Backblaze

Backblaze
Developer(s) Backblaze Inc.
Initial release 2007 (2007)
Operating system Android, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, XP, Mac OS X 10.5+
Platform Windows, macOS
Available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean
Type Online backup service, Cloud storage
License Proprietary
Website www.backblaze.com

Backblaze is a data storage provider. It offers two products:

Overview

Founded in 2007, Backblaze has raised a total of $5.3M in capital and is profitable.[4]

Backblaze's first product is its Computer Backup offering. It allows the user to back up data continuously, manually, when the computer is idle, or on an hourly schedule. The service makes use of AES encryption for security, and uses data compression and bandwidth optimization to reduce upload and download times. Files that need to be restored can be delivered in the form of a digital download,[5] on an external USB hard drive up to 4 TB or a USB flash drive up to 128 GB.[6]

In September 2015, Backblaze launched a new product, B2 Cloud Storage. Being an Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), it is targeted at software integration (though a web frontend and APIs are also available). It directly competes with similar services Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.[7] In April 2018, Backblaze announced cloud computing partnerships[8] that directly connect Backblaze's data centers with its partners, offering high performance cloud computing for data stored in B2 Cloud Storage with no transfer fees.

Technology

Data replication

Data uploaded onto Backblaze's data center is sharded into 17 data shards plus three parity shards for each file. Parity shard bits are computed by the Reed–Solomon error correction algorithm. The shards are stored in 20 storage pods, each in a separate cabinet to increase resilience to a power loss to an entire cabinet. Backblaze states that its Vault architecture is designed with 99.999999999% (eleven 9s) annual durability.[9]

Encryption

Backblaze utilizes a combination of AES and SSL encryption to protect user data. All data is stored on Backblaze Storage Pods encrypted with the user's private key, which is secured with the user's password and username. Users desiring additional security and privacy wishing to take a Trust No One approach may also use the passphrase system which encrypts the private key with a passphrase not stored on Backblaze servers[10].

Storage Pod open design

A server case using the open design of the Storage Pod.

In 2009 and 2011, Backblaze released CAD drawings of the computer case used by the storage servers in its datacenters. With commercial off-the-shelf components such as x64 processors, disks, and motherboards, high-density storage servers can be built at a lower cost than commercial ones.[11]

In February 2013, version 3.0 of the pod was introduced with increased storage capacity and other upgrades.[12]

In March 2014, version 4.0 of the pod was introduced which is faster, simpler and less expensive,[13] and then a "tweaked" version 4.5 in March 2015.[14]

In November 2015, version 5.0 of the storage pod was released, in which the motherboard, CPU, and SATA cards were upgraded, and the memory was increased to 32GB. [15]

In April 2016, version 6.0 of the storage pod was released. [16]

References

  1. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic. "Backblaze drops download pricing for its B2 storage platform by 60%". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-04-26.
  2. ↑ Chartier, David (2008-06-02). "Making off-site backups brainless: hands-on with Backblaze". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  3. ↑ "Online Storage Service Backblaze Now More Unlimited Than Unlimited". TechCrunch. 2011-10-26. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  4. ↑ "How a startup went from building servers out of wood to a $20 million business — without giving control to outside investors". Business Insider. Retrieved 2017-04-26.
  5. ↑ "Backblaze: Online Backup With Time Machine's Finesse". TechCrunch. 2008-06-02. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  6. ↑ "4 TB USB Restore Drives Are Here: Yay!". BackBlaze. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
  7. ↑ "B2 Cloud Storage Pricing". 2 January 2018.
  8. ↑ "Backblaze Announces B2 Compute Partnerships". Backblaze.com. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  9. ↑ "Backblaze Durability is 99.999999999% — And Why It Doesn't Matter". Backblaze.com. Retrieved 2018-07-17.
  10. ↑ "Online Backup Security & Encryption". Backblaze. Retrieved 2016-03-23.
  11. ↑ "Petabytes on a Budget v2.0:Revealing More Secrets". Blog.backblaze.com. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  12. ↑ "180TB of Good Vibrations - Storage Pod 3.0". Blog.backblaze.com. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  13. ↑ "Storage Pod 4.0: Direct Wire Drives". Blog.backblaze.com. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  14. ↑ "Storage Pod 4.5 – Tweaking a Proven Design". Backblaze.com. Retrieved 2016-03-23.
  15. ↑ "The Hardware Inside B2 Cloud Storage – Storage Pod 5.0".
  16. ↑ "Storage Pod 6.0: Building a 60 Drive 480TB Storage Server".
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