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Backblaze has a backup service for laptops/desktops, but our B2 service is actually more like S3 - the data is available without delays or penalties for access.

Backblaze has a backup service for laptops/desktops, but our B2 service is actually more like S3 - the data is available without delays or penalties for access. (Unlike Glacier.)

cookiecaper 9y ago
Yeah, it's similar to Google Nearline or TarSnap in that unlike Glacier, the data can be read out instantly instead of waiting for Amazon to restore it off of a tape or whatever they do. The "penalty for access" is the download cost. However, my understanding is that B2 was intended for long-term storage and not everyday cloud storage. Is this understanding incorrect? Backblaze does take the position that B2 should be considered as a competitor for S3? Up to this point, my experience with B2 has been that they don't want to be the authoritative storage source for the data. I seem to recall reading that B2 should not be used as primary storage (though that was in beta days). In support discussions, a representative expressed surprise when it was implied that I may not have local copies of files that already exist on B2 (I do indeed have local copies, but it was beside the point) before confirming that yes, I would need to redownload and reupload to complete a rename.
- brianwski 9y ago
  Brian from Backblaze here. > my understanding is that B2 was intended for long-term storage... Long term storage is a great use of B2, but it was never "intended" as anything other than the ability to reliably store blobs of data and retrieve them really fast whenever and how ever often you like. I suppose there are different use cases that work well for B2 and others that don't work well, but that is up for customers to decide, not Backblaze. > ... they [Backblaze?] don't want to be the authoritative storage source for the data Who told you that? Backblaze wants people to use B2 for whatever they want. Backblaze makes an AMAZINGLY GOOD authoritative storage source. > I would need to redownload and reupload to complete a rename Right now the B2 service does not include a "rename" function. If that would be useful to customers, we can add it? We collect customer requests and add them in the order that we have time and what gets the most customer votes.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. >Long term storage is a great use of B2, but it was never "intended" as anything other than the ability to reliably store blobs of data and retrieve them really fast whenever and how ever often you like. I suppose there are different use cases that work well for B2 and others that don't work well, but that is up for customers to decide, not Backblaze. I guess that the pricing structure of free uploads and expensive downloads is the main thing that caused it to be compared to Glacier and other long-term storage solutions like Nearline. Reducing the download cost is an attempt to get more people to see B2 as an S3 replacement, right? >Who told you that? Backblaze wants people to use B2 for whatever they want. Backblaze makes an AMAZINGLY GOOD authoritative storage source. Like I said, I must be recalling discussion from the time the beta was announced, and that such restrictions were shed post-beta. Did Backblaze ever expand into its promised second datacenter? >Right now the B2 service does not include a "rename" function. If that would be useful to customers, we can add it? We collect customer requests and add them in the order that we have time and what gets the most customer votes. Yes, this made me stop using B2 for all practical intents and purposes. It's such an easy thing that it doesn't seem like there's any reason it shouldn't be supported. Between the web UI's lack of pagination and the inability to rename a file to comply with virtual folders, the web interface is not usable.
    - extra88 9y ago
      > Reducing the download cost is an attempt to get more people to see B2 as an S3 replacement, right? B2's download cost was already cheaper than AWS for everyone but the largest customers but I expect a little guy has to try harder. I think something that has contributed to seeing B2 as mainly for backup, aside from it being a service of a backup company, is greater emphasis on durability rather than availability. And looking at web pages now, B2's availability SLA is 99.9% [0] while S3's is 99.99% [1] (S3 Infrequent Access is 99.9%). [0] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html [1] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
    - brianwski 9y ago
      > Reducing the download cost is an attempt to get more people to see B2 as an S3 replacement, right? A price drop MIGHT open new markets to us. What those markets are are kind of an internal debate at Backblaze. What we agree on is that we priced outbound bandwidth incorrectly when we launched B2. We know this for two reasons: A) The price Backblaze pays bandwidth is WAAAAAY lower than 5 cents per GByte. B) Almost nobody is choosing to use Backblaze as a CDN or website server or a large source of outbound data. One new market might be making B2 more attractive as a CDN or website server. It is my understanding that CDN customers use the CDN because of two things: 1) cheap download prices and 2) fault tolerance and reliability and distribution all over the world. Most CDNs charge about 2 cents/GByte or maybe a little more. If B2 outbound bandwidth prices drop below what CDNs charge, then SOME of their customers might consider B2 as one part of their solution. In my humble opinion we are still overpriced, but the reason we're dropping prices slowly is because we're slightly terrified of becoming too attractive too fast and not being able to handle the onslaught as the world abandons all the other CDNs and goes with B2 since we are so much cheaper. So we're going slowly at first while we ramp up, and then we can drop prices much more in the future as we gain comfort with serving up gigantic amounts of cached data. > Did Backblaze ever expand into its promised second datacenter? In the process of. Servers are sitting in the new datacenter powered up and talking with each other (and even have customer data on them), but we do not yet let customers choose which datacenter their data lands in (or choose to duplicate their data between).

