Backblaze B2

Created Sunday 02 April 2023

About

Backblaze (an online cloud storage provider) have an object storage service called B2. I have wrote about how I use B2 to mount a 1 PB external drive for general purpose storage and backup. I also use a bucket to backup pictures as my secondary cloud backup explained in this post.

How it works?

B2 is a simple service to understand. There are no complex storage classes. You create a bucket, upload data to the bucket either on their web browser integration or using tools such as rclone.

They have data centres in the USA and one in the EU. However, you cannot create an account in the USA and then create an EU bucket, you have to create a new account for their EU data centre. If you want cross-region replication, you can set this up on their website. Unlike B2, S3 have more regional support and more data centres.

Bucket features include options to share and encrypt. By default, buckets are private and encryption is disabled.

If you need your file locked for a period of time, you can set this up too. I highest you can go is 8 years (3,000 days). Once you select object lock, you need to add retention policy.

Objection version can be managed too. You have a few great options to manage versions. By default all versions are kept.

Pricing

I like B2 pricing model. They charge $0.005 for data stored, and $0.01 for data retrieval. For example, if I store 500 GB I pay $2.50 per month and to restore in a disaster, I would pay $5. There are no cost for data deletion.