinda, you can pay ($2/m) for extended version history, and that might keep the files for longer.

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#65

Post by vxNsr » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

Not a big fan of this, our home computers are all less than 2tb, at this point it looks like it’s cheaper to find someone else to do the backups who isn’t “unlimited”.

The biggest selling point to me for backblaze was set it and forget it + stable price.

Now they’re raising their price every year, and require that I jump through hoops to have the old price.

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#66

Post by 2Gkashmiri » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #64

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #56

Uh... can this be abused to backup CCTV footage from a old DVR ? The data would be at once just 1 tb but the CCTV reuses the space so its 1tb each month. I know it would be ethically "bad" but if I had to do it, maybe set up a cron to push data from DVR to a PC which then uses backblaze software to backup and keep old files?

Kinda, you can pay ($2/m) for extended version history, and that might keep the files for longer.

Cool

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#67

Post by msbarnett » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

cdumler wrote: post #42

agustif wrote: post #32

I used Backblaze B2 for a project as the store of the files. I had to switch to elsewhere once hitting production, when doing thousands of async upload requests, some would randomly 403 on me. Their customers rep solution was to handle it on my side (yeah, I know) but it was easier for me to just switch providers. I guess for other products Backblaze is good, but I wouldn't recommend their Backblaze B2 to other fello…

B2 was designed for backup storage, not being a fake hard drive. Even if it was, you would have a far better solution for dealing with latency and your data being in the clear if you would use `rclone`. Add the B2 storage backend, then a local cache to B2, then encryption to cache. You then get local performance from the cache, unlimited space from B2, and it becomes eventually consistent in the background.

> B2 was designed for backup storage… unlimited space from B2…

You seem confused – B2 is Backblaze’s pay-per-GB-stored-or-downloaded AWS S3 competitor, not their consumer unlimited backup product. It even clones the S3 API for maximum ease of switching.

It’s not unreasonable of anyone to expect B2 to work in the same usecases one would have for S3.

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#68

Post by zinekeller » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #50

chomp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely know people who not use it in good faith. Same people that crammed many terabytes into Amazon Drive back when it was unlimited so that they could "back up their plex server".

So what is the best off-site solution for backing up a NAS in good faith? I have about 10TB of data that is "backed up" to varying degrees but no all-in-one solution right now.

Assuming that your NAS is Linux-based, maybe Borg with Rsync.net may suit you (used it for mine, satisfied with it). Note that you are responsible for keeping the Borg encryption keys if you used it. $80/month (for 10 TB) might be yikes though if you're expecting a web or mobile-browsable backup though (since Rsync.net is literally a ssh storage provider), and if you want to keep snapshots, you need to also pay for their storage. Borg supports FUSE access though, so if you really need to browse then that should be good enough for occasional one-off restores.

Borg: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

Rsync.net: https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#69

Post by atYevP » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

Laminary wrote: post #7

Working in video production, I know there are a lot of videographers and photographers "abusing" the unlimited nature of this service. It's not my business how BackBlaze does things, or if the usage falls within their acceptable use policy, but I see so many in my industry brag about the insanely cheap rates BackBlaze offers on their computer backup. From my armchair, it seems like a bunch of personal users subsidize…

Yev from Backblaze here -> We go into it a bit in the blog post, but over the last two years our average data stored for Computer Backup increased by 15% - it's not just a handful of people pulling the number forward. That plus the rising cost of hardware over the last year and a half resulted in us having to make this adjustment.

Re: Subscription Changes for Computer Backup

#70

Post by atYevP » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

jpalomaki wrote: post #26

I appreciate how this blog entry puts the most important thing out first - the fact that prices are increasing. And only then goes to justify why customers should be still happy.

Yev from Backblaze here -> thank you! We didn't want to fill it with a bunch of fluff first and then give bad news. Went with the most pressing information up front since it's the most relevant, and then tucked the offer towards the back. I'll make sure that the team sees the feedback :)