Tag Archives: Featured 1

Developers: Spring Into Action With Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Post Syndicated from original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/developers-spring-into-action-with-backblaze-b2-cloud-storage/

Spring is in the air here in the Northern Hemisphere, and a developer’s fancy lightly turns to new projects. Whether you’ve already discovered how astonishingly easy it is to work with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage or not, we hope you find this collection of handy tips, tricks, and resources useful—many of the techniques apply no matter where you are storing data. But first, let’s have a little fun…

Backblaze Developer Meetup

Whether you call yourself a developer, software engineer, or programmer, if you are a Backblaze B2 customer or are just Backblaze B2-curious and want to hang out in person with like-minded folks, here’s your chance. Backblaze is hosting its very first developer meetup on May 24th from 6–8 p.m. in downtown San Mateo, California. We’ll be joined by Gleb Budman, CEO and Co-founder of Backblaze, members of our Engineering team, our Developer Evangelism team, sales engineers, product managers, and more. There’ll be snacks, drinks, prizes, and more. Space is limited, so please sign up for a spot using this Google Form by May 13th and we’ll let you know if there’s space.

Join Us at GlueCon 2022

Are you going to GlueCon 2022? Backblaze will be there! GlueCon is a developer-centric event that will be held in Broomfield, Colorado on May 18th and 19th, 2022. Backblaze is the partner sponsor of the event and Pat Patterson, our chief technical evangelist, will deliver one of the keynotes. There’s still time to learn more and sign up for GlueCon 2022, but act now!

Tips and Tricks

Here’s a collection of tips and tricks we’ve published over the last few months. You can take them as written or use your imagination as to what other problems you can solve.

  • Media Transcoding With Backblaze B2 and Vultr Cloud Compute
    Your task is simple: allow users to upload video from their mobile or desktop device and then make that video available to a wide variety of devices anywhere in the world. We walk you through how we built a very simple video sharing site with Backblaze B2 and Vultr’s Infrastructure Cloud using Vultr’s Cloud Compute instances for the application servers and their new Optimized Cloud Compute instances for the transcoding workers. This includes setup instructions for Vultr and sample code in GitHub.
  • Free Image Hosting With Cloudflare and Backblaze B2
    Discover how the combination of Cloudflare and Backblaze B2 allows you to create your own, personal 10GB image hosting site for free. You start out using Cloudflare Transform Rules to give you access to HTTP traffic at the CDN edge server. This allows you to manipulate the URI path, query string, and HTTP headers of incoming requests and outgoing responses. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to setup both Cloudflare and Backblaze B2 and leave the rest up to you.
  • Building a Multiregion Origin Store With Backblaze B2 and Fastly Compute@Edge
    Compute@Edge is a serverless computing environment built on the same caching platform as the Fastly Deliver@Edge CDN. Serverless computing removes provisioning, configuration, maintenance, and scaling from the equation. One place where this technology can be used is in serving your own data from multiple Backblaze B2 regions—in other words, serve it from the closest or most available location. Learn how to create a Compute@Edge application and connect it to Backblaze B2 buckets making your data available anywhere.
  • Using a Cloudflare Worker to Send Notifications on Backblaze B2 Events
    When building an application, a common requirement is to be able to send a notification of an event (e.g., a user uploading a file) so that an application can take some action (e.g., processing the file). Learn how you can use a Cloudflare Worker to send event notifications to a wide range of recipients, allowing great flexibility when building integrations with Backblaze B2.

Additional Resources

What’s Next?

Coming soon on our blog, we’ll provide a developer quick start kit using Python that you can use with the Backblaze S3 Compatible API to store and access data in B2 Cloud Storage. The quick start kit includes:

  1. A sample application with open-source code on GitHub.
  2. Video code walk-throughs of the sample application.
  3. Hosted sample data.
  4. Guided instructions that walk you through downloading the sample code, running it yourself, and then using the code as you see fit, including incorporating it into your own applications.

Launching in mid-May; stay tuned!

Wrap-up

Hopefully you’ve found a couple of things you can try out using Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. Join the many developers around the world who have discovered how easy it can be to work with Backblaze B2. If you have any questions, you can visit www.backblaze.com/help.html to use our Knowledge Base, chat with our customer support, or submit a customer support request. Of course, you’ll find lots of other developers online who are more than willing to help as well. Good luck and invent something awesome.

