41 ms·

Save Data Directly to B2 with Backblaze Cloud Backup 6.0

71 points by jhack 8y ago

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Very cool feature release. Is it possible to generate a public link to a snapshot?
- atYevP 8y ago
  Yev from Backblaze here -> There is no way to give a public link to a Snapshot. But you can "share" a single file from your Backup with a public link!
  - yumraj 8y ago
    Yev, can I use the Backblaze Cloud Backup to just do selective backup with B2, without requiring a full computer backup subscription? I know numerous clients already support writing to B2, but would be great if there was an official client to do just that, again, without a backup subscription.
    - atYevP 8y ago
      No this feature requites the data to already have been sent to Backblaze via the Backblaze computer backup application - so it's not quite a 1st party app for B2 (still requires the subscription to get the data uploaded). We vet all the integrations listed on our site and there's some really simple ones that do a good job of sending the data over to B2.
izacus 8y ago
I'm having trouble finding supported operating systems for the tool - does Backblaze support Linux yet?
- moreentropy 8y ago
  I'd recommend using Restic (https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/), it supports backing up to Backblaze B2 and generally is the best and most innovative backup tool I've ever used. Backblaze has a Restic howto: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002880514-How-to-configure-Backblaze-B2-with-Restic-on-Linux https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002880514-Ho...
  - eliaspro 8y ago
    And if you'd like something more accessible for regular desktop usage, check out Relica which makes use of restic under the hood. Author is Matt Holt, the guy behind Caddy server. https://relicabackup.com https://relicabackup.com
    - locusm 8y ago
      Big restic fan here, will check this out. Thanks.
- sliken 8y ago
  Look at the B2 integrations, several support linux.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
atoav 8y ago
I use duplicati with AES-256 for exactly this on backplaze (and another different SFTP target)
- stubish 8y ago
  Duplicati is still very much in beta, and from personal experience I would not recommend it for larger or critical backups. It does seem really promising though.
bsutt 8y ago
This is a pretty useful feature. It goes some way towards solving the problem of keeping a backup of my photos. Rather than having to keep buying more physical storage I can archive off photos in batches to B2 from my regular Backblaze backup.
- mlangenberg 8y ago
  Wouldn't that remove an additional layer of protection? When you move from physical storage + backblaze backup to B2 storage, B2 becomes a single source failure, right?
  - bsutt 8y ago
    Yes, that would be correct. I guess a better idea would be to fill the drive up, lock the physical drive away in a fireproof safe, then archive the files from that drive's Backblaze backup to B2. Buy a new drive and repeat.
ksec 8y ago
And it is still very much Desktop based, I wonder if Blackblaze will one day have a Consumer No Fuss NAS along with B2 Subscription model. ( Something I wish Apple had done with Time Capsule and iCloud ) So I just set, forget and pay monthly knowingly the Data should be safe.
- DCKing 8y ago
  Synology and FreeNAS support backing up to Backblaze B2, both easily configurable in their respective GUIs. Many other popular NAS solutions allow you to install Duplicati, which will allow you to do the same.
  - tyfon 8y ago
    Will the nas connecting count for the 30 days? I've been thinking about having an external backup of about 5 TB of images, video and documents in an encrypted form but I have issues finding someone who can do it properly. For now I just have a 2nd nas at my fathers house that mirrors my data.
    - DCKing 8y ago
      I've always backed up my NAS to B2 since its early days, and honestly have forgotten about the 30 day deletion limit. I've never encountered the limit in various NAS setups, even when I backed up using cronjobs using the B2 Python client library.
  - mlangenberg 8y ago
    Is this a sync or a proper versioned backup (à la Hyper Backup)? So will it protect me against ransomware and accidental mass file deletion?
    - DCKing 8y ago
      Not out of the box, no. The FreeNAS implementation (and I assume many others) depends on rclone [1], which describes it as rsync for cloud providers. For protection against that you would have to implement periodic snapshots (which many NAS products also support) and sync the snapshots. Or you could probably use B2's built in snapshot feature. Both require additional manual work, though. [1]: https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/
throwitaway132 8y ago
> No More Connecting Your External Drives Every 30 Days Or maybe just don't be so eager to purge your paying customers' backups in the first place? It's not like we stop paying your subscription fees as soon as we disconnect a drive. I was a happy Backblaze customer until one day when I went on a month-ish long vacation, took my external hard drive with me, and came back to find the entire backup gone. If the drive went bad or if I were to lose it during the trip, I'd have been shit out of luck. Switched to Crashplan and never looked back. Even now that they're double the price of Backblaze (since they discontinued the consumer plan, I've moved to their business plan) I still find it a much better value proposition because of their _much_ more flexible versioning and retention policies: https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Configuring/Specify_version_settings https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Configuring/Specify_v... https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Restoring/Retain_and_download_deleted_files https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Restoring/Retain_and_... None of this "we delete your backups if we don't see them for 30 days" bullshit. Versioning and retention is _the_ core value proposition of a backup product imho, and Backblaze is laughably inadequate in this area. Stay away.
- jve 8y ago
  Just this week logged on to Backblaze to restore my external disk which kind of died. Was a little late and no backup there :( I still hope that the HDD is alive but perhaps USB controller is dead and will try to revive it.
  - propogandist 8y ago
    You can try a product called SpinRite (grc.com) - it can help revive the drive to get your data out of it.
    - jve 8y ago
      My computer doesn't see that drive. Once I connected it saw it for a moment, files were there. It's not the USB cable - same with different cable. Data recovery software (like photorec) wouldn't be problem. I'll try to hook it directly to a desktop PC
cdumler 8y ago
The reason why Backblaze and Crashplan have various restrictions is due to being all-you-can-eat. At some point, they have to create an arbitrary cap. So, the snapshot is a curious feature, but seems to be implemented poorly. It doesn't seem to be snapshot system, but an archive system. A snapshot is usually a point in time represented by a series of changes. By being a series of change, it would deduplicate redundant files between snapshots. It appears that this is a full archive backup, which is fine but have some limitations: * Need to upload the whole archive every time. * No deduplication. * Need to have double the space to restore (download then unzip). * No partial restores. * No encryption of personal files. If you have any technical willingness, consider restic. It is a command line utility that has the ability to backup to many backends, including B2. Being a CLI, it can be scripted. Files can be arbitrarily backed up and restored. It has encryption that the servers can never see. I also hear Duplicati is similar, but have never used it. If you want an easy way to just make archives locally and store it on B2 for cheap, consider a cloud mounter, like Mountain Duck. You can treat B2 as a drive and upload/download files as needed. Note: B2 is a _very_ simple store, so simple that it doesn't support renaming files (must download, rename, and upload). But, it is fast and inexpensive.
msh 8y ago
I wonder how this works with encrypted Backblaze backups.
mike503 8y ago
I see BB pushing B2 more and more and it makes me sad. Instead of a Linux client (which I can’t imagine would be that difficult, ultimately, after this many years) they’re putting all resources on the pay-for-utilization model. Good for them, bad for us waiting for a Linux client. CrashPlan is garbage. Bloated client, keeps breaking down and I get reports my devices aren’t backed up but then they say they are, after backing up 30+ TB (it took years) it says my original backup had to be reset so I had to restart the entire thing, just not a lot of confidence with them. But it is the only unlimited Linux option out there. Also, they just removed their personal plan and do business only and per device now. If they could make their client not suck, and give better confidence in their platform, I wouldn’t complain.

