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Backblaze S3 storage
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Backblaze S3 storage

vfusevfuse Member, Host Rep

Backblaze is now offering S3 storage at just $0.005 per gb

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html

Just signed up but still on the waiting list, did anyone already get in?

Thanked by 1deadbeef
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Comments

  • Im also on the waiting list :)

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    thanks, I've registered.

  • Same, on the waiting list!

  • It says that you get bumped up the waiting list if you fill out their survey. Amusingly it asks if you work for S3, which I suspect pushes you back down the list :)

  • How can they offer it that cheap?

  • WHTWHT Member
    edited September 2015

    Can this be used as ftp server to backup cpanel accounts?

    Edit: $5 per TB is not the cheapest time4vps still cheaper :)

  • vfusevfuse Member, Host Rep

    @mpkossen said:
    How can they offer it that cheap?

    They have some really cool posts on their blog on how they build their servers with costs etc.

    https://www.backblaze.com/blog/storage-pod-4-5-tweaking-a-proven-design/

  • @mpkossen - higher density, consumer drives 'good enough' - see their (open) storage pod design here : https://backblaze.com/blog/storage-pod/.

    I bet they will do transparent remote compression as well.

    Thanked by 1deadbeef
  • mpkossen said: How can they offer it that cheap?

    >

    Deduplication + FS Compression etc i would think

  • They're calling it S3 storage. Does that mean they use S3, an S3 compatible API, or something else?

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    mpkossen said: They're calling it S3 storage. Does that mean they use S3, an S3 compatible API, or something else?

    They are just using S3 as a term to get people to easily relate to what it is exactly. API is not S3 compatible yet. But they said it might be planned. It is a beta.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/3ly8zw/backblaze_takes_on_amazon_s3_with_dirtcheap_data/

    Some backblaze employees have been responding in this post

    Thanked by 2deadbeef vfuse
  • Looks surprising,
    Signed up, 10GB would be great for backups :D

  • TarZZ92 said: Deduplication + FS Compression etc i would think

    Also using desktop disks helps, but the problem with this service is performance. If you look at their pod design, its so over contended in every way.

    We went through a long (9 months) of scaleability tests with our S3 service and we did test their pod design and an i3 processor can't handle that amount of traffic, secondly two gigabit ports and 45 disks is not a good contention.

    Assume each disk can do 100MB real through put thats 4500MBps traffic or 36Gbps being forced through 2 x 1Gbps (assuming they bond them).

    Then using 5 x SATA expanders contends disks further, so its just one bottleneck after another.

    Their design is great for slow backup but for performance sensitive traffic its going to be very sluggish. I don't know how they think they can pitch this against the other S3 services they name. The performance of those other platforms is a magnitude of levels higher.

    We came at this a different way, we built our pods with 36 disks with individual SATA connections to each disk and 2 NVMe SSDs for caching, each pod has 2 x 10GE interconnect and 1 x 40Gbps Infiniband for clustering. Performance off our S3 platform is crazily fast and dimensioned for large traffic.

  • Awmusic12635 said: They are just using S3 as a term to get people to easily relate to what it is exactly. API is not S3 compatible yet. But they said it might be planned. It is a beta.

    That makes the title of this thread misleading. Oh well... It doesn't make the offer anything less interesting.

  • telephonetelephone Member
    edited September 2015

    @mpkossen said:
    How can they offer it that cheap?

    More in-depth here: http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/63950/blackblaze-rolls-out-new-storage-plan-at-half-a-penny-per-gigabyte-5-for-1tb-month

    In short: $5/TB to store, $50/TB to recover ($0.005/GB to store, $0.05/GB to recover).

    Thanked by 2mpkossen netomx
  • telephone said: In short: $5/TB to store, $50/TB to recover ($0.005/GB to store, $0.05/GB to recover).

    So assuming you want to do more than just send data, if they are claiming theirs is the cheapest in the world, then our S3 service is cheaper:

    1TB storage, $0/GB/in, 1TB out included = $19.50/month

    10TB storage, $0/GB/in, 10TB out included = $177.45/month

    http://www.delimiter.com/landingpage/objspace/

    Compared to their charges:

    1TB Storage = $0.005 x 1000 = $5

    1TB In = $0

    1TB Out = $50

    Total: $55/month

    10TB Storage = $0.005 x 10000 = $50

    10TB In = $0

    10TB Out = $500

    Total: $550/month

    So it seems that Delimiter's S3 storage is almost 60% cheaper than the 'The lowest cost cloud storage on the planet:'

    Thanked by 3WHT deadbeef lazyt
  • @MarkTurner said:
    So assuming you want to do more than just send data,

    I don't think that's their positioning though - to me it looks like a "glacier without the delay".

