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The fact that the entire infrastructure of backblaze exists in a single building is a little worrying. Are there any plans to expand to other datacenters? What

by moondev 10y ago

The fact that the entire infrastructure of backblaze exists in a single building is a little worrying. Are there any plans to expand to other datacenters? What happens if there is a disaster there? Is everything gone? Does backblaze backup it's own data?

atYevP 10y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> Yes we do plan on expanding to more datacenters, and we do have emergency plans in place, though we do choose our datacenters carefully to make sure that we avoid any natural-disaster prone areas. As for backing up our own data - we certainly do make backups of our core info/necessary data. As for the user data that we store, that's backed up across the storage pods in a vault as discussed in that post. We do not replicate customer data across multiple datacenters. At our price-point, that's just not feasible.
- click170 10y ago
  Is there thought being given to expose such an option to the end user at additional cost? Say if I wanted to make sure my data was stored in 2 regions, and was OK with a slight increase in cost to accomplish that.
  - atYevP 10y ago
    Sure, we consider it every now and again but for now we like "clean" pricing - meaning that it's the same across the board. Of course that might change in the future, but we try to strive for simplicity, so having different "tiers" goes somewhat counter to what we've done thus far.
    - Bromlife 10y ago
      Long time BackBlaze user & fan here. Currently backing up three computers. Love your service. However, for my main dev computer, I would totally pay another $5USD to replicate it to another location. I don't think that needs to complicate the pricing that much. You're essentially just paying for another backup, except it's the same computer in a different location. Another question, any plans for coming to Linux?
      - icefo 10y ago
        As far as I know they haven't released an official client for Linux but started a new service: B2 cloud storage. There is an API and lots of third party clients. The only downside is that there is no 5$ unlimited plan
      - atYevP 10y ago
        Hey there! Thanks for using us :D Icefo is correct, we don't currently have plans for Linux support - but we do have Backblaze B2. While not unlimited, it gives a lot more flexibility, and may end up being less expensive, depending on how much data you're storing -> backblaze.com/b2
  - kejaed 10y ago
    I think at that point you could look into rsync.net
gist 10y ago
> What happens if there is a disaster there? While unlikely there are other threats. You could have a disgruntled or mentally unbalanced employee. All eggs in one basket (whatever the basket and how robust it is) is always a potential problem. To me the way to deal with this threat would be to spread backups over two vendors even if backblaze decides to open other data centers as Yev has indicated in his comment.
- atYevP 10y ago
  > You could have a disgruntled or mentally unbalanced employee. The recent S3 outage was caused by a typo. You can plan around natural disasters and all sorts of things, but the vast majority of the time, data loss is caused by humans. Diversify where that data lives. We would never recommend that you should ONLY keep your backup in Backblaze. We should be part of your solution.
  - gist 10y ago
    I think that if you do open other data centers you should charge extra for that in your pricing, optionally. While there could be negative marketing implications depending on the exact cost or how it's worded, I don't think it's an unreasonable approach. Since not everyone needs the diversity and it would make more sense (because it assumes your costs will go up) to not make all customers pay for something that they don't need because they have other plan b's. You might already be the plan c for some of your customers. > We would never recommend that you should ONLY keep your backup in Backblaze I am guessing (I haven't thoroughly checked so I could be wrong) that your marketing materials don't make this fact known in an obvious way. No issue with that but I think many non business users might not think of it this way.
    - atYevP 10y ago
      We do try to emphasize a 3-2-1 backup strategy through newsletters and blogs posts. A few examples: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/ and more recently https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backing-up-for-small-business/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backing-up-for-small-business.... We're not trying to hide anything, and truthfully, plenty of folks do use us as their primary or only backup, and it works just fine. Most business' already have a multi-part backup strategy in place. As for the charging for geo-redundancy, it's something we've considered, but at least for now we like "clean" pricing where it's the same across the board. Might change in the future, but nothing to report now.
averagewall 10y ago
I don't see that as a problem. If you take a backup CD home from the office, it's also stored in a single location. The chance of your house burning down at the same time your office computer gets hacked is low enough to not worry about. Even if Backblaze replicated your backup in different locations, that only protects against their data center being destroyed. You will still lose your data if the app silently stopped working or your account gets deleted across all data centers, etc. If you really want multiple locations, then I think you should use a 2nd backup service entirely to remove that single point of failure (Backblaze itself).
- infogulch 10y ago
  This works for backups, but this makes me more concerned about their B2 offering. I feel like B2 data should at least have the option of being replicated to another datacenter.

