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Backblaze B2 Drops Download Price By 60%
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Backblaze B2 Drops Download Price By 60%

We are thrilled to announce that, effective immediately, we are reducing the price of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage downloads from $0.05 to $0.02 per GB. What’s more, the first gigabyte of data downloaded each day is still free.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-drops-download-pricing/

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Comments

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Ugh, I really want to use it. Has anyone had any success in getting this to work on linux? I have not. I can't even get rclone to work with it, and it's not like it's setup is complicated. It asks for two details, give it that, thinks I have no buckets.

  • DormeoDormeo Member
    edited April 2017

    This can be very cool. A plan to move my ~1TB live data to there. Combined with cloudflare can be the best :P

  • could this be used for plex?

  • williewillie Member
    edited April 2017

    2 cents a GB is still steep: OVH Cloud Storage is 1 cent/GB. I also keep hearing also that B2 is slow. Does anyone use it who can comment on that?

    Other than that I've been happy with Hetzner StorageBox (in Germany though), Online C14, and most of the various storage VPS offers that are always available on LET.

  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

    @elofty said:
    could this be used for plex?

    If it works with rclone mount it could, but considering @jarland hasn't had much success... probably not right now.

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    We're using rclone with Amazon Cloud Drive, works superb @jarland

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
  • Could someone explain why Backblaze has any appeal at all given what look to me like more attractive alternatives out there, and also what kind of transfer speeds do you get? Thanks.

    Thanked by 1mehargags
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @willie said:
    Could someone explain why Backblaze has any appeal at all given what look to me like more attractive alternatives out there, and also what kind of transfer speeds do you get? Thanks.

    Price for object storage. I'm getting 100mbit on a 100mbit line.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • Are the downloads still 5¢/GB?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    $0.005 per GB storage, $0.02per GB download. At least that's what it says here: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html

  • jarland said: Price for object storage. I'm getting 100mbit on a 100mbit line.

    Thanks. Hmm, ok, that sounds you want it for backups that you don't expect to access, but in the event you do need them you want fast retrieval rather than waiting for an archive extraction like from C14. If that's the situation, it makes sense, although it's a kind of limited use case.

    Is object storage somehow preferable to a VPS with a web server? I think it is, but am not sure exactly how. I do find C14's limited functionality is one of the things I like about it (feels like less ways to go wrong) so maybe object storage is similar.

    Glad to hear the speed is decent now.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    @willie said:

    jarland said: Price for object storage. I'm getting 100mbit on a 100mbit line.

    Thanks. Hmm, ok, that sounds you want it for backups that you don't expect to access, but in the event you do need them you want fast retrieval rather than waiting for an archive extraction like from C14. If that's the situation, it makes sense, although it's a kind of limited use case.

    Is object storage somehow preferable to a VPS with a web server? I think it is, but am not sure exactly how. I do find C14's limited functionality is one of the things I like about it (feels like less ways to go wrong) so maybe object storage is similar.

    Glad to hear the speed is decent now.

    Doesn't appear to be any kind of queue for downloading. I'm maxing out my connection for that too. TBH it's hard to get this kind of pricing on a VPS consistently that isn't just promotional sales. To have it redundant, low cost, scaled cost based on usage, and versioning included, VPS doesn't really compare IMO.

    It sounds like object storage is a bit new to you, this might be a good read: http://cloudacademy.com/blog/object-storage-block-storage/

    At high scale object storage tends to be the winner over block storage. Eventually you even run into things like inode limitations on a partition, etc.

  • Thanks, I've never used object storage and am probably missing some subtleties but I had some basic info like in that document. I still see a tradeoff involving the amount of data, how long you plan to leave it there, whether and how often you expect to download, whether you need quick retrieval and the bandwidth costs.

    Examples:

    • Backblaze B2 (currently under discussion): free inbound bw, 2c/GB outbound, 0.5c/GB storage, quick retrieval
    • OVH Cloud: free inbound, 1c/GB outbound, 1c/GB storage, quick retrieval
    • OVH Archive: 1c inbound, 1c out, 0.2c/GB storage, slow retrieval
    • Online C14 Intensive: free inbound, free outbound, 0.5c/GB storage, slow retrieval. I'm using some of this.
    • Online C14 standard: 1c inbound, 1c outbound, 1c deletion, 0.2c/GB storage, slow retrieval, can't understand how this ever beats OVH Archive
    • Hetzner Storagebox: free inbound, free outbound, high volume storage as low as 0.4c/TB, quick retrieval (scp/sftp, not a vps), have to buy fixed size containers (2TB, 5TB, 10TB). More expensive below 2TB.
    • VPS - 0.5c to 1c/GB if you shop a little, bw included, has the usual issues of unmanaged services.