The post Developers: Spring Into Action With Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q1 2022

Post Syndicated from original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2022/

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Backblaze began collecting and storing statistics about the hard drives it uses to store customer data. As of the end of Q1 2022, Backblaze was monitoring 211,732 hard drives and SSDs in our data centers around the universe. Of that number, there were 3,860 boot drives, leaving us with 207,872 data drives under management. This report will focus on those data drives. We will review the hard drive failure rates for those drive models that were active as of the end of Q1 2022, and we’ll also look at their lifetime failure statistics. In between, we will dive into the failure rates of the active drive models over time. Along the way, we will share our observations and insights on the data presented and, as always, we look forward to you doing the same in the comments section at the end of the report.

“The greatest teacher, failure is.”1

As of the end of Q1 2022, Backblaze was monitoring 207,872 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation, we removed 394 drives from consideration as they were either used for testing purposes or were drive models which did not have at least 60 active drives. This leaves us with 207,478 hard drives to analyze for this report. The chart below contains the results of our analysis for Q1 2022.

“Always pass on what you have learned.”2

In reviewing the Q1 2022 table above and the data that lies underneath, we offer a few observations and caveats:

  • “The Force is strong with this one.”3 The 6TB Seagate (model: ST6000DX000) continues to defy time with zero failures during Q1 2022 despite an average age of nearly seven years (83.7 months). 98% of the drives (859) were installed within the same two-week period back in Q1 2015. The youngest 6TB drive in the entire cohort is a little over four years old. The 4TB Toshiba (model: MD04ABA400V) also had zero failures during Q1 2022 and the average age (82.3 months) is nearly as old as the Seagate drives, but the Toshiba cohort has only 97 drives. Still, they’ve averaged just one drive failure per year over their Backblaze lifetime.
  • “Great, kid, don’t get cocky.”4 There were a number of padawan drives (in average age) that also had zero drive failures in Q1 2022. The two 16TB WDC drives (models: WUH721816ALEL0 and WUH721816ALEL4) lead the youth movement with an average age of 5.9 and 1.5 months respectively. Between the two models, there are 3,899 operational drives and only one failure since they were installed six months ago. A good start, but surely not Jedi territory yet.
  • “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”5 You might have noticed the AFR for Q1 2022 of 24.31% for the 8TB HGST drives (model: HUH728080ALE604). The drives are young with an average age of two months, and there are only 76 drives with a total of 4,504 drive days. If you find the AFR bothersome, I do in fact find your lack of faith disturbing, given the history of stellar performance in the other HGST drives we employ. Let’s see where we are in a couple of quarters.
  • “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”6 The saga continues for the 14TB Seagate drives (model: ST14000NM0138). When we last saw this drive, the Seagate/Dell/Backblaze alliance continued to work diligently to understand why the failure rate was stubbornly high. Unusual it is for this model, and the team has employed multiple firmware tweaks over the past several months with varying degrees of success. Patience.

“I like firsts. Good or bad, they’re always memorable.”7

We have been delivering quarterly and annual Drive Stats reports since Q1 2015. Along the way, we have presented multiple different views of the data to help provide insights into our operational environment and the hard drives in that environment. Today we’d like to offer a different way to visualize comparing the average age of many of the different models we currently use versus the annualized failure rate of each of those drive models: the Drive Stats Failure Square:

“…many of the truths that we cling to depend on our viewpoint.”8

Each point on the Drive Stats Failure Square represents a hard drive model in operation in our environment as of 3/31/2022 and lies at the intersection of the average age of that model and the annualized failure rate of that model. We only included drive models with a lifetime total of one million drive days or with a confidence interval of all drive models included being 0.6 or less.

The resulting chart is divided into four equal quadrants, which we will categorize as follows:

  • Quadrant I: Retirees. Drives in this quadrant have performed well, but given their current high AFR level they are first in line to be replaced.
  • Quadrant II: Winners. Drives in this quadrant have proven themselves to be reliable over time. Given their age, we need to begin planning for their replacement, but there is no need to panic.
  • Quadrant III: Challengers. Drives in this quadrant have started off on the right foot and don’t present any current concerns for replacement. We will continue to monitor these drive models to ensure they stay on the path to the winners quadrant instead of sliding off to quadrant IV.
  • Quadrant IV: Muddlers. Drives in this quadrant should be replaced if possible, but they can continue to operate if their failure rates remain at their current rate. The redundancy and durability built into the Backblaze platform protects data from the higher failure rates of the drives in this quadrant. Still, these drives are a drain on data center and operational resources.

