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Goodness, I wish Backblaze had a Linux client. I pay for Backblaze for my wife's Windows workstation _and_ a second license for her Windows laptop, yet I'm stuc

by teach 7y ago

Goodness, I wish Backblaze had a Linux client. I pay for Backblaze for my wife's Windows workstation _and_ a second license for her Windows laptop, yet I'm stuck with CrashPlan for Small Business to back up my Linux workstation. And before I get comments about B2 and Duplicity, my Linux workstation is also our NAS, so I'd be backing up roughly 4-5TB. I greatly prefer Backblaze, but not enough to pay an extra $200 a year.

pcurve 7y ago
5tb?! They may not want your business ;)
- gmanley 7y ago
  I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I can't imagine what would happen if everyone started downloading all the media they watch, though. Hopefully streaming continues to be realistic in the near future.
  - brianwski 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I work on the backup client, and I like larger customers for the reason that if the client works for the larger customers today, then it will work really really well for average size customers for several years to come. Larger customers help stretch and test the datastructures for me. :-) We politely ask the larger customers to recommend Backblaze to their friends and family with less data. We live on the averages, so as long as that works out, we're happy to free customers from worrying about exactly how much they store.
    - teach 7y ago
      So if you need a beta tester for a Linux client, you know who to ask! And I just double-checked and it looks like I'm only backing up a little less than 2TB in Crashplan after all.
      - prirun 7y ago
        I think Crashplan Business is $120/yr. B2 costs $5/TB/mo or $120 yr. You could switch to B2 for the same price as Crashplan and avoid the Crashplan pain. (Although you may be in a transition period at Crashplan where it isn't yet costing you $120/yr).
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Yep, I suspect that's probably exactly why they don't have a Linux client for their "Unlimited" backup system. (You can do it with B2, but B2 doesn't have an "unlimited" plan.)
- scarface74 7y ago
  Why not? The 5TB of storage is a one time cost for BlackBlaze (ignoring disk failures). If they backup 5TB one time and keep paying $6/month, eventually they will be profitable customer.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Ignoring disk failures and server operating costs. That said, 5TB isn't a huge number. It could be as low as $200 of hardware cost. With them paying $60 a year, they may or may not end up being a drain on the company's resources. Though they're definitely not paying a full share of the fixed costs the company has. Edit: Though the full scenario is paying for three clients, so $180 for that much data, and that should easily be profitable.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      We don’t know how much their servers cost, but we can extrapolate how much storage costs to store 5TB over time since they report both how redundantly they store files, their hard drive failure rate and I believe the cost per hard drive.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        > We don’t know how much their servers cost Their blog posts say it's about $3500 without drives. I didn't pull $200 out of nowhere. If you stuff a $3500 chassis with 60 $325 12TB drives (current amazon price) and you're getting 80% storage efficiency, that's exactly $40 per usable TB. Add an extra 25% for safety, and then add a big $400 per month for power/data/space and replacing the one-ish drive per year that fails. Assume you throw the entire thing in the garbage after five years. These are pretty pessimistic numbers, but it's still only $92 per TB per 5 years. With three accounts that's $460 dollars of direct costs on a revenue of $900. To be profitable on 5TB in one account is much trickier. It depends on the hosting costs far more than the hardware costs, and those are hard to guess. If they're over $150, it might be impossible to break even on direct costs, even given more than five years.
jorams 7y ago
> my Linux workstation is also our NAS, so I'd be backing up roughly 4-5TB. They've said in the past that this is an important reason not to release a Linux client. Backblaze backup is meant for backups of personal computers, which generally have relatively limited storage themselves capacity. Add a linux client and many people will start running it on servers with many terabytes of drive capacity. They have a page[1] on their website about NAS backup, and it points to B2 for a reason. [1]: https://www.backblaze.com/business-nas-backup.html https://www.backblaze.com/business-nas-backup.html
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  It's an interesting thing to think about. In practice people with "a lot" of data tend to put it on a NAS. On the other hand that's only a single hard drive's worth of data. Somehow it's become almost weird to have even one big drive inside your computer. Even though an 8TB drive (the best price per byte) is only $150.
ac29 7y ago
Backblaze has explicitly said more or less the exact reason they don't have a Linux client for their one-price-fits-all backup service is that they don't want people backing up multi-TB NAS devices. The folks over r/DataHoarder/ would absolutely destroy them if they offered unlimited backups for NAS devices for $6/month - many of them have hundreds of TB on their personal NAS'. Its absolutely the correct business decision, and as you note, you are more than welcome to use B2 and pay per GB for as much storage as you want.
- bluedino 7y ago
  On Reddit they said the biggest user was storing 430TB on the $5 plan
  - brianwski 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > they said the biggest user was storing 430TB on the $5 plan Here is the histogram of Personal Backup sizes at the end of 2018: https://i.imgur.com/iVEuwUT.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iVEuwUT.jpg You will need to "zoom in" and then scroll over to the right to see the largest at that time.
- bproven 7y ago
  you can still (probably) do that now using b2 cloud with duplicity or restic you just don't have an official Linux client. Although I do use restic on my laptop (backing up to b2) I wish they had a nice official Linux client for desktops (unless you are talking about non-b2 :) )
  - metafunctor 7y ago
    Then you pay a fair price for the space you actually use, not a flat monthly fee.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Simple solution: A limit.
reitzensteinm 7y ago
Have you done a restore of CrashPlan recently? I tried to do a full restore before cancelling my service, and it didn't work. Downloaded a burst of files (maybe 5% of the total), then sat there spinning for a week or more with no further progress.

