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Why do you think Backblaze is able to maintain cheap unlimited support in the wake of so many other providers recently jumping ship? Amazon, SOS and now Crashpl

Why do you think Backblaze is able to maintain cheap unlimited support in the wake of so many other providers recently jumping ship? Amazon, SOS and now Crashplan. I've heard stories of people using Amazon to store over 1PB of data which would be thousands of dollars monthly even at Glacial cost. Do the "ultra" users weigh down on your margins?

atYevP 9y ago
Hey there! Great question. We use our own storage infrastructure called Storage Vaults (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architecture/)which https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect... we build on top of our Storage Pods (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-serv...). That means we can store a lot of data, at a lower Cost per GB than a lot of folks, and we pass the savings on to our customers. Of course we have some customers that store WAY more than we break-even on, but we also have A LOT more customers with a more manageable data-set.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Are you able to dedupe common data between customers? I'd assume there's storage savings in storing a chunk of data (multiple copies of course) only once storage-system wide.
  - atYevP 9y ago
    We don't do account-wide deduplication, but we do deduplicate on the machine before backing up.
- balladeer 9y ago
  ~7 yrs at CrashPlan. Never backed up more than 30-50GB at a time and it's not gonna dramatically change at all in the near future. I use it strictly for "personal" and critical data that I cannot recover or get from anywhere else once lost - personal pics, personal videos, my notes - diary, some mails. No, not all mails - most of them are left with Google, MS, on my VPS and if they are gone, I am not gonna miss them terribly. I don't even store my code on CrashPlan servers - for that's there gitlab and bitbucket (mirrored there) and my external hard disk. In fact I have a ~3GB folder in Dropbox that I have named "Emergency Backup" and if all is lost I might be happy with just that. It's not that I am being a model "low storage" customer so that CrashPlan can function. But I want to keep my backup habit disciplined (in my own way, of course - many would find my backup strategy as stupid for their own use cases and that's fine). So please, for the love up proper backup, bring unlimited versioning and file retention for customers like me :-) Or float a cheaper plan where you limit the storage. Or hell, bring something like cold storage and dump my backup there (I know B2 but that's not what I am looking for; something baked in your main backup service). All I would do is periodically keep checking whether my backup is there or not and I will just leave it be. (Okay, if not really unlimited then something close to it). We need a CrashPlan alternative. I am willing to stick with and wait for almost a year but after that I would like to move to a better alternative and more trustworthy which you are - except, in all honestly - that glaringly missing (or omitted) critical backup feature. Also, my backup is something I want to pay and let someone else handle in a very solid way. Here's a discussion I had with Brian few days back and there are some points I have raised. I am not saying they are brilliant ideas, actually that is a wish-list but please have a look if you can - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15074647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15074647
  - atYevP 9y ago
    Thanks I'll take a look. Honest question, if you're not backing up more than 50GB of data, why not just use Backblaze B2 w/ another front-end GUI like ARQ or Cloudberry or Hashbackup? You'd be paying $0.25/month for the storage, much less than with our Computer Backup service, and you can make life-cycle rules that would keep versions for as long as you'd like.
    - balladeer 9y ago
      Because I want one service that has everything built in. Like CrashPlan backup app, or your computer backup app. I have mentioned this in my comment. I understand the price difference but I want the ease, peace etc, not something where I need to hook two or few things together.
      - atYevP 9y ago
        Understood! Thank you for the additional color!
      - eltoozero 9y ago
        I would rather see them leverage/contribute to existing cross-platform client-side backup software like ZManda[0] making the improvements needed to either make it work directly with B2 or integrate with Amanda. Keep your focus on the storage angle, there are ways to accomplish this, I use a "glue box" (Synology NAS) to collect the data and fire it off to B2, could easily be a linux machine running b2 cli tools[1]. [0]: https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Zmanda_Windows_Client https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Zmanda_Windows_Client [1]: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/quick_command_line.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/quick_command_line.html
      - pnutjam 9y ago
        I run a personal home server that acts as my cloud / NAS. I personally think RAID is overkill for most home users. Instead, I use my 2nd drive to mirror the data. This saves me from fat finger errors and such. I also use BTRFS so I can take snapshots and provide my own file versioning. For offsite backup, I use a time4vps storage server, but I might transition to B2 in the future. I like what I'm hearing.
Ajedi32 9y ago
Part of it might be because they don't support Linux, which tends to have a larger percentage of "ultra" users. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125543
- brianwski 9y ago
