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Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

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Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#61

Post by renaudg »

atYevP wrote: post #43
renaudg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI I've just confirmed that the issue is still present in 7.0.0.386 (I've seen the same error messages in the log and the inherit process has failed silently)

Thanks - you should be getting an update soon!

Yev, thanks for intervening but I’ve just received an update so incredible and unapologetic that I’m tempted to share verbatim excerpts here, and I think you should take a look.

Support is basically telling me that the inherit process on the server can’t handle my "too large backup state’s indexes", and that I’m gonna have to start afresh and reupload 2TB or so from scratch. Not only that, but in order to even be allowed to do this, I’m gonna have to free up my license first by deleting my existing backup, and accept being left without one during the weeks this will take. You’ve gotta be kidding me ?

And I’m this situation in the first place not even because I have a new computer I want to inherit the backup, but because support themselves suggested that I nuke my local backup state and restore it using the inherit feature, to work around the installer being unable to upgrade me to the latest 6.1 release. That’s how it all started.

No apologies given either, no offer to investigate further to avoid that very inconvenient outcome. I’ve been a customer for 7 years but honestly, if I can’t trust your systems to handle the "too large" 2-3TB backup of my MacBook and a couple of external HDDs and I’m supposed to accept that, that suddenly makes me less confident in everything else you do. I hope I misunderstood something here, but I don’t think I did.

EDIT: Ok, reading the email again I may have misunderstood the part where I need to delete my existing backup first. It looks like I can use the 14 days trial to start a new backup, then transfer the license over before the end of the trial. It’s still pretty bad because there’s no way I‘ll have those 2-3TBs reuploaded within 2 weeks, and of course it’s still a massive inconvenience to do so.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#62

Post by brianwski »

buildzr wrote: post #56
yreg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the restore experience was painful. I attempted to restore about 1TB of data (on macOS). Since I have 500mbit internet I assumed I'd be able to download it through the app, but that didn't prove easy. Even when split into smaller zip archives, the download would go terribly slow. Often, the archives would be corrupted and I'd have to re-download them. In the end I had to order a drive to Europe (and pay the ta…

> when you loose your data you have only 30 days to get it back before Backblaze deletes it as well! Uhhh... this one could be a significant issue for me right now. I've got a laptop that's been offline for about 2 months now due to a motherboard failure due to liquid damage. I haven't bothered dumping the drive yet because I figured even if it's got issues Backblaze has a copy. You're telling me that if I login to m…

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> Has this policy changed at some point?

It is more complicated than just "after 30 days" (and always has been). If your laptop is entirely offline (or you simply uninstall the client from your laptop), then the policy is ACTUALLY that we keep your backup for 6 months as long as you keep paying your bill. But to be honest, it's more like a year or two. The 6 month policy is we guarantee the backup will be preserved, not that we will immediately go out and delete it at exactly 6 months and 1 day.

This is a completely different situation than files you delete but the backup continues. For cost reasons, Backblaze purges the files that you deleted from your local drive after 30 days. HOWEVER, with this new 7.0 release you can pay a little more and increase that retention time to one year, or forever. This was a highly requested feature for the situation you ran into.

Or, if you have a hard drive that you disconnect and aren't willing to reconnect for more than 30 days. Since your backup is continuing, Backblaze assumes the drive will never come back, so the files are then deleted to save money in the datacenter. Of course, this changes with the 1 year retention policy, you can unplug the drive for up to 1 year and still dial back time and restore all your files.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#63

Post by elehack »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #57
calcifer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the problem isn't closed vs open source, but the fact that on Linux it would be trivial to mount a massive NAS (think dozens of TBs) in a way that's completely invisible to the Backblaze client and pay $6/month for unlimited backups. There were people on /r/datahoarder who stored petabytes on Amazon's "unlimited" backup before the whole product got canceled.

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

Backblaze can back up arbitrarily large local drives, but does not allow you to set network drives as backup sources (for precisely this reason). It's fine with the local drive being shared - our desktop's big storage drive is exposed over the network - but it can detect and refuse mounts from other machines. I don't know what it does with an iSCSI drive, haven't tried.

I think it's harder to detect network mounts in a way that wouldn't have a bunch of false positives on Linux.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#64

Post by brianwski »

calcifer wrote: post #59
clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

I'm not familiar enough with Windows to answer that, but I imagine HTPCs are much more likely to use Linux and would make a $6/month backup a very attractive target.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> Can you abuse Backblaze on Windows or Macintosh?

