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The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

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Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#91

Post by itsgrimetime »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #55
mynameisnoone wrote: post #28

Boooo! No drive manufacturer names and model numbers. This is totally useless data for anyone so it's absolutely pointless to blog about. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-... contains the necessary data, but it seems old. I don't know why they're buying COTS server gear because their whole premise was the economy-of-scale of having their own pods made. I don't understand why they don't go t…

> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3- ... contains the necessary data, but it seems old. ...is this a joke? That's Q3 2023. Assuming the quarters are calendar quarters, Q4 2023 ended literally 3 days ago. They're not going to have a report out right away.

Maybe you misread it but that link is stats for Q3 2021 - but Q3 2023 is available here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-...

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#92

Post by loopdoend »

tzs wrote: post #84
quickthrower2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $9/month you would get a lot more features from the backup service. The interesting ones being File Sharing and Extended Version History. So it depends if you want those, as well as a nice web UI. And at 1TB the numbers get closer, at 2TB it becomes cheaper to use the backup service. The main thing for me is legacy. In my will it is a lot easier to explain how to get files from the standard backup plan, rather th…

First make sure you understand how they handle encryption. The features and ease of use come at the cost of some security. They generate a public/private key pair for the user. The client gets the public key and the server gets the private key. During backups the data is encrypted on the client with a symmetric key (which I believe is generated on the client). The encrypted data is sent to the server. The symmetric k…

If you’re not decrypting the files yourself then they could be meddled with or snooped on, I’m not sure which is worse…

This whole “the files would fly by really quickly” line is not reassuring as surely this means the whole scraping/thieving thing could be automated.

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#93

Post by dsissitka »

cvalka wrote: post #76
dsissitka wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

restic has supported append-only repositories since before rustic was a thing.

Only for one backend (restic server). It does NOT support append only for S3 or other backends which is the most frequently used scenario.

And some setups with rclone. How is that different from restic? The documented rclone setup doesn't support append-only in any meaningful way.

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#94

Post by ComputerGuru »

gorkish wrote: post #26

The most interesting thing here is the discussion about using vendor hardware instead of their own bespoke stuff. My takeaway is that it's still essentially impossible to negotiate anywhere close to a fair price with commodity server vendors until you are buying hundreds of machines, and then only if you are capable of demonstrating that you are willing to design and build them yourself. And yet despite this, it's st…

At that scale, either pay it or buy off-lease equipment.

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#97

Post by CTDOCodebases »

joshfee wrote: post #29

I use B2 as the backend for my personal backups using restic (which I would highly recommend https://github.com/restic/restic ). I don't have a ton of data to backup, so even with hourly backups (restic only backs up when there are changes) I have ~100GB and it runs me a whopping $0.60/month. I almost feel guilty when I get the bill. But the minute I need to pick a storage platform in a professional context I know wh…

B2 is great if you don't test your backups.

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#98

Post by CTDOCodebases »

sudhirkhanger wrote: post #52
joshfee wrote: post #29

I use B2 as the backend for my personal backups using restic (which I would highly recommend https://github.com/restic/restic ). I don't have a ton of data to backup, so even with hourly backups (restic only backs up when there are changes) I have ~100GB and it runs me a whopping $0.60/month. I almost feel guilty when I get the bill. But the minute I need to pick a storage platform in a professional context I know wh…

Is their any difference in storing to B2 via Restic or Duplicity vs BackBlaze Computer Backup? Do you have access to your file via mobile access, sharing feature, etc.? https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup

Restic is good for storing files on computers you don't control because the private key doesn't get exposed. It also has features for snapshots and testing backups. You can select a percentage to test so if you have a slow internet connection you can get some piece of mind without having to download all your backup data.

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#99

Post by Groxx »

tzs wrote: post #84
quickthrower2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $9/month you would get a lot more features from the backup service. The interesting ones being File Sharing and Extended Version History. So it depends if you want those, as well as a nice web UI. And at 1TB the numbers get closer, at 2TB it becomes cheaper to use the backup service. The main thing for me is legacy. In my will it is a lot easier to explain how to get files from the standard backup plan, rather th…

First make sure you understand how they handle encryption. The features and ease of use come at the cost of some security. They generate a public/private key pair for the user. The client gets the public key and the server gets the private key. During backups the data is encrypted on the client with a symmetric key (which I believe is generated on the client). The encrypted data is sent to the server. The symmetric k…

While I completely agree: I don't believe this applies to Restic (or many other many-cloud-host backup software). It seems to be using the dumb S3 like API with an entirely local encryption, as do many others because that's kinda the only portable way to do encryption.

I have not dug into it in detail though, so I would encourage everyone to not believe this without verifying.

Re: The drive stats of Backblaze storage pods

#100

Post by neonnomad »

MeteorMarc wrote: post #2

>>>All 40 of the Dell servers which make up these two Vaults were relocated to the top of 52U racks, and it appears that initially they did not like their new location. Or the way in which they were handled during the relocation?

My guess would be vibration at the top of the rack which is why when you relocate them they do much better. This is such a great thing to call out explicitly with data.
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