Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericfrederich | Hacker News Reader

I love the articles from Backblaze. I enjoy them publishing the failure rates of drives and anything else on the blog.

Two things missing from them in my opinion 1) a Linux client and 2) a second location

I guess I could get away without a Linux client if there was an unRAID plugin for B2.

Second on the linux client. I have a linux machine with a zfs volume that I've been backing up to crashplan. Since they've announced they're dumping their consumer market I have no cost-effective place to go. Most likely, I'll be more picky about my backups and use S3 life-cycled to Glacier.

> Since they've announced they're dumping their consumer market

Could you link some source? I'm also backing up my linux machines with them and would prefer to plan ahead.

They have emailed a few times about it.

Some info here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/23/crashplan_ends_cons...

time4vps.eu has some nicely price storage servers. They have no backup, since they're designed to be part of a larger backup strategy, but it works for me.

affiliate link: https://billing.time4vps.eu/?affid=1881

Cheaper then backblaze in most situations and you get a full linux host.

I would really like to use rsync.net for my "external third-party" backups specifically because of their "ZFS Platform" [0] but (from my off the top of my head calculations) their pricing seems to come out a little on the high side.

With my luck, the first time I need to be able to quickly restore a full dataset or something, it will probably have been well worth it and I'll likely be kicking myself for not doing it.

[0]: http://www.rsync.net/products/platform.html#zfs

Be careful with rsync.net if you're on a comcast cable modem. They can't seem to handle the "xfinity powerboost" and you end up being throttled to 160kB/sec

Regarding 1): rclone does the job. That's what I use with B2.

https://rclone.org/

B2 plus rclone works well, but for many it's potentially significantly more expensive than the standard "all you can eat" $5 a month plan. In my case B2 would workout at roughly 4x the monthly cost and that's before factoring in the fact B2 charges for downloads as well as uploads. An official Linux client would be significantly better value.

As they've said though, the usage of most linux users isn't on par with Windows / Mac users. They simply would crush themselves with people attempting to backup 200TB nas devices for $5.00 a month. If you want any perspective on how crazy the fringes are with data storage and how they impact providers (such as amazon, google, backblaze, etc.) simply read the stories on reddit /r/datahoarder and you'll quickly see why this decision makes sense from a business perspective.

Very small numbers of people already do this on Mac/Windows using tricks like mouting the NAS as an iSCSI device to backup absurd amounts on the $5 plan. The business model is clearly that the legions of small users subsidize the "whales" and Linux desktops are a drop in the ocean vs the Windows/Mac world too. Do you have a source for where Backblaze claimed the usage of most Linux users isn't on par?

> Do you have a source for where Backblaze claimed the usage of most Linux users isn't on par?

One of their employees pretty much said exactly that here on HN recently. I don't have the comment bookmarked or anything like that so I can't cite it for you, but I do remember reading it.

I'm paraphrasing, of course, but s/he basically said "the math doesn't work out" (for the regular service, not B2 (obviously)).

In previous comments they've indicated that a Linux client won't be released because they can't afford unlimited storage for all the Linux NAS boxes.

B2 is priced at a sustainable point for them, so that's your best option for other use cases-- it's only $5/TB*mo!

I just started using Duplicacy with B2 and am very pleased. It's a bit more expensive if you have a lot of data (I do), but it's way faster, transparent and usable than their client.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com