by moondev 10y ago

atYevP 10y ago

Yev from Backblaze here -> Yes we do plan on expanding to more datacenters, and we do have emergency plans in place, though we do choose our datacenters carefully to make sure that we avoid any natural-disaster prone areas. As for backing up our own data - we certainly do make backups of our core info/necessary data. As for the user data that we store, that's backed up across the storage pods in a vault as discussed in that post. We do not replicate customer data across multiple datacenters. At our price-point, that's just not feasible.

click170 10y ago
Is there thought being given to expose such an option to the end user at additional cost? Say if I wanted to make sure my data was stored in 2 regions, and was OK with a slight increase in cost to accomplish that.
- atYevP 10y ago
  Sure, we consider it every now and again but for now we like "clean" pricing - meaning that it's the same across the board. Of course that might change in the future, but we try to strive for simplicity, so having different "tiers" goes somewhat counter to what we've done thus far.
  - Bromlife 10y ago
    Long time BackBlaze user & fan here. Currently backing up three computers. Love your service. However, for my main dev computer, I would totally pay another $5USD to replicate it to another location. I don't think that needs to complicate the pricing that much. You're essentially just paying for another backup, except it's the same computer in a different location. Another question, any plans for coming to Linux?
    - icefo 10y ago
      As far as I know they haven't released an official client for Linux but started a new service: B2 cloud storage. There is an API and lots of third party clients. The only downside is that there is no 5$ unlimited plan
    - atYevP 10y ago
      Hey there! Thanks for using us :D Icefo is correct, we don't currently have plans for Linux support - but we do have Backblaze B2. While not unlimited, it gives a lot more flexibility, and may end up being less expensive, depending on how much data you're storing -> backblaze.com/b2
- kejaed 10y ago
  I think at that point you could look into rsync.net

gist 10y ago

> What happens if there is a disaster there? While unlikely there are other threats. You could have a disgruntled or mentally unbalanced employee. All eggs in one basket (whatever the basket and how robust it is) is always a potential problem. To me the way to deal with this threat would be to spread backups over two vendors even if backblaze decides to open other data centers as Yev has indicated in his comment.

atYevP 10y ago
> You could have a disgruntled or mentally unbalanced employee. The recent S3 outage was caused by a typo. You can plan around natural disasters and all sorts of things, but the vast majority of the time, data loss is caused by humans. Diversify where that data lives. We would never recommend that you should ONLY keep your backup in Backblaze. We should be part of your solution.
- gist 10y ago
  I think that if you do open other data centers you should charge extra for that in your pricing, optionally. While there could be negative marketing implications depending on the exact cost or how it's worded, I don't think it's an unreasonable approach. Since not everyone needs the diversity and it would make more sense (because it assumes your costs will go up) to not make all customers pay for something that they don't need because they have other plan b's. You might already be the plan c for some of your customers. > We would never recommend that you should ONLY keep your backup in Backblaze I am guessing (I haven't thoroughly checked so I could be wrong) that your marketing materials don't make this fact known in an obvious way. No issue with that but I think many non business users might not think of it this way.
  - atYevP 10y ago
    We do try to emphasize a 3-2-1 backup strategy through newsletters and blogs posts. A few examples: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/ and more recently https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backing-up-for-small-business/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backing-up-for-small-business.... We're not trying to hide anything, and truthfully, plenty of folks do use us as their primary or only backup, and it works just fine. Most business' already have a multi-part backup strategy in place. As for the charging for geo-redundancy, it's something we've considered, but at least for now we like "clean" pricing where it's the same across the board. Might change in the future, but nothing to report now.

averagewall 10y ago

I don't see that as a problem. If you take a backup CD home from the office, it's also stored in a single location. The chance of your house burning down at the same time your office computer gets hacked is low enough to not worry about. Even if Backblaze replicated your backup in different locations, that only protects against their data center being destroyed. You will still lose your data if the app silently stopped working or your account gets deleted across all data centers, etc. If you really want multiple locations, then I think you should use a 2nd backup service entirely to remove that single point of failure (Backblaze itself).

infogulch 10y ago
This works for backups, but this makes me more concerned about their B2 offering. I feel like B2 data should at least have the option of being replicated to another datacenter.