by teach 7y ago

pcurve 7y ago

5tb?! They may not want your business ;)

gmanley 7y ago
I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I can't imagine what would happen if everyone started downloading all the media they watch, though. Hopefully streaming continues to be realistic in the near future.
- brianwski 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > I backed up 11TB. As long as we are outliers I don't think it's an issue. I work on the backup client, and I like larger customers for the reason that if the client works for the larger customers today, then it will work really really well for average size customers for several years to come. Larger customers help stretch and test the datastructures for me. :-) We politely ask the larger customers to recommend Backblaze to their friends and family with less data. We live on the averages, so as long as that works out, we're happy to free customers from worrying about exactly how much they store.
  - teach 7y ago
    So if you need a beta tester for a Linux client, you know who to ask! And I just double-checked and it looks like I'm only backing up a little less than 2TB in Crashplan after all.
    - prirun 7y ago
      I think Crashplan Business is $120/yr. B2 costs $5/TB/mo or $120 yr. You could switch to B2 for the same price as Crashplan and avoid the Crashplan pain. (Although you may be in a transition period at Crashplan where it isn't yet costing you $120/yr).
Ajedi32 7y ago
Yep, I suspect that's probably exactly why they don't have a Linux client for their "Unlimited" backup system. (You can do it with B2, but B2 doesn't have an "unlimited" plan.)
scarface74 7y ago
Why not? The 5TB of storage is a one time cost for BlackBlaze (ignoring disk failures). If they backup 5TB one time and keep paying $6/month, eventually they will be profitable customer.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Ignoring disk failures and server operating costs. That said, 5TB isn't a huge number. It could be as low as $200 of hardware cost. With them paying $60 a year, they may or may not end up being a drain on the company's resources. Though they're definitely not paying a full share of the fixed costs the company has. Edit: Though the full scenario is paying for three clients, so $180 for that much data, and that should easily be profitable.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    We don’t know how much their servers cost, but we can extrapolate how much storage costs to store 5TB over time since they report both how redundantly they store files, their hard drive failure rate and I believe the cost per hard drive.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      > We don’t know how much their servers cost Their blog posts say it's about $3500 without drives. I didn't pull $200 out of nowhere. If you stuff a $3500 chassis with 60 $325 12TB drives (current amazon price) and you're getting 80% storage efficiency, that's exactly $40 per usable TB. Add an extra 25% for safety, and then add a big $400 per month for power/data/space and replacing the one-ish drive per year that fails. Assume you throw the entire thing in the garbage after five years. These are pretty pessimistic numbers, but it's still only $92 per TB per 5 years. With three accounts that's $460 dollars of direct costs on a revenue of $900. To be profitable on 5TB in one account is much trickier. It depends on the hosting costs far more than the hardware costs, and those are hard to guess. If they're over $150, it might be impossible to break even on direct costs, even given more than five years.

jorams 7y ago

> my Linux workstation is also our NAS, so I'd be backing up roughly 4-5TB. They've said in the past that this is an important reason not to release a Linux client. Backblaze backup is meant for backups of personal computers, which generally have relatively limited storage themselves capacity. Add a linux client and many people will start running it on servers with many terabytes of drive capacity. They have a page[1] on their website about NAS backup, and it points to B2 for a reason. [1]: https://www.backblaze.com/business-nas-backup.html https://www.backblaze.com/business-nas-backup.html

Dylan16807 7y ago
It's an interesting thing to think about. In practice people with "a lot" of data tend to put it on a NAS. On the other hand that's only a single hard drive's worth of data. Somehow it's become almost weird to have even one big drive inside your computer. Even though an 8TB drive (the best price per byte) is only $150.

ac29 7y ago

Backblaze has explicitly said more or less the exact reason they don't have a Linux client for their one-price-fits-all backup service is that they don't want people backing up multi-TB NAS devices. The folks over r/DataHoarder/ would absolutely destroy them if they offered unlimited backups for NAS devices for $6/month - many of them have hundreds of TB on their personal NAS'. Its absolutely the correct business decision, and as you note, you are more than welcome to use B2 and pay per GB for as much storage as you want.

bluedino 7y ago
On Reddit they said the biggest user was storing 430TB on the $5 plan
- brianwski 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > they said the biggest user was storing 430TB on the $5 plan Here is the histogram of Personal Backup sizes at the end of 2018: https://i.imgur.com/iVEuwUT.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iVEuwUT.jpg You will need to "zoom in" and then scroll over to the right to see the largest at that time.
bproven 7y ago
you can still (probably) do that now using b2 cloud with duplicity or restic you just don't have an official Linux client. Although I do use restic on my laptop (backing up to b2) I wish they had a nice official Linux client for desktops (unless you are talking about non-b2 :) )
- metafunctor 7y ago
  Then you pay a fair price for the space you actually use, not a flat monthly fee.
quickthrower2 7y ago
Simple solution: A limit.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

Have you done a restore of CrashPlan recently? I tried to do a full restore before cancelling my service, and it didn't work. Downloaded a burst of files (maybe 5% of the total), then sat there spinning for a week or more with no further progress.