  Brian from Backblaze here. > Part of it might be because they don't support Linux Backblaze DOES support Linux through the B2 product line and third party applications. There is a list of applications that support Linux here: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html (scroll down and look for pictures of Penguins). Supported applications include Dupicity which ships inside of several Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Debian. So you may already have your local client application pre-installed on your linux computer ready to backup to Backblaze!
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    Right, I meant Linux with the Backblaze personal service, since that's what the GP was referring to: > I've heard stories of people using Amazon to store over 1PB of data which would be thousands of dollars monthly even at Glacial cost. Do the "ultra" users weigh down on your margins? (Obviously with a price that scales with the amount of data stored, "ultra" users wouldn't be a problem on B2.)
    - pnutjam 9y ago
      It sounds like BackBlaze requires you to have local copies of the data, which would stop most people from storing a PB.
djrogers 9y ago
It helps that they only backup local storage - no NAS or network drive support. Obviously anyone storing 1Pb of data in Amazon isn't exactly uploading that from the drive(s) in their laptops...
scarface74 9y ago
One reason that Backblaze is so cheap and B2 is much cheaper than Amazon is that they don't have multiple data centers. That means two things: you don't have the fault tolerance you have at Amazon: If their building catches fire, you're SOL. The second consequence is that yiu can't choose a data center that is geographically close to you. That makes B2 unsuitable for off site primary storage for critical data and I wouldn't use it for more than a backup. That being said, I'm a happy backblaze customer and if I ever get a NAS, I would definitely use B2 as the backend for my backup solution.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Amazon doesn't include multi-region redundancy with S3. What you pay for is redundancy within a region, just like Backblaze. Source: I emailed Jeff Barr and asked.
  - daftdoki 9y ago
    It does include multi-AZ redundancy, which means that your data is spread across multiple physical locations within a region. AZs are usually within something like a 50-mile radius, which doesn't get you meteor level separation but does get you fire level separation.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Can you provide a citation to that level of geographic diversity per region? My understanding is that all AZs are within the same physical facility, but independent networking and power.
      - yeukhon 9y ago
        > all AZs are within the same physical facility The TL;DR from AWS documentation [1]: An Availability Zone is represented by a region code followed by a letter identifier; for example, us-east-1a. To ensure that resources are distributed across the Availability Zones for a region, we independently map Availability Zones to identifiers for each account. For example, your Availability Zone us-east-1a might not be the same location as us-east-1a for another account. There's no way for you to coordinate Availability Zones between accounts. The long and confusing explanation: At least not in us-east-1 and us-west-1-2, but I am pretty sure many of the large regions are also run in multiple physical facilities. The so-called availability zone is an abstract and virtual concept. Let us use us-east-1 as an example. Assume the following: * Physical DC buildings: Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island * AWS accounts: Joe, Alice, Bob * AZ: us-east-1a, us-east-1b, us-east-1c, and us-east-1d Every AWS account in us-east-1 region is assigned three AZs. But for sake of this explanation, we assume only two. * Joe: 1a, 1b * Alice: 1a, 1b * Bob: 1a, 1c You now ask, "WTF?" but you let this go, think this is done for capacity reason. So do we actually have four different physical facilities, one per each AZ? Nope. So is 1a and 1b in the same facility? Not necessarily, but very possible. So 1a and 1b in Queens, 1c in Brooklyn, and 1d in Manhattan? Nope. So what the fuck is AZ? What is the relationship between AZ and physical facility? Think about virtual memory address space. Joe's 1a and Bob's 1a are in Queens, but Alice's 1a is in Manhattan. But Joe's 1a and Bob's 1a are on a different floor, different racks, while Joe's 1b and Bob's 1c are in Brooklyn and on the same floor. This is why certain customers run out m3.xlarge in 1a but others don't in their 1a. In essence, AZ is a label and is unique per account. AZ is very similar how virtual memory address in OS looks like. We learned this because our EMR failed due to low capacity in one account. [1]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-regions-availability-zones.html#concepts-regions-availability-zones http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-reg...
chmars 9y ago
Backblaze is NOT able to maintain unlimited support: 'While files are expunged from the servers after 30 days if they're removed from a computer, your most recent backup snapshot will be retained for 6 months if your computer is completely unable to contact our servers (either it's shut off, or no internet connection). As long as your computer can contact Backblaze at least once every 6 months and perform a full Backblaze file scan operation, you don't delete or transfer the backup and you retain active billing, your most recent snapshot will be retained.' https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664898-What-happens-to-my-backups-when-I-m-away-or-on-vacation- https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664898-What-...
- atYevP 9y ago
  I think the question was about our unlimited model, not data retention/versioning, though if it was you've got the right answer :D