71 points by jhack 8y ago

toomuchtodo 8y ago

Very cool feature release. Is it possible to generate a public link to a snapshot?

atYevP 8y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> There is no way to give a public link to a Snapshot. But you can "share" a single file from your Backup with a public link!
- yumraj 8y ago
  Yev, can I use the Backblaze Cloud Backup to just do selective backup with B2, without requiring a full computer backup subscription? I know numerous clients already support writing to B2, but would be great if there was an official client to do just that, again, without a backup subscription.
  - atYevP 8y ago
    No this feature requites the data to already have been sent to Backblaze via the Backblaze computer backup application - so it's not quite a 1st party app for B2 (still requires the subscription to get the data uploaded). We vet all the integrations listed on our site and there's some really simple ones that do a good job of sending the data over to B2.

izacus 8y ago

I'm having trouble finding supported operating systems for the tool - does Backblaze support Linux yet?

moreentropy 8y ago
I'd recommend using Restic (https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/), it supports backing up to Backblaze B2 and generally is the best and most innovative backup tool I've ever used. Backblaze has a Restic howto: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002880514-How-to-configure-Backblaze-B2-with-Restic-on-Linux https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002880514-Ho...
- eliaspro 8y ago
  And if you'd like something more accessible for regular desktop usage, check out Relica which makes use of restic under the hood. Author is Matt Holt, the guy behind Caddy server. https://relicabackup.com https://relicabackup.com
  - locusm 8y ago
    Big restic fan here, will check this out. Thanks.
sliken 8y ago
Look at the B2 integrations, several support linux.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

atoav 8y ago

I use duplicati with AES-256 for exactly this on backplaze (and another different SFTP target)

stubish 8y ago
Duplicati is still very much in beta, and from personal experience I would not recommend it for larger or critical backups. It does seem really promising though.

bsutt 8y ago

This is a pretty useful feature. It goes some way towards solving the problem of keeping a backup of my photos. Rather than having to keep buying more physical storage I can archive off photos in batches to B2 from my regular Backblaze backup.

mlangenberg 8y ago
Wouldn't that remove an additional layer of protection? When you move from physical storage + backblaze backup to B2 storage, B2 becomes a single source failure, right?
- bsutt 8y ago
  Yes, that would be correct. I guess a better idea would be to fill the drive up, lock the physical drive away in a fireproof safe, then archive the files from that drive's Backblaze backup to B2. Buy a new drive and repeat.

ksec 8y ago

And it is still very much Desktop based, I wonder if Blackblaze will one day have a Consumer No Fuss NAS along with B2 Subscription model. ( Something I wish Apple had done with Time Capsule and iCloud ) So I just set, forget and pay monthly knowingly the Data should be safe.