“Difficult to see; always in motion is the future.”9

Obviously, the Winners quadrant is the desired outcome for all of the drive models we employ. But every drive basically starts out in either quadrant III or IV and moves from there over time. The chart below shows how the drive models in quadrant II (Winners) got there.

“Your focus determines your reality.”10

Each drive model is represented by a snake-like line (Snakes on a plane!?) which shows the AFR of the drive model as the average age of the fleet increased over time. Interestingly, each of the six models currently in quadrant II has a different backstory. For example, who could have predicted that the 6TB Seagate drive (model: ST6000DX000) would have ended up in the Winners quadrant given its less than auspicious start in 2015. And that drive was not alone; the 8TB Seagate drives (models: ST8000NM0055 and ST8000DM002) experienced the same behavior.

This chart can also give us a visual clue as to the direction of the annualized failure rate over time for a given drive model. For example, the 10TB Seagate drive seems more interested in moving into the Retiree quadrant over the next quarter or so and as such its replacement priority could be increased.

“In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”11

In the quarterly Drive Stats table at the start of this report, there is some element of randomness which can affect the results. For example, whether a drive is reported as a failure on the 31st of March at 11:59 p.m. or at 12:01 a.m. on April 1st can have a small effect on the results. Still, the quarterly results are useful in surfacing unexpected failure rate patterns, but the most accurate information regarding a given drive model is captured in the lifetime annualized failures rates.

The chart below shows the lifetime annualized failure rates of all the drive models in production as of March 31, 2022.

“You have failed me for the last time…”12

The lifetime annualized failure rate for all the drives listed above is 1.39%. That was down from 1.40% at the end of 2021. One year ago (3/31/2021), the lifetime AFR was 1.49%.

When looking at the lifetime failure table above, any drive models with less than 500,000 drive days or a confidence interval greater than 1.0% do not have enough data to be considered an accurate portrayal of their performance in our environment. The 8TB HGST drives (model: HUH728080ALE604) and the 16TB Toshiba drives (model: MG08ACA16TA) are good examples of such drives. We list these drives for completeness as they are also listed in the quarterly table at the beginning of this review.

Given the criteria above regarding drive days and confidence intervals, the best performing drive in our environment for each manufacturer is:

  • HGST: 12TB, model: HUH721212ALE600. AFR: 0.33%
  • Seagate: 12TB model: ST12000NM001G. AFR 0.63%
  • WDC: 14TB model: WUH721414ALE6L4. AFR: 0.33%
  • Toshiba: 16TB model: MG08ACA16TEY. AFR 0.70%

“I never ask that question until after I’ve done it!”13

For those of you interested in how we produce this report, the data we used is available on our Hard Drive Test Data webpage. You can download and use this data for free for your own purpose. All we ask are three things: 1) you cite Backblaze as the source if you use the data, 2) you accept that you are solely responsible for how you use the data, and 3) you do not sell the data itself to anyone; it is free.

Good luck and let us know if you find anything interesting. And no, it’s not a trap.

Quotes Referenced

  1. “The greatest teacher, failure is.”—Yoda, “The Last Jedi”
  2. “Always pass on what you have learned.”—Yoda, “Return of the Jedi”
  3. “The Force is strong with this one.”—Darth Vader, “A New Hope”
  4. “Great, kid, don’t get cocky.”—Han Solo, “A New Hope”
  5. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”—Darth Vader, “A New Hope”
  6. “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”—Yoda, “The Empire Strikes Back”
  7. “I like firsts. Good or bad, they’re always memorable.”—Ahsoka Tano, “The Mandalorian”
  8. “…many of the truths that we cling to depend on our viewpoint.”—Obi-Wan Kenobi, “Return of the Jedi”
  9. “Difficult to see; always in motion is the future.”—Yoda, “The Empire Strikes Back”
  10. “Your focus determines your reality.”—Qui-Gon Jinn, “The Phantom Menace”
  11. “In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”—Obi-Wan Kenobi, “A New Hope”
  12. “You have failed me for the last time…”—Darth Vader, “The Empire Strikes Back”
  13. “I never ask that question until after I’ve done it!”—Han Solo, “The Force Awakens”

The post Backblaze Drive Stats for Q1 2022 appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

What Is a Yottabyte?

