4 ms·

Hi Gleb, I want to use your cloud storage instead of S3. My main reason for using S3 is the DURABILITY (not reliability). S3 offers 99.999999%, which means it

Hi Gleb, I want to use your cloud storage instead of S3. My main reason for using S3 is the DURABILITY (not reliability). S3 offers 99.999999%, which means it is replicated numerous times. Which means I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT taking extra customer backups, it is "baked" into S3. How is the durability for B2?

jamroom 10y ago
From the B2 page: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html "Reliability: 99.999999% durability."
- dastbe 10y ago
  the OP misquoted S3s durability guarantee. Its 11 9s.
- kcorbitt 10y ago
  ...but in a single day datacenter, which realistically drops several "9"s from that guarantee when you consider tail events. I like b2 and am using it for backup in some projects, but unfortunately it's still not an appropriate choice as a primary data store. The common counterargument I've heard is that you should have multiple redundant storage providers that you manage at the application layer anyway. Problem with that is, there are a near-infinite number of things I "should" do, but very finite resources to do them. S3 backs up across multiple availability zones by default, so using it means one less thing I have to spend brain cycles worrying about.
  - jamroom 10y ago
    Yep - I agree with you 100%, just pointing out what their page says. I'd love to see B2 get more data centers around the world - when we have to do a 500GB restore on a server in Germany, it's already slow even pulling from S3 - with B2 it would be even slower.
    - budmang 10y ago
      Curious - if we open a region in Europe, do people care where?
      - killercup 10y ago
        I know many German companies require you to store data on servers also located in Germany. (But I have no idea if it's similar in other countries.)
        Symbiote 10y ago
        Is it within Germany, or is it just within the EU? Restricting it to Germany would seem anti-competitive on an EU level, which is usually not allowed. But I don't know the laws.
        rahkiin 10y ago
        Depends. But if there are rules about keeping it in-country, you should consider storing it not at a storage provider. Mostly, it is important to keep the data in the EER. So germany is fine. Moving data out of the EU is a big issue, although I have been using B2 but encrypt my data first myself.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
olavgg 10y ago
Backblaze use Reed Solomon / Erasure Coding for their data, plus checksumming with healing, which means that it should be very safe. Their main disadvantage is that they only have one datacenter, unless they have gotten a second one recently.
- mjevans 10y ago
  I was suitable impressed with their description of the singular (I believe) data center they own. Even though it is in an area that is at risk for a major earthquake it seems to be at the upper end of engineering specifications. Having said that, if your data is absolutely critical then I agree that even further geographic diversity would be desirable. Most likely you want to avoid the Pacific Rim, and volatile countries. A central European site/company would be good for this. Obviously you should expect to pay more to store your data in more than one place.
  - brianwski 10y ago
    Brian from Backblaze here so I'm biased. :-) > if your data is absolutely critical then I agree that even further geographic diversity would be desirable I think geographic distribution is absolutely critical if you need "uptime". But for pure durability I think multiple geographic regions is a red herring. What you need much more than multiple geographic regions is having your data stored in two profoundly different formats with two profoundly different vendors with source code written by two separate teams. Furthermore, I would pay for those with two separate credit cards. The same software bug (or lack of payment resulting in Backblaze B2 or Amazon S3 deleting ALL copies of your data) will delete your data flawlessly across geographic regions. Every time. Backblaze carefully chose our main datacenter to not be in an earthquake zone, and on a hill (flood proof), and not in tornado zone, and no hurricanes. I suppose that in the case of a meteor strike on a datacenter or terrorist attack some geographic regions would help, but that is really diminishing returns compared with software or human error. If you truly value your data, two regions won't save you -> two vendors will.
    - dyu- 10y ago

jamroom 10y ago

From the B2 page: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html "Reliability: 99.999999% durability."

dastbe 10y ago
the OP misquoted S3s durability guarantee. Its 11 9s.
kcorbitt 10y ago
...but in a single day datacenter, which realistically drops several "9"s from that guarantee when you consider tail events. I like b2 and am using it for backup in some projects, but unfortunately it's still not an appropriate choice as a primary data store. The common counterargument I've heard is that you should have multiple redundant storage providers that you manage at the application layer anyway. Problem with that is, there are a near-infinite number of things I "should" do, but very finite resources to do them. S3 backs up across multiple availability zones by default, so using it means one less thing I have to spend brain cycles worrying about.
- jamroom 10y ago
  Yep - I agree with you 100%, just pointing out what their page says. I'd love to see B2 get more data centers around the world - when we have to do a 500GB restore on a server in Germany, it's already slow even pulling from S3 - with B2 it would be even slower.
  - budmang 10y ago
    Curious - if we open a region in Europe, do people care where?
    - killercup 10y ago
      I know many German companies require you to store data on servers also located in Germany. (But I have no idea if it's similar in other countries.)
      - Symbiote 10y ago
        Is it within Germany, or is it just within the EU? Restricting it to Germany would seem anti-competitive on an EU level, which is usually not allowed. But I don't know the laws.
        rahkiin 10y ago
        Depends. But if there are rules about keeping it in-country, you should consider storing it not at a storage provider. Mostly, it is important to keep the data in the EER. So germany is fine. Moving data out of the EU is a big issue, although I have been using B2 but encrypt my data first myself.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

olavgg 10y ago

Backblaze use Reed Solomon / Erasure Coding for their data, plus checksumming with healing, which means that it should be very safe. Their main disadvantage is that they only have one datacenter, unless they have gotten a second one recently.

mjevans 10y ago
I was suitable impressed with their description of the singular (I believe) data center they own. Even though it is in an area that is at risk for a major earthquake it seems to be at the upper end of engineering specifications. Having said that, if your data is absolutely critical then I agree that even further geographic diversity would be desirable. Most likely you want to avoid the Pacific Rim, and volatile countries. A central European site/company would be good for this. Obviously you should expect to pay more to store your data in more than one place.
- brianwski 10y ago
  Brian from Backblaze here so I'm biased. :-) > if your data is absolutely critical then I agree that even further geographic diversity would be desirable I think geographic distribution is absolutely critical if you need "uptime". But for pure durability I think multiple geographic regions is a red herring. What you need much more than multiple geographic regions is having your data stored in two profoundly different formats with two profoundly different vendors with source code written by two separate teams. Furthermore, I would pay for those with two separate credit cards. The same software bug (or lack of payment resulting in Backblaze B2 or Amazon S3 deleting ALL copies of your data) will delete your data flawlessly across geographic regions. Every time. Backblaze carefully chose our main datacenter to not be in an earthquake zone, and on a hill (flood proof), and not in tornado zone, and no hurricanes. I suppose that in the case of a meteor strike on a datacenter or terrorist attack some geographic regions would help, but that is really diminishing returns compared with software or human error. If you truly value your data, two regions won't save you -> two vendors will.
  - dyu- 10y ago