DCKing 8y ago
Synology and FreeNAS support backing up to Backblaze B2, both easily configurable in their respective GUIs. Many other popular NAS solutions allow you to install Duplicati, which will allow you to do the same.
- tyfon 8y ago
  Will the nas connecting count for the 30 days? I've been thinking about having an external backup of about 5 TB of images, video and documents in an encrypted form but I have issues finding someone who can do it properly. For now I just have a 2nd nas at my fathers house that mirrors my data.
  - DCKing 8y ago
    I've always backed up my NAS to B2 since its early days, and honestly have forgotten about the 30 day deletion limit. I've never encountered the limit in various NAS setups, even when I backed up using cronjobs using the B2 Python client library.
- mlangenberg 8y ago
  Is this a sync or a proper versioned backup (à la Hyper Backup)? So will it protect me against ransomware and accidental mass file deletion?
  - DCKing 8y ago
    Not out of the box, no. The FreeNAS implementation (and I assume many others) depends on rclone [1], which describes it as rsync for cloud providers. For protection against that you would have to implement periodic snapshots (which many NAS products also support) and sync the snapshots. Or you could probably use B2's built in snapshot feature. Both require additional manual work, though. [1]: https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/

throwitaway132 8y ago

> No More Connecting Your External Drives Every 30 Days Or maybe just don't be so eager to purge your paying customers' backups in the first place? It's not like we stop paying your subscription fees as soon as we disconnect a drive. I was a happy Backblaze customer until one day when I went on a month-ish long vacation, took my external hard drive with me, and came back to find the entire backup gone. If the drive went bad or if I were to lose it during the trip, I'd have been shit out of luck. Switched to Crashplan and never looked back. Even now that they're double the price of Backblaze (since they discontinued the consumer plan, I've moved to their business plan) I still find it a much better value proposition because of their _much_ more flexible versioning and retention policies: https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Configuring/Specify_version_settings https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Configuring/Specify_v... https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Restoring/Retain_and_download_deleted_files https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/6/Restoring/Retain_and_... None of this "we delete your backups if we don't see them for 30 days" bullshit. Versioning and retention is _the_ core value proposition of a backup product imho, and Backblaze is laughably inadequate in this area. Stay away.

jve 8y ago
Just this week logged on to Backblaze to restore my external disk which kind of died. Was a little late and no backup there :( I still hope that the HDD is alive but perhaps USB controller is dead and will try to revive it.
- propogandist 8y ago
  You can try a product called SpinRite (grc.com) - it can help revive the drive to get your data out of it.
  - jve 8y ago
    My computer doesn't see that drive. Once I connected it saw it for a moment, files were there. It's not the USB cable - same with different cable. Data recovery software (like photorec) wouldn't be problem. I'll try to hook it directly to a desktop PC

cdumler 8y ago

The reason why Backblaze and Crashplan have various restrictions is due to being all-you-can-eat. At some point, they have to create an arbitrary cap. So, the snapshot is a curious feature, but seems to be implemented poorly. It doesn't seem to be snapshot system, but an archive system. A snapshot is usually a point in time represented by a series of changes. By being a series of change, it would deduplicate redundant files between snapshots. It appears that this is a full archive backup, which is fine but have some limitations: * Need to upload the whole archive every time. * No deduplication. * Need to have double the space to restore (download then unzip). * No partial restores. * No encryption of personal files. If you have any technical willingness, consider restic. It is a command line utility that has the ability to backup to many backends, including B2. Being a CLI, it can be scripted. Files can be arbitrarily backed up and restored. It has encryption that the servers can never see. I also hear Duplicati is similar, but have never used it. If you want an easy way to just make archives locally and store it on B2 for cheap, consider a cloud mounter, like Mountain Duck. You can treat B2 as a drive and upload/download files as needed. Note: B2 is a _very_ simple store, so simple that it doesn't support renaming files (must download, rename, and upload). But, it is fast and inexpensive.

msh 8y ago

I wonder how this works with encrypted Backblaze backups.

mike503 8y ago

I see BB pushing B2 more and more and it makes me sad. Instead of a Linux client (which I can’t imagine would be that difficult, ultimately, after this many years) they’re putting all resources on the pay-for-utilization model. Good for them, bad for us waiting for a Linux client. CrashPlan is garbage. Bloated client, keeps breaking down and I get reports my devices aren’t backed up but then they say they are, after backing up 30+ TB (it took years) it says my original backup had to be reset so I had to restart the entire thing, just not a lot of confidence with them. But it is the only unlimited Linux option out there. Also, they just removed their personal plan and do business only and per device now. If they could make their client not suck, and give better confidence in their platform, I wouldn’t complain.