Post Syndicated from original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-is-a-yottabyte/

A Yottabyte, We Will Define

A yottabyte (technically pronounced “yadda-a-bite,” not “yoda-bite,” but it’s the eve of May the Fourth and we couldn’t pass up a “Star Wars” reference) is a phenomenally huge number of bytes. As a refresher, a byte is a unit of digital storage made up of eight bits (short for binary digit which are either a one or a zero).

The prefix “yotta” is the largest unit recognized by the International System of Units (SI). It denotes a factor of 1024 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 24 zeroes in case your eyes are crossing) or one septillion (not reptilian).

To compare, the last time we defined a big number, we looked at an exabyte, which is only a measly 1018.

Put it in other units of measure, one yottabyte =

  • one million (1,000,000) zettabytes
  • one billion (1,000,000,000) exabytes
  • one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) petabytes
  • one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) terabytes
  • one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) gigabytes
  • one sextillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) megabytes
  • one septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes

Feel the force of the zeroes, you will!

To give you some examples of what these fantastic figures actually look like, we put together this infographic with some approximations to bring a yottabyte into perspective. Keep in mind, right now, nothing is actually measured in yottabyte scale—it’s a theoretical number that’s just sitting around waiting for the future of supercomputing to be put to good use.

How Big is a Yottabyte

If you want to share this infographic on your site, copy the code below and paste into a Custom HTML block. 

<div><div><strong>What is a Yottabyte</strong></div><a href="https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-is-a-yottabyte/"><img src="https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/compressed-v2_Backblaze_How-Big-is-a-Yottabyte_IG-copy-1-scaled.jpg" border="0" alt="how big is a yottabyte infographic" title="how big is a yottabyte infographic" /></a></div>

”Judge Me by My Size, Do You?”

“And, well, you should not,” in the words of Yoda. Now that you know what a yottabyte looks like, let’s look at how much data storage Backblaze has under management.

Way back in 2010, we passed 10 petabytes of cloud backup data under management. It was a big deal at the time and we celebrated it on our blog. We made an infographic about it and thus began our infographic journey into the world of big numbers.

10 Petabytes Visualized

In 2012, we passed 75 petabytes and visualized the data as an iTunes gift card, as one does in 2012…

iTunes Card

Just five months after that, we passed 100 petabytes and compared it to Mt. Shasta…

Mt. Shasta

We were really on a roll—150 petabytes in early 2015, 200 before the end of that year. The storage was accelerating, and we couldn’t mark every milestone with a cool visual. That was, until we hit one exabyte in 2020.

How Big is an Exabyte?

And it hasn’t slowed down since then. Today, we have over two exabytes of data storage under management. We’re nowhere near a yottabyte yet, but like Yoda says, “Patience, you must have.”

Two exabytes today. A yottabyte tomorrow. Maybe? Someday? Either way, you know we’ll be there with a handy infographic whenever the day comes.

The post What Is a Yottabyte? appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

What’s the Diff: File-level vs. Block-level Incremental Backups

Post Syndicated from Kari Rivas original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/whats-the-diff-file-level-vs-block-level-incremental-backups/

If you’ve stumbled upon this blog, chances are you already know that you need to be backing up your data to protect your home or business. Maybe you’re a hobbyist with over 1,000 digital movies in your collection and you lie awake at night, worrying about what would happen if your toddler spills juice on your NAS (let’s face it, toddlers are data disasters waiting to happen). Or you’re a media and entertainment professional worried about keeping archives of your past projects on an on-premises device. Or maybe that tornado that hit your area last week caused you to think twice about keeping all of your data on-premises.

Whether you have a background in IT or not, the many different configuration options for your backup software and cloud storage can be confusing. Today, we’re hoping to clear up one common question when it comes to backup strategies—understanding the difference between file-level and block-level incremental backups.

