6 ms·

Backblaze has been good but me and several others I know are moving away due to not having a Linux client and being licensed per machine rather than per storage

Backblaze has been good but me and several others I know are moving away due to not having a Linux client and being licensed per machine rather than per storage or user. It’s 2023 and we have lots of devices and a lot of people have a small home server they want to backup or just run Linux on their machines.

somsak2 3y ago
"A lot of people" don't have a Linux computer, and especially not a home server.
- smcleod 3y ago
  Perhaps wherever you live that's not the case, but it's certainly is in Australia and New Zealand. Statista shows 47% identifying as professionals in the field of software development use Linux-based operating systems. Probably around 80% of the engineers I know in Melbourne Australia run macOS, with somewhere between 15-19% of remaining 20% running Linux (I think I've seen a dev running windows recently but I can't remember where).
berbec 3y ago
If you can mount your NAS as an iSCSI volume, you're golden. https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/9chhz6/backblaze_personal_and_iscsi_mounted_volumes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/9chhz6/backblaze...
- smcleod 3y ago
  Unfortunately macOS no longer has an iSCSI initiator.
someplaceguy 3y ago
I backup my Linux systems to Backblaze using restic on a daily basis and I pay per storage used (and some cents for number of operations). It's nice because I get zstd compression, smart deduplication, encryption, snapshots, multiple sets of backups to the same repo, daily random verification of backup data, etc. I also do the exact same backups every day to (admittedly, underpowered) dedicated servers using borg but the restic backups always complete much faster. And it's also pretty damn cheap. Never had a problem, highly recommended, five stars***** (no affiliation).
- smcleod 3y ago
  That sounds like you're not using backblaze backup - you might be using backblaze b2 storage? (s3 compatible object storage). If so, how much (in your currency) does it cost you to backup say 3TB with daily (x7), weekly (x4), monthly (x12) snapshots available for a year? Using their own calculator and assuming in a year you have a total of 10TB stored (3TB of "active" data and the rest point-in time) they estimate B2 to cost a whopping $1110AUD/yr.
  - someplaceguy 3y ago
    > That sounds like you're not using backblaze backup - you might be using backblaze b2 storage? Right. Why, is the name of the service an issue? In Backblaze B2 you basically pay per storage, which I thought is what you wanted but perhaps I misread you and you wanted pay per machine instead? I actually prefer pay per storage because I think pay per machine (i.e. an infinite storage promise) is not a sustainable model and just leads to a bad surprise down the road, when the service becomes too popular -- perhaps a sudden large price increase, the service being shutdown or even bankruptcy/sale of the business. Although this means I do have to be somewhat selective of what I backup, it's not a big effort for me. I basically just exclude some large unimportant media files, my OS/installed programs (no need to backup those) and downloaded files, which can also be redownloaded again whenever I want. > If so, how much (in your currency) does it cost you to backup say 3TB with daily (x7), weekly (x4), monthly (x12) snapshots available for a year? I currently have a total of 496 snapshots, all the way back to a year ago, corresponding to a total of about 240-260 GiB of compressed data each snapshot. The number of snapshots is a bit misleading because many of them are of a separate folder which almost never changes. Still, it's 1 year's worth of almost daily backups of about 250 GiB of data. This month I paid exactly $2.00 USD plus $0.35 VAT (I'm not in the US but the bill comes in USD). I don't recall ever having paid more than that. > Using their own calculator and assuming in a year you have a total of 10TB stored (3TB of "active" data and the rest point-in time) they estimate B2 to cost a whopping $1110AUD/yr. restic doesn't actually care very much about what kind of backend storage you use, it's really extremely flexible. So for that kind of storage, you may also want to take a look at all the backends that are available in restic, including those available through rclone (IIRC?) as a mediator, although Backblaze B2 is usually among the cheapest, if not the cheapest. In your case, I think I'd probably just look into renting a cheap server with lots of storage and just use restic in SSH mode. You might have to look around a bit, as there are many, many options available, but most of them are priced very high. To get the cheap ones you need to find specific providers (e.g. like Hetzner for dedicated servers) that usually charge much lower prices than the competition. The cloud/VM servers are usually much cheaper, although personally I prefer to pay more and get a dedicated server in a cheap provider like Hetzner or OVH's Kimsufi (but that's because I can afford it, of course). But the cloud/VM servers should work fine as well, and there are many cheap providers for those. However, be aware that the servers that have the amounts of storage that you're looking for are sometimes named "seed boxes" or "backup" / "storage" servers rather than just cloud or dedicated servers, as the latter ones usually have SSDs/NVMe storage which, although faster, is smaller and/or more expensive per TB than HDDs. Some providers have storage devices available over the local network which can be flexibly provisioned and this might be cheaper than getting servers with large HDDs, as usually you only pay for the amount you use (or the amount you reserve). This is sometimes called "block storage" or perhaps "object storage". That said, most of these are backed by SSDs so they can be really expensive. I've never rented a server with such a large amount of storage, so unfortunately I can't recommend a specific server type off the top of my head. But Hetzner has some storage boxes you might want to have a look into: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box The "DataHoarder" and "Seedboxes" subreddits might also be useful to find good options.