atYevP 9y ago

Hey there! Great question. We use our own storage infrastructure called Storage Vaults (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architecture/)which https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect... we build on top of our Storage Pods (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-serv...). That means we can store a lot of data, at a lower Cost per GB than a lot of folks, and we pass the savings on to our customers. Of course we have some customers that store WAY more than we break-even on, but we also have A LOT more customers with a more manageable data-set.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Are you able to dedupe common data between customers? I'd assume there's storage savings in storing a chunk of data (multiple copies of course) only once storage-system wide.
- atYevP 9y ago
  We don't do account-wide deduplication, but we do deduplicate on the machine before backing up.
balladeer 9y ago
~7 yrs at CrashPlan. Never backed up more than 30-50GB at a time and it's not gonna dramatically change at all in the near future. I use it strictly for "personal" and critical data that I cannot recover or get from anywhere else once lost - personal pics, personal videos, my notes - diary, some mails. No, not all mails - most of them are left with Google, MS, on my VPS and if they are gone, I am not gonna miss them terribly. I don't even store my code on CrashPlan servers - for that's there gitlab and bitbucket (mirrored there) and my external hard disk. In fact I have a ~3GB folder in Dropbox that I have named "Emergency Backup" and if all is lost I might be happy with just that. It's not that I am being a model "low storage" customer so that CrashPlan can function. But I want to keep my backup habit disciplined (in my own way, of course - many would find my backup strategy as stupid for their own use cases and that's fine). So please, for the love up proper backup, bring unlimited versioning and file retention for customers like me :-) Or float a cheaper plan where you limit the storage. Or hell, bring something like cold storage and dump my backup there (I know B2 but that's not what I am looking for; something baked in your main backup service). All I would do is periodically keep checking whether my backup is there or not and I will just leave it be. (Okay, if not really unlimited then something close to it). We need a CrashPlan alternative. I am willing to stick with and wait for almost a year but after that I would like to move to a better alternative and more trustworthy which you are - except, in all honestly - that glaringly missing (or omitted) critical backup feature. Also, my backup is something I want to pay and let someone else handle in a very solid way. Here's a discussion I had with Brian few days back and there are some points I have raised. I am not saying they are brilliant ideas, actually that is a wish-list but please have a look if you can - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15074647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15074647
- atYevP 9y ago
  Thanks I'll take a look. Honest question, if you're not backing up more than 50GB of data, why not just use Backblaze B2 w/ another front-end GUI like ARQ or Cloudberry or Hashbackup? You'd be paying $0.25/month for the storage, much less than with our Computer Backup service, and you can make life-cycle rules that would keep versions for as long as you'd like.
  - balladeer 9y ago
    Because I want one service that has everything built in. Like CrashPlan backup app, or your computer backup app. I have mentioned this in my comment. I understand the price difference but I want the ease, peace etc, not something where I need to hook two or few things together.
    - atYevP 9y ago
      Understood! Thank you for the additional color!
    - eltoozero 9y ago
      I would rather see them leverage/contribute to existing cross-platform client-side backup software like ZManda[0] making the improvements needed to either make it work directly with B2 or integrate with Amanda. Keep your focus on the storage angle, there are ways to accomplish this, I use a "glue box" (Synology NAS) to collect the data and fire it off to B2, could easily be a linux machine running b2 cli tools[1]. [0]: https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Zmanda_Windows_Client https://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Zmanda_Windows_Client [1]: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/quick_command_line.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/quick_command_line.html
    - pnutjam 9y ago
      I run a personal home server that acts as my cloud / NAS. I personally think RAID is overkill for most home users. Instead, I use my 2nd drive to mirror the data. This saves me from fat finger errors and such. I also use BTRFS so I can take snapshots and provide my own file versioning. For offsite backup, I use a time4vps storage server, but I might transition to B2 in the future. I like what I'm hearing.