Refresher: Full vs. Incremental Backups

First things first, let’s define what we’re dealing with: the difference between full and incremental backups. The first step in any backup plan is to perform a full backup of your data. Plan to do this on a slow day because it can take a long time and hog a lot of bandwidth. Of course, if you’re a Backblaze customer, you can also use the Backblaze Fireball to get your data into Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage without taking up precious internet resources.

You should plan on regularly performing full backups because it’s always a good idea to have a fresh, full copy of your entire data set. Some people perform full backups weekly, some might do them monthly or even less often; it’s up to you as you plan your backup strategy.

Then, typically, incremental backups are performed in between your full backups. Want to know more about the difference between full and incremental backups and the considerations for each? Check out our recent blog post on the different types of backups.

What’s the Diff: File-level vs. Block-level Incremental Backups

Let’s take it to the next level. Incremental backups back up what has been changed or added since your last full backup. Within the category of incremental backups, there are two standard options: file-level and block-level incremental backups. Many backup tools and devices, like network attached storage (NAS) devices, offer these options in the configuration settings, so it’s important to understand the difference. After you decide which type of incremental backup is best for you, check your backup software or device’s support articles to see if you can configure this setting for yourself.

File-level Incremental Backups

When a file-level incremental backup is performed and a file has been modified, the entire file is copied to your backup repository. This takes longer than performing a block-level backup because your backup software will scan all your files to see which ones have changed since the last full backup and will then back up the entire modified file again.

Imagine that you have a really big file and you make one small change to that file; with file-level backups, the whole file is re-uploaded. This likely sounds pretty inefficient, but there are some advantages to a file-level backup:

  • It’s simple and straightforward.
  • It allows you to pick and choose the files you want backed up.
  • You can include or exclude certain file types or easily back up specific directories.

File-level backups might be the right choice for you if you’re a home techie who wants to back up their movie collection, knowing that those files are not likely to change. Or it could be a good fit for a small business with a small amount of data that isn’t frequently modified.

The diagram below illustrates this concept. This person performs their full backup on Sundays and Wednesdays. (To be clear, we’re not recommending this cadence—it’s just for demonstration purposes.) This results in a 100% copy of their data to a backup repository like Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. On Monday, part of a file is changed (the black triangle) and a new file is added (the red square). The file-level incremental backup uploads the new file (the red square) and the entire file that has changed (the grey square with the black triangle). On Tuesday, another file is changed (the purple triangle). When the file-level incremental backup is performed, it adds the entire file (the grey square with the purple triangle) to the backup repository. On Wednesday, a new full backup is run, which creates a complete copy of the source data (including all your previously changed and added data) and stores that in the cloud. This starts the cycle of full backups to incremental backups over again.

Click to expand.

Block-level Incremental Backups

Block-level incremental backups do not copy the entire file if only a portion of it has changed. With this option, only the changed part of the file is sent to the backup repository. Because of this, block-level backups are faster and require less storage space. If you’re backing up to cloud storage, obviously this will help you save on storage costs.

Let’s return to our scenario where full backups are performed on Sundays and Wednesdays, but this time, block-level incrementals are being run in between. When the first block-level incremental backup is run on Monday, the backup software copies just the changed piece of data in the file (the black triangle) and the new data (the red square). In the Tuesday backup, the additional modified data in another file (the purple triangle) is also added to the backup repository. On Wednesday, the new full backup results in a fresh copy of the full data set to the cloud.

Click to expand.

Block-level incremental backups take a snapshot of the running volume and data is read from the snapshot. This allows files to be copied even if they’re currently in use in a running software program, and it also reduces the impact on your machine’s performance while the backup is running.

This backup type works better than file-level incremental backups when you have a large number of files or files that often change. If you don’t need to pick and choose which files to specifically include or exclude in your backup, it’s generally best to use block-level incremental backups, as they’re more efficient.

The only drawbacks to block-level incremental backups are that recovery may take longer, since your backup software will need to recover each piece of modified data and rebuild the file. And, because this style of incremental backup uploads modified data in pieces and parts, if one of those pieces becomes corrupted or is unable to be recovered, it could affect your ability to recover the whole file. For this reason (and plenty of other good reasons), it’s important to regularly include full backups in your backup strategy and not just count on incremental backups perpetually.

Ready to Get Started?

No matter which method of incremental backup you decide is right for you, you can take advantage of Backblaze’s extremely affordable B2 Cloud Storage at just $5/TB/month. Back up your servers or your NAS in a matter of minutes and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re protected from a data disaster.