Backblaze lives on the "averages", and so far the averages for Windows and Macintosh have worked out for us. We don't have any deep pockets (no VC funding) so we have to stay profitable or die. If you are curious what the distribution of customer sizes is, here is a histogram (you will need to zoom in, then use the scrollbar): https://i.imgur.com/iVEuwUT.jpg

Backblaze does not allow running the "Personal Backup Client" on Windows "Server" OS flavors to help the averages. Macintosh are really super successful in the laptop category, but very very few people or businesses run them as servers so again, the averages work out for us (so far).

However, in all of our market research, the Linux users averages would quickly drive us out of business. By definition, Linux is pretty much dedicated to almost exclusively servers, and exclusively dedicated to SUPER technical people who understand exactly how much data they have. We built "Backblaze B2" expressly for these technical customers running Linux. If you know how much data you have, and you have less than average, you will literally save money with Backblaze B2.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#65

Post by brianwski »

therealx wrote: post #60
cweagans wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reasonably sure you could do the same on macOS.

The MacOS market is big enough to support that - they prob manually call out the outliers.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> manually call out the outliers

We have never (yet) ejected anybody or asked them to leave for having too much data. What we do request (politely) is that customers with a large amount of data recommend Backblaze Personal Backup to their friends and family with less data to help bring our averages back down.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#66

Post by brianwski »

lubblig wrote: post #41
atYevP wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This speedtest is somewhat accurate and is pointed to our data center so should give you a decent idea of speed -> https://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/ . The reason latency is a factor is that it affects how quickly data leaves your computer and gets to our data center, so if you're far away, it can play a factor!

Unless I missed some setting it seems like the speedtest is only for the US data center(s). Is there any way to test the speed to the EU data center?

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> Is there any way to test the speed to the EU data center?

Create a free Backblaze account in the EU datacenter region. Then upload/download some data! The first 10 GBytes of B2 is 100% free, you don't even need to give us a credit card so you can try it all utterly risk free with no way we could mess with you.

If you run the Backblaze Personal Backup, make sure you manually configure it to use 30 threads, then let it rip and watch your bandwidth meter to see what it can use. The first 14 days are completely free, again no Credit Card required! Personally I get about 100 Mbits/sec from my home in California to the European datacenter (capped by my ISP), but if you are in Europe you should be able to hit 500 Mbits/sec using the Personal Backup Client with 30 threads if you are close enough to Amsterdam (where the datacenter is). Oh, one hint -> don't judge Backblaze Personal Backup until you have been backing up for at least 12 hours. Backblaze backs up small files first, and the latency to push 1 byte files murders performance. But after we get through all your small files, it should rip.

In the end, everybody has enough bandwidth to reach everywhere in the world now, and you really shouldn't pick a service based on total throughput. I think you should pick it based on cost, comfort with the security model and how sensitive your data is, ease of use, etc. Unless you have a Petabyte or more of data, you can backup hundreds of TBytes to anywhere in the world nowadays. Easily. No problem.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#67

Post by cweagans »

brianwski wrote: post #64
calcifer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar enough with Windows to answer that, but I imagine HTPCs are much more likely to use Linux and would make a $6/month backup a very attractive target.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > Can you abuse Backblaze on Windows or Macintosh? Backblaze lives on the "averages", and so far the averages for Windows and Macintosh have worked out for us. We don't have any deep pockets (no VC funding) so we have to stay profitable or die. If you are curious what the distribution of customer sizes is, here is a histogram (you will need to zoom in, then use the scrollbar): https:/…

I'm definitely not advocating for the backup client to be used on servers -- that's definitely not the right fit. I would be 100% okay with a backblaze client checking for X or wayland or something that would otherwise indicate that it's a real desktop environment running if that's what it takes.

Also: money isn't everything. I want to pay for a product that makes my life easier, and B2 ain't it.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#68

Post by atYevP »

renaudg wrote: post #61
atYevP wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - you should be getting an update soon!

