Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

backblaze.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 237 posts

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#41

Post by gamegoblin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #26
jcreedon wrote: post #2

The biggest shortcoming I see compared to the other big players (AWS, Azure, Google), and it is something they don't mention, is that they only have one datacenter, compared to the several from the other big players. The pricing is quite incredible though. I suspect if enough people hop on board with this they will probably look into setting up another datacenter.

Something to note: Unless you're storing data in us-east-1, all other regions in AWS are "one datacenter". Yes, they have AZs, but those aren't datacenters, they're just compartmentalized segments of the same datacenter. So! If you can tolerate the loss of a datacenter, store in Blackblaze. If you need geo-redundancy until Backblaze can offer it? Store in us-east-1 (which is geo-redundant between Virginia and Oregon)…

Do you have a source that all other regions are "one datacenter"?

All I could find on the S3 FAQ says "your objects are redundantly stored on multiple devices across multiple facilities." which seems to contradict the "one datacenter" claim.

Also, do you have a source that us-east-1 is geo-redundant between Virginia and Oregon? That was not my understanding of how it worked.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#42

Post by budmang »

acdha wrote: post #15
budmang wrote: post #4

I'm thrilled that we can offer this raw cloud storage for just $0.005/GB/month. Would love to hear from the Hacker News community what you do with storage today & what you might do with B2. Here are my thoughts on our announcement today: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-cloud-storage-provider/ Gleb

Do you have any plans to offer some sort of WORM model where you could “seal” a bucket, file, etc. to prevent future changes? This is really nice for protecting against malware, human error or malice, etc. and a regulatory requirement for certain industries.

We're at the very beginning of this journey, and heard from a lot of folks that they wanted access to inexpensive cloud storage. I imagine we'll learn a lot more about needs & use cases from people overtime. I can certainly understand the value of WORM storage and it is something we'll definitely consider adding. Appreciate the suggestion!

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#43

Post by atYevP »

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!

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#44

Post by DinkyG »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #26
jcreedon wrote: post #2

The biggest shortcoming I see compared to the other big players (AWS, Azure, Google), and it is something they don't mention, is that they only have one datacenter, compared to the several from the other big players. The pricing is quite incredible though. I suspect if enough people hop on board with this they will probably look into setting up another datacenter.

Something to note: Unless you're storing data in us-east-1, all other regions in AWS are "one datacenter". Yes, they have AZs, but those aren't datacenters, they're just compartmentalized segments of the same datacenter. So! If you can tolerate the loss of a datacenter, store in Blackblaze. If you need geo-redundancy until Backblaze can offer it? Store in us-east-1 (which is geo-redundant between Virginia and Oregon)…

This is incorrect. If you look for news articles about Amazon constructing data centers or buying facilities you'll notice that they have multiple data center facilities in each region.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#45

Post by budmang »

sspiff wrote: post #13
budmang wrote: post #4

I'm thrilled that we can offer this raw cloud storage for just $0.005/GB/month. Would love to hear from the Hacker News community what you do with storage today & what you might do with B2. Here are my thoughts on our announcement today: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-cloud-storage-provider/ Gleb

Thank you for doing this. I've read some awesome stuff on Backblaze's infrastructure over the years, but never could use the service (a high level backup solution for Windows/Mac isn't so useful for me). This announcement may mean I finally get to test your stuff! (I've been frustrated with the quality and feature creep in open source syncing solutions and procrastinating building my own, bare bones alternative).

Would love to have you do it...and hearing about how it goes!

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#46

Post by Bud »

Real attention to detail in this announcement. I signed up right away.

If there's attention to detail with one thing, odds are you'll find it in other places, too.

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#47

Post by brianwski »

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…

> 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 traditional backup product where we wrote all the software on both sides so we could save money this way.

With that said, we are actively considering offering an S3 compatible API for a slightly higher cost (basically what it would cost us to deploy the larger load balancing tech).

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#48

Post by brianwski »

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!

There are several of us that are very happy to hear that!

Re: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

#49

Post by atYevP »

Bud wrote: post #46

Real attention to detail in this announcement. I signed up right away. If there's attention to detail with one thing, odds are you'll find it in other places, too.

Yev at Backblaze -> So pleased to hear your say that! I'll forward it to the engineering team. They have LITERALLY been working nonstop on this for a year and deserve some praise! Thank you for signing up, I'm excited for you to start using it!
Post reply on HN