The post What’s the Diff: File-level vs. Block-level Incremental Backups appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Use a Cloudflare Worker to Send Notifications on Backblaze B2 Events

Post Syndicated from Pat Patterson original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/use-a-cloudflare-worker-to-send-notifications-on-backblaze-b2-events/

When building an application or solution on Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, a common requirement is to be able to send a notification of an event (e.g., a user uploading a file) so that an application can take some action (e.g., processing the file). In this blog post, I’ll explain how you can use a Cloudflare Worker to send event notifications to a wide range of recipients, allowing great flexibility when building integrations with Backblaze B2.

Why Use a Proxy to Send Event Notifications?

Event notifications are useful whenever you need to ensure that a given event triggers a particular action. For example, last month, I explained how a video sharing site running on Vultr’s Infrastructure Cloud could store raw and transcoded videos in Backblaze B2. In that example, when a user uploaded a video to a Backblaze B2 bucket via the web application, the web app sent a notification to a Worker app instructing the Worker to read the raw video file from the bucket, transcode it, and upload the processed file back to Backblaze B2.

A drawback of this approach is that, if we were to create a mobile app to upload videos, we would have to copy the notification logic into the mobile app. As the system grows, so does the maintenance burden. Each new app needs code to send notifications and, worse, if we need to add a new field to the notification message, we have to update all of the apps. If, instead, we move the notification logic from the web application to a Cloudflare Worker, we can send notifications on Backblaze B2 events from a single location, regardless of the origin of the request. This pattern of wrapping an API with a component that presents the exact same API but adds its own functionality is known as a proxy.

Cloudflare Workers: A Brief Introduction

Cloudflare Workers provides a serverless execution environment that allows you to create applications that run on Cloudflare’s global edge network. A Cloudflare Worker application intercepts all HTTP requests destined for a given domain, and can return any valid HTTP response. Your Worker can create that HTTP response in any way you choose. Workers can consume a range of APIs, allowing them to directly interact with the Cloudflare cache, manipulate globally unique Durable Objects, perform cryptographic operations, and more.

Cloudflare Workers often, but not always, implement the proxy pattern, sending outgoing HTTP requests to servers on the public internet in the course of servicing incoming requests. If we implement a proxy that intercepts requests from clients to Backblaze B2, it could both forward those requests to Backblaze B2 and send notifications of those requests to one or more recipient applications.

This example focuses on proxying requests to the Backblaze S3 Compatible API, and can be used with any S3 client application that works with Backblaze B2 by simply changing the client’s endpoint configuration.

Implementing a similar proxy for the B2 Native API is much simpler, since B2 Native API requests are secured by a bearer token rather than a signature. A B2 Native API proxy would simply copy the incoming request, including the bearer token, changing only the target URL. Look out for a future blog post featuring a B2 Native API proxy.

Proxying Backblaze B2 Operations With a Cloudflare Worker

S3 clients send HTTP requests to the Backblaze S3 Compatible API over a TLS-secured connection. Each request includes the client’s Backblaze Application Key ID (access key ID in AWS parlance) and is signed with its Application Key (secret access key), allowing Backblaze B2 to authenticate the client and verify the integrity of the request. The signature algorithm, AWS Signature Version 4 (SigV4), includes the Host header in the signed data, ensuring that a request intended for one recipient cannot be redirected to another. Unfortunately, this is exactly what we want to happen in this use case!

Our proxy Worker must therefore validate the signature on the incoming request from the client, and then create a new signature that it can include in the outgoing request to the Backblaze B2 endpoint. Note that the Worker must be configured with the same Application Key and ID as the client to be able to validate and create signatures on the client’s behalf.

Here’s the message flow:

  1. A user performs an action in a Backblaze B2 client application, for example, uploading an image.
  2. The client app creates a signed request, exactly as it would for Backblaze B2, but sends it to the Cloudflare Worker rather than directly to Backblaze B2.
  3. The Worker validates the client’s signature, and creates its own signed request.
  4. The Worker sends the signed request to Backblaze B2.
  5. Backblaze B2 validates the signature, and processes the request.
  6. Backblaze B2 returns the response to the Worker.
  7. The Worker forwards the response to the client app.
  8. The Worker sends a notification to the webhook recipient.
  9. The recipient takes some action based on the notification.