Yev, thanks for intervening but I’ve just received an update so incredible and unapologetic that I’m tempted to share verbatim excerpts here, and I think you should take a look. Support is basically telling me that the inherit process on the server can’t handle my "too large backup state’s indexes", and that I’m gonna have to start afresh and reupload 2TB or so from scratch. Not only that, but in order to even be all…

Yes, unfortunately the re-upload will take some time, but hopefully you can increase threading and get the data uploaded quickly. Understand it's not ideal, but hopefully there's not too much of a time gap between backups.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#69

Post by brianwski »

Faark wrote: post #21
CharlesW wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I know the history and what they've said in the past, and also know about their B2 product. I'm hoping for a real answer from Yev, but if not I've been reasonably happy with CrashPlan (which is a NAS-friendly solution).

Crashplan is more than twice the price, so you'd even have the budget for an extra device. Did you ever have to restore a significant amount of data with CrashPlan? Its been more than a month since a 3tb drive died on me and I'v only got 1/3 of it restored so far. I don't see any local bottlenecks. Its restore-or-upload, so recent data in unsecured as well. :( CrashPlan does supports client side encryption, making Bl…

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze so I'm biased.

> supports client side encryption, making Blackblaze not really an option for me

Just to be clear, Backblaze Personal Backup encrypts all files on the client side, period. Now by default, Backblaze has the ability to decrypt those files, but you can set a "Private Encryption Key" and then if you forget that private encryption key nobody (including you, any Backblaze employees, the NSA) will EVER read those files, they are gone.

Some people point out that you have to supply your private encryption key in order to prepare a restore, and at that moment you have to hand it over to Backblaze (for 10 seconds). But look at the work flow and think about it:

1) If you never prepare a restore, your files are uncrackable by the NSA or Backblaze, period, end of story.

2) If Backblaze's datacenter is hacked for the 3 years before you prepare a restore, nobody can read your files because it simply isn't possible, you have never provided the private encryption key to Backblaze. This is most evident for any "zero day security breach" where the world goes haywire for 24 hours and hackers gain entry into all systems everywhere. If you avoid preparing a restore in those 24 hours, your data was safe before the hack, safe during the hack, and safe after it is all cleaned up and the systems are locked down again.

3) Ok, the day comes that you need a restore -> you hand over your private encryption keys, and our servers NEVER write that to disk! They keep it in RAM, which is pretty dang hard to hack. The restore is prepared, you download it, then you can manually delete the restore! Yes, technically this opened up a 10 second or more window of vulnerability where you were only protected by our hardened systems and all of our OTHER security measures. No human ever looked at your files. The systems are all automated and billions of files are flowing around. Honestly, you're pretty safe.

4) If you have something on your computer that you will go DIRECTLY TO JAIL if it is ever discovered, then I'd highly encourage you to encrypt that in a little encrypted file at rest on your computer anyway (regardless whether or not you use Backblaze). I mean, the FBI caught that guy that ran "The Silk Road" by distracting him in the library and sliding his laptop away from him before he could close it. As long as your file is pre-encrypted "at rest" on your laptop, Backblaze can back it up and no matter what even if you prepare a restore safely. Meanwhile we can keep all your photos and music and not illegal or overly private stuff backed up conveniently for you.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#70

Post by ryanwaggoner »

renaudg wrote: post #23

In case someone at Backblaze is reading this : I had a less than ideal experience in the past couple of days, trying to report through normal support channels a potentially critical bug breaking the "inherit backup" feature in the Mac client. Here goes : a few days ago the Backblaze Mac client started prompting me to upgrade urgently to the latest version (6.1.0.370). I went ahead and did that but got "Installation c…

I just had this exact same experience / issue the last few days.

First, the whole annoying “Backups are broken! You must manually update” pop up every 30 mins. Any time an update requires some special procedure beyond clicking “Install now”, I view it as likely a dev failure. And providing zero context about WHY makes it worse.

Then, the stupid installer fails repeatedly. Just says “installation failed, contact support”. I do and they tell me to delve into /Library and delete the backblaze files there. Feels kludgy. Are they telling thousands of customers to do this? Or is something fucked with my install? Who knows?

Then, the stupid “inherit backup” thing stalls at 50% repeatedly for hours and uses 99% of my CPU. I finally just killed it and resolved to tackle all this mess later.

Honestly, it’s making me rethink using Backblaze at all. Who knows if my backup will even be there when I need it if this is how they run things? (And yes, I know I need to test my backups. I don’t.) I went looking for alternatives today...

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