    I've been figuring to use OVH Archive for long term archiving on the idea that I don't mind waiting a few hours to retrieve the data. B2's advantage as far as I can see is being able to get the data out faster, but it costs more. Right now I have a few things in C14 Intensive which is nice, and I put something small in C14 Standard just to see how it feels.

    Thanked by 1PepeSilvia
  • ihadpihadp Member

    @jarland said:

    @willie said:

    jarland said: Price for object storage. I'm getting 100mbit on a 100mbit line.

    Thanks. Hmm, ok, that sounds you want it for backups that you don't expect to access, but in the event you do need them you want fast retrieval rather than waiting for an archive extraction like from C14. If that's the situation, it makes sense, although it's a kind of limited use case.

    Is object storage somehow preferable to a VPS with a web server? I think it is, but am not sure exactly how. I do find C14's limited functionality is one of the things I like about it (feels like less ways to go wrong) so maybe object storage is similar.

    Glad to hear the speed is decent now.

    Doesn't appear to be any kind of queue for downloading. I'm maxing out my connection for that too. TBH it's hard to get this kind of pricing on a VPS consistently that isn't just promotional sales. To have it redundant, low cost, scaled cost based on usage, and versioning included, VPS doesn't really compare IMO.

    It sounds like object storage is a bit new to you, this might be a good read: http://cloudacademy.com/blog/object-storage-block-storage/

    At high scale object storage tends to be the winner over block storage. Eventually you even run into things like inode limitations on a partition, etc.

    Why B2 over something like gdrive? I can see it being cheaper to a degree, but once you surpass $10/month Google drive is a cheaper solution and I would argue better.

    What am I missing?

  • WSSWSS Member

    @jarland said:
    It asks for two details, give it that, thinks I have no buckets.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    ihadp said: Why B2 over something like gdrive? I can see it being cheaper to a degree, but once you surpass $10/month Google drive is a cheaper solution and I would argue better.

    You're probably thinking from the perspective of backing up little stuff or using desktop sync. That's not what object storage was meant to replace. I don't see how Google Drive is cheaper anyway though. Do the math:

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

    I'm calculating 10TB at $51.20/m with B2.

    When looking at this from the perspective of backups, at higher scales, B2 is the clear winner in cost there. You shouldn't be downloading backups constantly anyway, so you can almost cut that cost out entirely.

  • Hetzner Storagebox is 39.90 euro/m for 10TB with no bandwidth charges.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    willie said: B2's advantage as far as I can see is being able to get the data out faster, but it costs more

    How do you figure that? They charge for uploads and B2 doesn't.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    @willie said:
    Hetzner Storagebox is 39.90 euro/m for 10TB with no bandwidth charges.

    With redundancy, versioning, and file system limitations not being an issue, for only Great deal :P

    That's not even a savings per GB of data if you do the math. Figure OS usage and convert it to USD, no real savings. So you lose the features and gain nothing.

    It's not the same product. You're just thinking raw storage. You're not thinking about backups that challenge a partition's inode limit, or interacting with them without dropping to a shell, building your own APIs, or using third party API solutions for implementation like Minio. We're talking about pre-built solutions that are cost effective and answer a lot of problems that developers and admins deal with at a higher level, not just where to backup your Wordpress or MP3 directory.

    Script daily backups of 1.5TB of data in the range of hundreds of millions of inodes across multiple servers, with versioning, and then talk to me about how your single drive dedi is doing the job for you ;)

    It's okay for something to not fit your needs, or for your needs to not require something. That doesn't make it by any means a bad deal for people who's needs you don't understand. Some people need an automated sorting facility, some just need a trash can. That's my situation right now. I just did rsync to a backupsy box for a long time, but it's when you outgrow things like that where you start to see the benefits of the more complex solutions.

  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

    jarland said: not just where to backup your Wordpress

    I use object storage for that too, lol. It's great. Pennies a month for a dozen sites with nightly backups.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarland said: How do you figure that? They charge for uploads and B2 doesn't.

