Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#61

Post by silverlyra » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:19 PM UTC

Guzba wrote: post #52

radlad wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an easily solved problem. Backblaze has an example here: https://github.com/backblaze-b2-samples/cloudflare-b2

Does the solution involve using Cloudflare workers? Because, as I said, I'm sure it is possible but maybe we've gone off the deep end a bit. Just how crazy of a configuration do you want just to serve files from an object store? This looks like an awful lot of setup for "easily solved". Easily solved is what S3 does where this isn't even a problem.

  curl -sL https://github.com/backblaze-b2-samples/cloudflare-b2/raw/main/README.md | head -n 1
  # Cloudflare Worker for Backblaze B2

yes, it's a worker

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#62

Post by rattt » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:24 PM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #54

smileybarry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Backblaze B2 charges for egress, while CloudFlare does not.

They do not charge for egress either. https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/landing/ad/use-cases...

*Up to 3x of average monthly data stored, then $0.01/GB for additional egress.

Or free if you go through Cloudflare since they have the bandwidth aliance.

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#63

Post by djhn » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:27 PM UTC

tills13 wrote: post #47

aftbit wrote: post #10

How is data stored in this tier? Is it just on big slow SMR disks?

Anecdotally, we have found R2 to be nearly half as slow to respond as the same request to S3 _proxied through Cloudflare_. So... something isn't right here. Maybe a mechanical turk where a live human is fetching the object using Windows Explorer behind the scenes?

Any chance you could convert ‘nearly half as slow’ to a percentage of the original response time? This reads like a reading comprehension puzzle and I don’t even know if my hunch is correct.

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#64

Post by SahAssar » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:31 PM UTC

tills13 wrote: post #47

aftbit wrote: post #10

How is data stored in this tier? Is it just on big slow SMR disks?

Anecdotally, we have found R2 to be nearly half as slow to respond as the same request to S3 _proxied through Cloudflare_. So... something isn't right here. Maybe a mechanical turk where a live human is fetching the object using Windows Explorer behind the scenes?

Did you mean "half as fast"? The way you worded it sounds like you mean to say that s3 is faster, but it says that r2 is twice as fast as s3.

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#65

Post by no_wizard » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:34 PM UTC

simfree wrote: post #27

historynops wrote: post #16

A fairly unrelated point, but its so strange how companies that underpin a lot of the internet struggle in the stock market. While we all wish we had sold our tech stocks in 2021, Cloudflare still hasn't recovered.

Cloudflare has a very dysfunctional sales pipeline. Their free, premium and self-serve offerings might underpin the internet, but the highly profitable offerings that are gated behind their sales teams are not getting sold. Too many of the clients that they should be selling to. Magic Transit (bring your own ASN), classic website DDoS protection (above the Business $200 tier, which has low, undisclosed data limits in…

Not to mention they have on multiple occasions made significant internal changes (including layoffs) to their sales organization. I have a feeling if the public were to get an introspection into their sales pipeline it would be eye opening, and not in a good way

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#66

Post by no_wizard » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:39 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #58

internetter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Backblaze is unprofitable and publicly traded So is Cloudflare

Cloudflare practically has a stranglehold on the modern Internet. I would bet money they would be immediately profitable if they killed their free tier. There aren't that many competitors, and I don't know if they've got the spare capacity to absorb all the exodus. I'm not so sure about Backblaze. I don't even think they're the biggest player in that space (AWS is, I would guess). I would guess most people could migr…

if they simply streamlined their sales pipeline and created a mid tier (somewhere between $500-$2500 a month for example) that unlocks some of the features that are behind "contact sales" banner they could boost revenue without changing any existing tiers, I'd wager.

I think the platform has a ton of potential and it already shows signs of real progress, but much like fly.io, its rough edges are incredibly rough.

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#67

Post by Springtime » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:46 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #40

kjkjadksj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t get over the fact how storage is still so expensive in 2024. Lowest you can get is probably $5 per tb a month from any of these companies. A new tb hdd is probably $25 today. Where does the money go, into c suite car payments?

I really believe there's a missing market. I think there would be big business in building servers for homes. Where you prioritize low power usage and low noise, and do not need blazing speeds or frequent/high access. Cloud is great, but some things should still be stored at home. Home NAS systems are a bit odd and difficult to expand (nowhere near what a rack is). My argument would be that this would be helpful with…

Edit: misunderstood your premise. You meant bespoke solely single household servers at home. Like homelabs but without the hassle.

Wuala[1][2] did something similar more than a decade ago, in that users become distributed storage for other users which made the service free for those participating (otherwise was a paid subscription). They were then acquired and stopped their most unique feature before closing for good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuala

[2] https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/08/first-look-wua...

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#68

Post by eropple » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:51 PM UTC

gfs wrote: post #36

Guzba wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example shows leaving your bucket name in the url as a way to filter out requests to other bucket names. If you want your static site to have http://mysite.com/bucketname/index.html then I guess that's ok. But again, careful configuration and still not for every situation. I'm sure you can layer more rules to get it exactly right but I'd not be eager to layer on complex configuration through multiple service prov…

As far as I know, bucket names must be unique at other providers like AWS as well. [0] I'm no expert but to try and protect my own domain, I use a transform rule to match a subdomain and append "/file/$MY_BUCKET_NAME" to each request. This should return a 404 for anybody who tries to inject their own bucket in the path. I could be wrong of course. [0]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/bucket...

Bolting a Cloudfront distribution onto a S3 bucket is pretty well-trod territory, though, and doesn't have these sharp edges. (Has a couple other ones, but they're less common.)

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#69

Post by tootie » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #58

internetter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Backblaze is unprofitable and publicly traded So is Cloudflare

Cloudflare practically has a stranglehold on the modern Internet. I would bet money they would be immediately profitable if they killed their free tier. There aren't that many competitors, and I don't know if they've got the spare capacity to absorb all the exodus. I'm not so sure about Backblaze. I don't even think they're the biggest player in that space (AWS is, I would guess). I would guess most people could migr…

I don't see how Cloudflare has a stranglehold. They've captured the bottom of the market by having low, low introductory prices and turnkey security. They have tons of huge and small competitors though. They have far less revenue than Akamai.

Re: Cloudflare R2 IA storage tier

#70

Post by tootie » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:08 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #66

everforward wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare practically has a stranglehold on the modern Internet. I would bet money they would be immediately profitable if they killed their free tier. There aren't that many competitors, and I don't know if they've got the spare capacity to absorb all the exodus. I'm not so sure about Backblaze. I don't even think they're the biggest player in that space (AWS is, I would guess). I would guess most people could migr…

if they simply streamlined their sales pipeline and created a mid tier (somewhere between $500-$2500 a month for example) that unlocks some of the features that are behind "contact sales" banner they could boost revenue without changing any existing tiers, I'd wager. I think the platform has a ton of potential and it already shows signs of real progress, but much like fly.io, its rough edges are incredibly rough.

I don't work in enterprise sales or nothing, but it seems to me that businesses whose only price tag is "call us" are the ones with the most revenue. Transparent pricing is great for SMBs, but the big bucks are in making yourself entrenched in giant enterprises.