somsak2 3y ago

"A lot of people" don't have a Linux computer, and especially not a home server.

smcleod 3y ago
Perhaps wherever you live that's not the case, but it's certainly is in Australia and New Zealand. Statista shows 47% identifying as professionals in the field of software development use Linux-based operating systems. Probably around 80% of the engineers I know in Melbourne Australia run macOS, with somewhere between 15-19% of remaining 20% running Linux (I think I've seen a dev running windows recently but I can't remember where).

berbec 3y ago

If you can mount your NAS as an iSCSI volume, you're golden. https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/9chhz6/backblaze_personal_and_iscsi_mounted_volumes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/9chhz6/backblaze...

smcleod 3y ago
Unfortunately macOS no longer has an iSCSI initiator.

someplaceguy 3y ago

I backup my Linux systems to Backblaze using restic on a daily basis and I pay per storage used (and some cents for number of operations). It's nice because I get zstd compression, smart deduplication, encryption, snapshots, multiple sets of backups to the same repo, daily random verification of backup data, etc. I also do the exact same backups every day to (admittedly, underpowered) dedicated servers using borg but the restic backups always complete much faster. And it's also pretty damn cheap. Never had a problem, highly recommended, five stars***** (no affiliation).

smcleod 3y ago
That sounds like you're not using backblaze backup - you might be using backblaze b2 storage? (s3 compatible object storage). If so, how much (in your currency) does it cost you to backup say 3TB with daily (x7), weekly (x4), monthly (x12) snapshots available for a year? Using their own calculator and assuming in a year you have a total of 10TB stored (3TB of "active" data and the rest point-in time) they estimate B2 to cost a whopping $1110AUD/yr.
- someplaceguy 3y ago
  > That sounds like you're not using backblaze backup - you might be using backblaze b2 storage? Right. Why, is the name of the service an issue? In Backblaze B2 you basically pay per storage, which I thought is what you wanted but perhaps I misread you and you wanted pay per machine instead? I actually prefer pay per storage because I think pay per machine (i.e. an infinite storage promise) is not a sustainable model and just leads to a bad surprise down the road, when the service becomes too popular -- perhaps a sudden large price increase, the service being shutdown or even bankruptcy/sale of the business. Although this means I do have to be somewhat selective of what I backup, it's not a big effort for me. I basically just exclude some large unimportant media files, my OS/installed programs (no need to backup those) and downloaded files, which can also be redownloaded again whenever I want. > If so, how much (in your currency) does it cost you to backup say 3TB with daily (x7), weekly (x4), monthly (x12) snapshots available for a year? I currently have a total of 496 snapshots, all the way back to a year ago, corresponding to a total of about 240-260 GiB of compressed data each snapshot. The number of snapshots is a bit misleading because many of them are of a separate folder which almost never changes. Still, it's 1 year's worth of almost daily backups of about 250 GiB of data. This month I paid exactly $2.00 USD plus $0.35 VAT (I'm not in the US but the bill comes in USD). I don't recall ever having paid more than that. > Using their own calculator and assuming in a year you have a total of 10TB stored (3TB of "active" data and the rest point-in time) they estimate B2 to cost a whopping $1110AUD/yr. restic doesn't actually care very much about what kind of backend storage you use, it's really extremely flexible. So for that kind of storage, you may also want to take a look at all the backends that are available in restic, including those available through rclone (IIRC?) as a mediator, although Backblaze B2 is usually among the cheapest, if not the cheapest. In your case, I think I'd probably just look into renting a cheap server with lots of storage and just use restic in SSH mode. You might have to look around a bit, as there are many, many options available, but most of them are priced very high. To get the cheap ones you need to find specific providers (e.g. like Hetzner for dedicated servers) that usually charge much lower prices than the competition. The cloud/VM servers are usually much cheaper, although personally I prefer to pay more and get a dedicated server in a cheap provider like Hetzner or OVH's Kimsufi (but that's because I can afford it, of course). But the cloud/VM servers should work fine as well, and there are many cheap providers for those. However, be aware that the servers that have the amounts of storage that you're looking for are sometimes named "seed boxes" or "backup" / "storage" servers rather than just cloud or dedicated servers, as the latter ones usually have SSDs/NVMe storage which, although faster, is smaller and/or more expensive per TB than HDDs. Some providers have storage devices available over the local network which can be flexibly provisioned and this might be cheaper than getting servers with large HDDs, as usually you only pay for the amount you use (or the amount you reserve). This is sometimes called "block storage" or perhaps "object storage". That said, most of these are backed by SSDs so they can be really expensive. I've never rented a server with such a large amount of storage, so unfortunately I can't recommend a specific server type off the top of my head. But Hetzner has some storage boxes you might want to have a look into: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box The "DataHoarder" and "Seedboxes" subreddits might also be useful to find good options.