  • deadbeef said: glacier without the delay

    More like Glacier without the delay, without the same level of redundancy and without any decent performance.

    Just imagine the performance of an i3 with 180TB strapped to it and 8GB RAM. Just common sense tells you thats going to be painful under load.

    Thanked by 1deadbeef
  • Dreamhost tried this, they still have it, single datacenter and S3 api compatible, you just change the url you connect to in your script.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • MarkTurner said: So it seems that Delimiter's S3 storage is almost 60% cheaper than the 'The lowest cost cloud storage on the planet:'

    The only problem with your comparison is you will not use outbound traffic every month, only on the off chance you need to restore.

  • @miTgiB - it depends whether you are using this space for backup or serving content. From what I can tell the majority of S3 users are using it as an object store rather than backup so in the majority of cases, you'll easily consume this transit.

    If you factor it out over 12 months, then budget for one calamity per year, you'll probably still find it cheaper.

    Consider running something like Duplicity and you want to restore from that, you have the full backups and the incrementals to download to restore your data. That gets expensive very quickly if you are paying per GB.

    Thanked by 1afterSt0rm
  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    They're claiming 20gbps io, they split files across 20 of their storage pods, they call this the vault.

  • @WHT said:
    Can this be used as ftp server to backup cpanel accounts?

    Edit: $5 per TB is not the cheapest time4vps still cheaper :)

    True, but @time4vps has something called an "Acceptable Use Policy" which prevents you from filling up an entire drive in 1 second

  • singsingsingsing Member
    edited September 2015

    Still, great for backup. Production? No.

    But if they ever decide to shut down, there is -no way- everyone will be able to take their data back out. This problem exists generally and not much can be done about it.

  • time4vpstime4vps Member, Host Rep

    doghouch said: @time4vps has something called an "Acceptable Use Policy" which prevents you from filling up an entire drive in 1 second

    Can you be more specific? Our storage servers can be filled up to the package limit: 0.5 TB, 1 TB and 2 TB.

  • time4vps said: Can you be more specific? Our storage servers can be filled up to the package limit: 0.5 TB, 1 TB and 2 TB.

    I presume he's talking about I/O. Filling up 500GB in a few seconds would be a huge waste of I/O resources.

  • time4vpstime4vps Member, Host Rep

    Gunter said: I presume he's talking about I/O. Filling up 500GB in a few seconds would be a huge waste of I/O resources.

    Indeed we have limits on IOPS: 400 IOPS. At 99% cases it's more then enough.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • time4vps said: Indeed we have limits on IOPS: 400 IOPS. At 99% cases it's more then enough.

    >

    so that the reason I got 5 minute to check directory size?

    $ time du -sh /backup/
    15G /backup/
    
    real    5m9.549s
    user    0m1.322s
    sys 0m11.590s
    
  • @MarkTurner said: @miTgiB - it depends whether you are using this space for backup or serving content. From what I can tell the majority of S3 users are using it as an object store rather than backup so in the majority of cases, you'll easily consume this transit.

    That's correct. S3 is used primarily for object store for web applications and such. AWS also just introduced "Infrequent Access Storage" which this is much more similar to ($0.0125/GB/mo) - this is also similar to Google's Nearline Storage ($0.01/GB/mo).

    I haven't used Backblaze in awhile, but from my past experience it was slow as shit for both backups & restores, but it was truly unlimited backup for pennies a month.

    This is $5/TB/mo object storage that will probably lack the performance (assumption based on past experience, the setup we know they're running and the price tag), but might be good for a secondary/third layer backup/long term archival solution. I have no problem spending a few bucks a month to have a secondary offsite backup, but can't see myself or clients using it for anything remotely production (or even primary backups)

  • mikeyur said: I haven't used Backblaze in awhile, but from my past experience it was slow as shit for both backups & restores, but it was truly unlimited backup for pennies a month.

    Its 'slow as shit' by design. The pods are overcontended at every level: CPU underpower, shared SATA interconnects, too small RAM, 1-2 gigabit ports.

    I think this product is just a knee jerk reaction to slowing backup sales and trying to get in on the S3 business. But like many of the non-primary players in that market, they provide a very substandard service.

    Thanked by 1TarZZ92
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