These steps are illustrated in the diagram below.

The validation and signing process imposes minimal overhead, even for requests with large payloads, since the signed data includes a SHA-256 digest of the request payload, included with the request in the x-amz-content-sha256 HTTP header, rather than the payload itself. The Worker need not even read the incoming request payload into memory, instead passing it to the Cloudflare Fetch API to be streamed directly to the Backblaze B2 endpoint.

The Worker returns Backblaze B2’s response to the client unchanged, and creates a JSON-formatted webhook notification containing the following parameters:

  • contentLength: Size of the request body, if there was one, in bytes.
  • contentType: Describes the request body, if there was one. For example, image/jpeg.
  • method: HTTP method, for example, PUT.
  • signatureTimestamp: Request timestamp included in the signature.
  • status: HTTP status code returned from B2 Cloud Storage, for example 200 for a successful request or 404 for file not found.
  • url: The URL requested from B2 Cloud Storage, for example, https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com/my-bucket/hello.txt.

The Worker submits the notification to Cloudflare for asynchronous processing, so that the response to the client is not delayed. Once the interaction with the client is complete, Cloudflare POSTs the notification to the webhook recipient.

Prerequisites

If you’d like to follow the steps below to experiment with the proxy yourself, you will need to:

1. Creating a Cloudflare Worker Based on the Proxy Code

The Cloudflare Worker B2 Webhook GitHub repository contains full source code and configuration details. You can use the repository as a template for your own Worker using Cloudflare’s wrangler CLI. You can change the Worker name (my-proxy in the sample code below) as you see fit:

wrangler generate my-proxy
https://github.com/backblaze-b2-samples/cloudflare-b2-proxy
cd my-proxy

2. Configuring and Deploying the Cloudflare Worker

You must configure AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_S3_ENDPOINT in wrangler.toml before you can deploy the Worker. Configuring WEBHOOK_URL is optional—you can set it to empty quotes if you just want a vanity URL for Backblaze B2.

[vars]

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = "<your b2 application key id>"
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT = "</your><your endpoint - e.g. s3.us-west-001.backblazeb2.com>"
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = "Remove this line after you make AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY a secret in the UI!"
WEBHOOK_URL = "<e.g. https://api.example.com/webhook/1 >"

Note the placeholder for AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY in wrangler.toml. All variables used in the Worker must be set before the Worker can be published, but you should not save your Backblaze B2 application key to the file (see the note below). We work around these constraints by initializing AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY with a placeholder value.

Use the CLI to publish the Worker project to the Cloudflare Workers environment:

wrangler publish

Now log in to the Cloudflare dashboard, navigate to your new Worker, and click the Settings tab, Variables, then Edit Variables. Remove the placeholder text, and paste your Backblaze B2 Application Key as the value for AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY. Click the Encrypt button, then Save. The environment variables should look similar to this:

Finally, you must remove the placeholder line from wrangler.toml. If you do not do so, then the next time you publish the Worker, the placeholder value will overwrite your Application Key.

Why Not Just Set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY in wrangler.toml?

You should never, ever save secrets such as API keys and passwords in source code files. It’s too easy to forget to remove sensitive data from source code before sharing it either privately or, worse, on a public repository such as GitHub.

You can access the Worker via its default endpoint, which will have the form https://my-proxy.<your-workers-subdomain>.workers.dev, or create a DNS record in your own domain and configure a route associating the custom URL with the Worker.

If you try accessing the Worker URL via the browser, you’ll see an error message:

<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>
Unauthenticated requests are not allowed for this api
</Message>
</Error>

This is expected—the Worker received the request, but the request did not contain a signature.

3. Configuring the Client Application

The only change required in your client application is the S3 endpoint configuration. Set it to your Cloudflare Worker’s endpoint rather than your Backblaze account’s S3 endpoint. As mentioned above, the client continues to use the same Application Key and ID as it did when directly accessing the Backblaze S3 Compatible API.

