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Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

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Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#121

Post by cperciva »

Osmium wrote: post #68

Tarsnap seems to rely pretty heavily on Amazon's infrastructure, so I'm guessing it won't support this? Which is a shame because I'd really like to use it, but can't afford to right now as an individual. Arq seems really good at supporting a broad variety of cloud providers though, so hopefully they'll add this too. I'm hesitant to use cloud backups generally; I've never seen an audit of how secure Arq's backup schem…

Tarsnap seems to rely pretty heavily on Amazon's infrastructure, so I'm guessing it won't support this?

I'll be taking a look at this of course, but there are things which are more important than price -- for example, reliability. Tarsnap users trust me to not lose their data, and I trust S3 to not lose their data. That's a trust I don't have in B2 yet -- first, simply because B2 hasn't been around for long enough to prove itself, and second based on what I've heard from former Backblaze users.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#124

Post by toomuchtodo »

mwcampbell wrote: post #79
brianwski wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is surprising that they didn't make it compatible with the S3 API .... The lack of scalable front-end load balancing is shown by the fact that they require users to first make an API call to get an upload URL And... you answered your own question. :-) We reduce our operating costs by not having as many load balancers in the datacenter and pushing off the responsibility to the API. It all comes from our tradition…

I, for one, prefer the directness of not having to go through a front-end proxy. It probably eliminates some failure modes. I think that, instead of Backblaze providing an S3-compatible API, someone should do an open-source S3-compatible front-end for B2, that any interested user can run on a cheap VPS.

https://libcloud.apache.org/

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#125

Post by heavenlyhash »

jbeda wrote: post #38

Took a quick look at the API. For context, I was involved in the early days of Google Cloud Storage. It is surprising that they didn't make it compatible with the S3 API -- at least for common object/bucket create/delete. This will require more code to be written and it will be harder to adapt client libraries. The API documentation is here: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/ Other notes: * The lack of scalable front…

> They require a SHA1 hash when uploading objects. This is probably overkill over a cheaper CRC.

Having been on the receiving end of entirely too many corrupted files in my life, I strongly approve of their use of a hash that's been standardized and fast for decades and remains cryptographically strong. "But fast" if you fail to store it isn't very helpful. TCP has a CRC too. We're wallpapering over it with better ones and everyone serious has been for years: it's time to accept that cheap CRCs aren't a good place to get stuck.

Improving the API to avoid the 2-pass problem is spot-on though. Another possible solution is to require either a subsequent API call, or format the first message as a multipart, and use that route to have the caller submit the hash that's used to confirm and commit the file to storage after the body upload. This would solve the 2pass problem while still ensuring the client is actually doing the integrity check -- and since Backblaze is more than likely to take the heat on any corruption issues, it's probably a good policy for them to make sure lazy client implementations aren't going to cause problems that their storage then gets the publicity smear for.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#126

Post by bedros »

atYevP wrote: post #43
degenerate wrote: post #39

Whether or not I decide to use this service, this is one of the most useful announcement blog posts I've read in a while. The tone is not just "ok we released this" but instead " we released this, and here are some practical use cases if you are already doing X, Y, or Z " -- nice job.

Yev from Backblaze here -> I cannot describe how pleased I am to read this comment. Thank you!

Is there a possibility to request the backed up data in physical form.

Let's say I backed up 8 TB of data for a small business, and I need to restore in 24 hrs, is it possible to request overnight shipments of hard drives of data so I can do the restore locally instead of taking weeks to download all that data

I know amazon has this feature, not sure about google.

Another question, what's the max number of buckets can an account hold?

Looking forward to try this service out, Thanks

Bedros

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#127

Post by Matheus28 »

falsestprophet wrote: post #17

For context, OVH offers object storage with 3x replication for $.01/GB [1]. [1] https://www.runabove.com/cloud-storage.xml

It is certainly interesting how OVH undercuts the competition by quite a large margin in everything. We use them for dedicated servers, but I wonder why they're not as well known as AWS...

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#128

Post by Freaky »

Osmium wrote: post #120
Freaky wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've used CrashPlan a lot and basically take it on faith that it's secure They use Blowfish. Says it all really - their default encryption is a long-obsolete 64-bit block cipher you might have picked in 1999 because it was faster than 3DES. I can only assume they do this because migrating would cost them money, and being able to advertise "448 bit encryption" actually sounds like a plus to most people and not the g…

> They use Blowfish. Says it all really - their default encryption is a long-obsolete 64-bit block cipher you might have picked in 1999 because it was faster than 3DES. Not defending it, because I know it's old and there are weaknesses, but aren't Blowfish and 3DES both still technically secure? This is a genuine question. It was my understanding that if implemented correctly, with a random key etc., that neither has…

Sure, but it's not exactly putting them in a good light is it? Dressing up obsolete stuff as state of the art "same as your bank uses", while either being unwilling or unable to migrate to something more era-appropriate.

Calls into question their competence, their honesty and their architecture all at once.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#129

Post by kbenson »

gaul wrote: post #50

Updated object store comparison: http://gaul.org/object-store-comparison/

This is nice, but I have one critique: Having the sorting indicators right justified and the text for the column header left justified without any column borders had my clicking on the sorting indicators for the wrong column for a few seconds and wondering why the sorting was wonky. You can click anywhere on the header column to sort, which once you realize that makes it easy to use as intended, but a visual indication of separate columns in the header (a right/left border, or horizontal striping) would make it just a tad more obvious.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#130

Post by dexterdog »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
jrnkntl wrote: post #5

cmd+f redundancy, availability, durability, 99: 0 results. Only on https://www.backblaze.com/b2/why-b2.html it is that I can cite the following: "the B2 Cloud Storage service has layers of redundancy to ensure data is durable and available". What that exactly is or what it translates to is nowhere to be found. If you want corporations or developers to use your storage services for their precious data, I'd be a bit mo…

Compared to S3, which while they say 11 9s of durability, they only commit to 99% uptime on a monthly basis (98% for their new S3 intermittent availability offering): https://aws.amazon.com/s3/sla/

They actually commit to 99.9 and 99 respectively after which they begin to give credit back. They credit back at a higher rate after 99 and 98.
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