Backblaze or similar service to store user file and display them, correct usage?

Liso

I developed and operate a webapp for my local community— where an user store written report and photos taken from their phone, actually the total data combined only takes 50-60 GB so it's not really much of data-- it is currently stored directly on my vps.

You see, I'm planning to migrate user data to place that designed for storage use. I've been checking s3 object storage like Backblaze B2 or Wasabi for this purpose.

I'm really interested in B2 as their price is attractive and seems to be what I'm looking for, I have two question though.

1. Is B2 correct for my use case ? The photos/report uploaded by user will be put up on the webapp for viewing.
2. Anyone have tried B2 on APAC region ? I live in Indonesia and I also serve user from Indonesia, I realized that B2 doesn't have datacenter in asia region. So will I experience a bit of lag when displaying data ?

Thanks

umzak

u can use edge storage from https://bunny.net/edge-storage/ for $0.01/GB
they have api for uploading data, deliver, replicate, cdn
and locations in Singapore that have low ping from Indonesia

tjn

@Liso said:

1. Is B2 correct for my use case ? The photos/report uploaded by user will be put up on the webapp for viewing.

I don't see why not. If you need ever expanding storage, it's a good use case. B2 have a good API.

2. Anyone have tried B2 on APAC region ? I live in Indonesia and I also serve user from Indonesia, I realized that B2 doesn't have datacenter in asia region. So will I experience a bit of lag when displaying data ?

Object storage in general doesn't always have the fastest speeds. B2, aren't exactly known for being super speedy either. You could always place a CDN like Cloudflare in front of B2, that will get you better connection speeds and free egress (Using Backblaze B2 with the Cloudflare CDN).

For resources closer to Indonesia, another option is Vultr (More info)which when combined with B2, also gets you free egress - they have a Singapore location.

Or what @umzak said - @BunnySpeed is great.

alilet

How do you upload files on Backblaze B2? Is there a client like OneDrive by Microsoft that can map your drive or it is like FTP where you upload files?

CyberneticTitan

@alilet said:
How do you upload files on Backblaze B2? Is there a client like OneDrive by Microsoft that can map your drive or it is like FTP where you upload files?

You can use their web UI to upload files, but its not designed to be a user-oriented product like OneDrive/Google Drive/Dropbox. rclone supports B2 and you can use any other client that supports S3 compatible APIs.

desperand

@Liso said:

I'm really interested in B2 as their price is attractive and seems to be what I'm looking for, I have two question though.

This is the mousetrap, honeycomb. Tested. Not cheap at all, hidden payments that not displayed in calculator or anywhere else.

Don't believe me? Upload there 200gb, and try to store for 1 months, than download files again back. Cool, right? The +- same with wasabi... I mean these not bad things, but it's about store only files, without access to them in any future.

Your solution will be own HDD, i.e.:
Hetzner, ovh, VPS providers. Not obj storage at all
One of the most cheapest are; buyvm, c14 from online net, hetzner, ovh (soyoustart)

tjn

@desperand said:
Don't believe me? Upload there 200gb, and try to store for 1 months, than download files again back. Cool, right?

B2's pricing is:
Storage = $0.005/GB/Month
Egress = $0.01/GB

In your example:
Storage = $0.005 * 200 = $1
Egress = $0.01 * 200 = $2

Total = $3

If you use CF or Vultr, you won't pay the $2 egress fee.

How much were you charged and what fees do you think are hidden?

desperand

@tjn said:

@desperand said:
Don't believe me? Upload there 200gb, and try to store for 1 months, than download files again back. Cool, right?

How much were you charged and what fees do you think are hidden?

Try it. Theory guy.

Kode

There are class B and C transactions as well, but they don't cost that much more, I store about 550GB and in January I downloaded 476GB so no theory needed, here is the breakdown:

For dates 01/02/2022 - 02/01/2022
B2 Cloud Storage For dates 01/02/2022 - 02/01/2022 (Bill)($7.94)
Download Bandwidth($4.26)
Class B Transactions($0.50)
Class C Transactions($0.27)
Storage($2.91)
Includes 20% UNITED KINGDOM VAT, $1.59 USD($1.59)
Total: ($9.53)

desperand

@Kode said:
There are class B and C transactions as well, but they don't cost that much more, I store about 550GB and in January I downloaded 476GB so no theory needed, here is the breakdown:

For dates 01/02/2022 - 02/01/2022
B2 Cloud Storage For dates 01/02/2022 - 02/01/2022 (Bill)($7.94)
Download Bandwidth($4.26)
Class B Transactions($0.50)
Class C Transactions($0.27)
Storage($2.91)
Includes 20% UNITED KINGDOM VAT, $1.59 USD($1.59)
Total: ($9.53)

Very interesting information. Thank you. I must re-check them, because something changed since last time used them. Have you used any 3rd party software/provider in cloudflare BW alliance like some guy above said?

---

Edited:
Ok, I got confused, I'm not right in 23 Feb 2022. But i was right before this blog post:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/developers-get-ec2-alternative-with-vultr-cloud-compute-and-bare-metal/

And also this:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-and-cloudflare-partner-to-provide-free-data-transfer/

The link above pretty interesting. Because I do not talking about sharing assets of websites. I talking about storing backups, data, and big chunks of data. Which is against Cloudflare ToS.
So yes, I can agree that I'm not right right now, but earlier - sorry. But b2 WAS full of hidden costs.

Good to see that they're changing and growing. Need to try.

Kode

Yeah, I have something in front of B2, because I didn't want to pay the bandwidth costs, so I have an nginx proxy cache that handles requests for files, any it doesn't have it pulls from B2, saves then sends. I didn't fancy paying B2's bandwidth costs on ~180TB/mo and using cloudflare wasn't really an option either, as they already tried to charge me £2k/mo for serving the files, which is how I ended up with my current solution.

The breakdown from above was from when the cache in front was downloading the4 data so it could serve it directly.

I actually have 3 caches in front of it

Server Diagram

This isn't totally accurate any more but you'll get the idea.
The Image Cache VPS gets requests from B2 and stores is internally and is in turn the upstream for the both the Assets Server (the main source of traffic) and for a cloudflare proxy (that only handles the main website requests).

I have it like this because the assets server has a 2.5Gbps link and averages over 500Mbps with regular spikes to 1Gbps+ it only has a 250GB SSD, so not everything can fit into it. The image Cache VPS is on a more powerful server and has plenty of space for the images, but it's also the server for the site, so I'd rather keep the majority of that bandwidth off it, but it can alos help out if needed by using round robin to serve from both servers.

ifdong

According to your needs, I recommend alibaba cloud's OSS. OSS works with cloudflare to reduce traffic and request (outside China) fees. And 40GB storage package is $2 annually, which is definitely worth it.