Ajedi32 9y ago

Part of it might be because they don't support Linux, which tends to have a larger percentage of "ultra" users. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125543

brianwski 9y ago
Brian from Backblaze here. > Part of it might be because they don't support Linux Backblaze DOES support Linux through the B2 product line and third party applications. There is a list of applications that support Linux here: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html (scroll down and look for pictures of Penguins). Supported applications include Dupicity which ships inside of several Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Debian. So you may already have your local client application pre-installed on your linux computer ready to backup to Backblaze!
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  Right, I meant Linux with the Backblaze personal service, since that's what the GP was referring to: > I've heard stories of people using Amazon to store over 1PB of data which would be thousands of dollars monthly even at Glacial cost. Do the "ultra" users weigh down on your margins? (Obviously with a price that scales with the amount of data stored, "ultra" users wouldn't be a problem on B2.)
  - pnutjam 9y ago
    It sounds like BackBlaze requires you to have local copies of the data, which would stop most people from storing a PB.

djrogers 9y ago

It helps that they only backup local storage - no NAS or network drive support. Obviously anyone storing 1Pb of data in Amazon isn't exactly uploading that from the drive(s) in their laptops...

scarface74 9y ago

One reason that Backblaze is so cheap and B2 is much cheaper than Amazon is that they don't have multiple data centers. That means two things: you don't have the fault tolerance you have at Amazon: If their building catches fire, you're SOL. The second consequence is that yiu can't choose a data center that is geographically close to you. That makes B2 unsuitable for off site primary storage for critical data and I wouldn't use it for more than a backup. That being said, I'm a happy backblaze customer and if I ever get a NAS, I would definitely use B2 as the backend for my backup solution.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Amazon doesn't include multi-region redundancy with S3. What you pay for is redundancy within a region, just like Backblaze. Source: I emailed Jeff Barr and asked.
- daftdoki 9y ago
  It does include multi-AZ redundancy, which means that your data is spread across multiple physical locations within a region. AZs are usually within something like a 50-mile radius, which doesn't get you meteor level separation but does get you fire level separation.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Can you provide a citation to that level of geographic diversity per region? My understanding is that all AZs are within the same physical facility, but independent networking and power.
    - yeukhon 9y ago
      > all AZs are within the same physical facility The TL;DR from AWS documentation [1]: An Availability Zone is represented by a region code followed by a letter identifier; for example, us-east-1a. To ensure that resources are distributed across the Availability Zones for a region, we independently map Availability Zones to identifiers for each account. For example, your Availability Zone us-east-1a might not be the same location as us-east-1a for another account. There's no way for you to coordinate Availability Zones between accounts. The long and confusing explanation: At least not in us-east-1 and us-west-1-2, but I am pretty sure many of the large regions are also run in multiple physical facilities. The so-called availability zone is an abstract and virtual concept. Let us use us-east-1 as an example. Assume the following: * Physical DC buildings: Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island * AWS accounts: Joe, Alice, Bob * AZ: us-east-1a, us-east-1b, us-east-1c, and us-east-1d Every AWS account in us-east-1 region is assigned three AZs. But for sake of this explanation, we assume only two. * Joe: 1a, 1b * Alice: 1a, 1b * Bob: 1a, 1c You now ask, "WTF?" but you let this go, think this is done for capacity reason. So do we actually have four different physical facilities, one per each AZ? Nope. So is 1a and 1b in the same facility? Not necessarily, but very possible. So 1a and 1b in Queens, 1c in Brooklyn, and 1d in Manhattan? Nope. So what the fuck is AZ? What is the relationship between AZ and physical facility? Think about virtual memory address space. Joe's 1a and Bob's 1a are in Queens, but Alice's 1a is in Manhattan. But Joe's 1a and Bob's 1a are on a different floor, different racks, while Joe's 1b and Bob's 1c are in Brooklyn and on the same floor. This is why certain customers run out m3.xlarge in 1a but others don't in their 1a. In essence, AZ is a label and is unique per account. AZ is very similar how virtual memory address in OS looks like. We learned this because our EMR failed due to low capacity in one account. [1]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-regions-availability-zones.html#concepts-regions-availability-zones http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-reg...

chmars 9y ago

Backblaze is NOT able to maintain unlimited support: 'While files are expunged from the servers after 30 days if they're removed from a computer, your most recent backup snapshot will be retained for 6 months if your computer is completely unable to contact our servers (either it's shut off, or no internet connection). As long as your computer can contact Backblaze at least once every 6 months and perform a full Backblaze file scan operation, you don't delete or transfer the backup and you retain active billing, your most recent snapshot will be retained.' https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664898-What-happens-to-my-backups-when-I-m-away-or-on-vacation- https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664898-What-...

atYevP 9y ago
I think the question was about our unlimited model, not data retention/versioning, though if it was you've got the right answer :D