Backblaze has a backup service for laptops/desktops, but our B2 service is actually more like S3 - the data is available without delays or penalties for access. (Unlike Glacier.)

cookiecaper 9y ago

Yeah, it's similar to Google Nearline or TarSnap in that unlike Glacier, the data can be read out instantly instead of waiting for Amazon to restore it off of a tape or whatever they do. The "penalty for access" is the download cost. However, my understanding is that B2 was intended for long-term storage and not everyday cloud storage. Is this understanding incorrect? Backblaze does take the position that B2 should be considered as a competitor for S3? Up to this point, my experience with B2 has been that they don't want to be the authoritative storage source for the data. I seem to recall reading that B2 should not be used as primary storage (though that was in beta days). In support discussions, a representative expressed surprise when it was implied that I may not have local copies of files that already exist on B2 (I do indeed have local copies, but it was beside the point) before confirming that yes, I would need to redownload and reupload to complete a rename.

brianwski 9y ago
Brian from Backblaze here. > my understanding is that B2 was intended for long-term storage... Long term storage is a great use of B2, but it was never "intended" as anything other than the ability to reliably store blobs of data and retrieve them really fast whenever and how ever often you like. I suppose there are different use cases that work well for B2 and others that don't work well, but that is up for customers to decide, not Backblaze. > ... they [Backblaze?] don't want to be the authoritative storage source for the data Who told you that? Backblaze wants people to use B2 for whatever they want. Backblaze makes an AMAZINGLY GOOD authoritative storage source. > I would need to redownload and reupload to complete a rename Right now the B2 service does not include a "rename" function. If that would be useful to customers, we can add it? We collect customer requests and add them in the order that we have time and what gets the most customer votes.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. >Long term storage is a great use of B2, but it was never "intended" as anything other than the ability to reliably store blobs of data and retrieve them really fast whenever and how ever often you like. I suppose there are different use cases that work well for B2 and others that don't work well, but that is up for customers to decide, not Backblaze. I guess that the pricing structure of free uploads and expensive downloads is the main thing that caused it to be compared to Glacier and other long-term storage solutions like Nearline. Reducing the download cost is an attempt to get more people to see B2 as an S3 replacement, right? >Who told you that? Backblaze wants people to use B2 for whatever they want. Backblaze makes an AMAZINGLY GOOD authoritative storage source. Like I said, I must be recalling discussion from the time the beta was announced, and that such restrictions were shed post-beta. Did Backblaze ever expand into its promised second datacenter? >Right now the B2 service does not include a "rename" function. If that would be useful to customers, we can add it? We collect customer requests and add them in the order that we have time and what gets the most customer votes. Yes, this made me stop using B2 for all practical intents and purposes. It's such an easy thing that it doesn't seem like there's any reason it shouldn't be supported. Between the web UI's lack of pagination and the inability to rename a file to comply with virtual folders, the web interface is not usable.
  - extra88 9y ago
    > Reducing the download cost is an attempt to get more people to see B2 as an S3 replacement, right? B2's download cost was already cheaper than AWS for everyone but the largest customers but I expect a little guy has to try harder. I think something that has contributed to seeing B2 as mainly for backup, aside from it being a service of a backup company, is greater emphasis on durability rather than availability. And looking at web pages now, B2's availability SLA is 99.9% [0] while S3's is 99.99% [1] (S3 Infrequent Access is 99.9%). [0] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html [1] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
  - brianwski 9y ago
    > Reducing the download cost is an attempt to get more people to see B2 as an S3 replacement, right? A price drop MIGHT open new markets to us. What those markets are are kind of an internal debate at Backblaze. What we agree on is that we priced outbound bandwidth incorrectly when we launched B2. We know this for two reasons: A) The price Backblaze pays bandwidth is WAAAAAY lower than 5 cents per GByte. B) Almost nobody is choosing to use Backblaze as a CDN or website server or a large source of outbound data. One new market might be making B2 more attractive as a CDN or website server. It is my understanding that CDN customers use the CDN because of two things: 1) cheap download prices and 2) fault tolerance and reliability and distribution all over the world. Most CDNs charge about 2 cents/GByte or maybe a little more. If B2 outbound bandwidth prices drop below what CDNs charge, then SOME of their customers might consider B2 as one part of their solution. In my humble opinion we are still overpriced, but the reason we're dropping prices slowly is because we're slightly terrified of becoming too attractive too fast and not being able to handle the onslaught as the world abandons all the other CDNs and goes with B2 since we are so much cheaper. So we're going slowly at first while we ramp up, and then we can drop prices much more in the future as we gain comfort with serving up gigantic amounts of cached data. > Did Backblaze ever expand into its promised second datacenter? In the process of. Servers are sitting in the new datacenter powered up and talking with each other (and even have customer data on them), but we do not yet let customers choose which datacenter their data lands in (or choose to duplicate their data between).