Thursday 30 Mar 2023

Secondary Cloud Backup

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I wanted to replicate my S3 bucket to prevent accidental deletion. After reading many manuals and how-to websites, I was unable to do this. I followed the manuals to the letter but would return errors on the batch replication script. So, I gave up on this. My original plan was to replicate from EU to US (just my pictures). Instead, I was already using B2 to host my cloud-attached drive, so thought I would use B2 as my secondary cloud backup – B2 costs more than S3 deep archive but I would have my pictures stored on two cloud providers adding additional cloud redundancy. My photo collection is around 500 GB so it took around three days to upload. I have 50 Mbps up on my fibre broadband, but B2 servers accepted 3.5 Mbps (UK to EU server).

3:2:1:1

I have followed the 3:2:1 rule by keeping data on my NAS, external backup hard drive, off-site hard drive, S3 bucket and now B2 bucket. I have enabled object lock, so my B2 backup is now immutable, hence the extra 1 in 3:2:1.

I was able to set object locks on S3 for 99 years, but B2 only allows 8 years. In 8 years, I may reupload or perhaps have a different solution by then – let’s hope B2 still exists.

Costs

Backblaze has easy-to-understand pricing. To download data it costs $0.01/GB and to store data it’s $0.005/GB/month – there are no upload costs. 500 GB costs me $2.50 per month, and in an emergency I can download all my pictures for only $5. Whereas on S3, I pay deep glacier fee of $0.00099/GB/month but download costs much more – plus longer wait times. I think of glacier as my “tape discs” that are long-lasting storage I hope to never use. Should I lose data locally, I will likely download from B2 first.

Security

A hacker would be able to log in, delete buckets and close account, thus destroying all data. So I use a random email address (xarnqyf51i3m49vp@myfavemail.com) and enable two-factor authentication (mobile application not SMS!). Also, should someone get into my bucket, all data are encrypted at rest.

Bottom Line

I am using S3 and B2 because I intend on buying no more additional external hard drive (expect one for NAS and another for my main PC as mass storage); this is due to potential reliability and storing data on them long term, and I would rather spend more money on Seagate IronWolf Pro and Western Digital Red Pro drives for me server then replace consumer hard drives.