    If your B2 expectation is zero downloads ever, and you plan to delete your backups after 3 months (I guess that's a reasonable backup plan) then it's better. Otherwise for 1TB, 6 months: OVH=$10 upload, $12 storage. B2 = $0 upload, $30 storage, OVH works out better.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    @willie said:

    jarland said: How do you figure that? They charge for uploads and B2 doesn't.

    If your B2 expectation is zero downloads ever, and you plan to delete your backups after 3 months (I guess that's a reasonable backup plan) then it's better. Otherwise for 1TB, 6 months: OVH=$10 upload, $12 storage. B2 = $0 upload, $30 storage, OVH works out better.

    Figure it this way: 1.5TB of backups uploaded every 1-2 days, replacing the previous file each time with versioning, keeping 7 backups, only downloading in event of emergency (never occurred since 2013).

    Won't find a better deal inside the US, and outside transfer often becomes an issue.

  • Hmm, yeah I see, that's a different use case and B2 looks good. I'm into storage mostly for long term archiving of large files like db snapshots so it works out different.

    I didn't realize inode limits became a problem with normal storage servers but not with object storage. That's interesting.

    For those frequent backups if you're dumping full containers, there must be a lot of deduplication possible and B2 probably does that. I wonder if there's an opportunity here.

    Thanks!

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @willie said:
    Hmm, yeah I see, that's a different use case and B2 looks good. I'm into storage mostly for long term archiving of large files like db snapshots so it works out different.

    I didn't realize inode limits became a problem with normal storage servers but not with object storage. That's interesting.

    For those frequent backups if you're dumping full containers, there must be a lot of deduplication possible and B2 probably does that. I wonder if there's an opportunity here.

    Thanks!

    Welcome to my hell ;)

  • williewillie Member
    edited April 2017

    So do I infer from this that DO backups are on B2? Interesting. (Added: hmm, you've got tons of other stuff too, so probably not DO).

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @willie said:
    So do I infer from this that DO backups are on B2? Interesting.

    Local NAS. MXroute, however, is looking at B2 to save costs.

  • ihadpihadp Member
    edited April 2017

    @jarland said:

    ihadp said: Why B2 over something like gdrive? I can see it being cheaper to a degree, but once you surpass $10/month Google drive is a cheaper solution and I would argue better.

    You're probably thinking from the perspective of backing up little stuff or using desktop sync. That's not what object storage was meant to replace. I don't see how Google Drive is cheaper anyway though. Do the math:

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

    I'm calculating 10TB at $51.20/m with B2.

    When looking at this from the perspective of backups, at higher scales, B2 is the clear winner in cost there. You shouldn't be downloading backups constantly anyway, so you can almost cut that cost out entirely.

    I have nearly 20TB's of content on my gDrive and it costs me $10/Month.

    You can purchase gsuite for $10/Month (1 User) which grants you all of the gsuite features including unlimited gdrive (storage & bandwidth).

    In case you don't believe me - https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/64jile/g_suite_business_with_a_single_user_organization/

    In the event Google begins to enforce the 1TB limit on accounts below 5 users you can easily upgrade to 5 users ($50/Month) and it would still be cheaper than B2 using your calculations.

    Pricing here - https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html#choose-a-plan

    --

    As to accessing the content, I use both insync and rclone.

    I have insync setup to sync all my content to my local SAN to ensure I have a local copy. I use rclone on my servers to either mount gdrive or to upload/download.

    I have upload/download from gDrive at ~600Mbit/s from Hetzner and 1Gbit/s from OVH.

    With rclone (and other tools) you can also encrypt all of your content too (not sure you can easily do that with B2).

    gDrive handles duplicate content, file names, revisioning, honors linux file names, etc.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    ihadp said: You can purchase gsuite for $10/Month (1 User) which grants you all of the gsuite features including unlimited gdrive (storage & bandwidth).

    Yeah... fear not, I won't be the one to make them crack down on that. I need more reliable long term, changing my plans involves a lot of work, so it needs to be the lasting and scalable solution, not just a make-do with something that works for now. I'm talking about MXroute backups here, after all.

  • SetsuraSetsura Member
    edited April 2017

    Neat. I actually already use B2 for sqldumps, and now I could actually afford to download them if I needed them.

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