4. Implementing a Webhook Consumer

The webhook consumer must accept JSON-formatted messages via HTTP POSTs at a public endpoint accessible from the Cloudflare Workers environment. The webhook notification looks like this:

{
"contentLength": 30155,
"contentType": "image/png",
"method": "PUT",
"signatureTimestamp": "20220224T193204Z",
"status": 200,
"url": "https://s3.us-west-001.backblazeb2.com/my-bucket/image001.png"
}

You might implement the webhook consumer in your own application or, alternatively, use an integration platform such as IFTTT, Zapier, or Pipedream to trigger actions in downstream systems. I used Pipedream to create a workflow that logs each Backblaze B2 event as a new row in a Google Sheet. Watch it in action in this short video:

Put the Proxy to Work!

The Cloudflare Worker/Backblaze B2 Proxy can be used as-is in a wide variety of integrations—anywhere you need an event in Backblaze B2 to trigger an action elsewhere. At the same time, it can be readily adapted for different requirements. Here are a few ideas.

In this initial implementation, the client uses the same credentials to access the Worker as the Worker uses to access Backblaze B2. It would be straightforward to use different credentials for the upstream and downstream connections, ensuring that clients can’t bypass the Worker and access Backblaze B2 directly.

POSTing JSON data to a webhook endpoint is just one of many possibilities for sending notifications. You can integrate the worker with any system accessible from the Cloudflare Workers environment via HTTP. For example, you could use a stream-processing platform such as Apache Kafka to publish messages reliably to any number of consumers, or, similarly, send a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topic for distribution to SNS subscribers.

As a final example, the proxy has full access to the request and response payloads. Rather than sending a notification to a separate system, the worker can operate directly on the data, for example, transparently compressing incoming uploads and decompressing downloads. The possibilities are endless.

How will you put the Cloudflare Worker Backblaze B2 Proxy to work? Sign up for a Backblaze B2 account and get started!

The post Use a Cloudflare Worker to Send Notifications on Backblaze B2 Events appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Learn About Women in History With Us!

Post Syndicated from Lora Maslenitsyna original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/learn-about-women-in-history-with-us/

March was Women’s History Month, and throughout the month, Backblaze’s employee-led, internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee educated our team on the contributions of women throughout history. In a company-wide Slack channel, DEI committee leaders shared facts and resources about women who were pioneers in a range of fields.

Many of our team members found these facts useful to inform and expand their own worldviews. Team members shared articles they found themselves, and some even used the content as part of their homeschooling curriculum. (As a bonus, the DEI Committee also surveyed employees to generate a word cloud that describes the women of Backblaze, which you can see in the image above.)

The initiative was so popular with our team, we thought we would share some of the content with you even though we are well on our way into April, because any day is a good day to recognize the diverse range of women who have made contributions to our everyday lives, whether it’s still Women’s History Month or not.

Keep reading to learn about important figures and events in the history of technology, Hollywood, politics, and more!

Women in History

In 1756, long before the women’s suffrage movement gained any traction, Lydia Chapin Taft was legally allowed to vote.
Lydia Chapin Taft’s husband, Josiah Taft, was a prominent member of their community in Uxbridge, Massachusetts; he served several terms as a legislator and presided over town hall meetings. When he died, the townspeople agreed to permit Lydia Chapin Taft to vote in her husband’s place. The decision was made in keeping with the slogan of “no taxation without representation,” since Josiah Taft was the town’s largest taxpayer. Lydia Chapin Taft went on to cast several more votes, contributing to the town’s stance on important matters like financial contribution to the French and Indian War.
Read more about Lydia Chapin Taft here.

The 1900s brought significant milestones for women and money in the United States.
In 1938, the federal minimum wage was established as a result of the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, eliminating many pay differences between men and women for hourly jobs. In the 1960s, women gained the right to open a bank account. Shortly after, in 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, which aimed to prohibit credit discrimination on the basis of gender. Before it passed, many banks granted credit cards to women only with their husbands’ signatures and outright refused to issue them to unmarried women.
Read more about economic rights for women in the U.S. here.

Wyoming refused to join the United States without a guarantee that women would be allowed to vote.
In 1869, the territory of Wyoming made history when it passed a law granting women aged 21 and older the right to vote. That law was threatened two decades later when Wyoming applied for statehood. Congress stated that it wouldn’t allow the territory to join the Union unless women were disenfranchised. Wyoming called Congress out on its bluff, replying via telegram, “We will remain out of the Union one hundred years rather than come in without the women.” Congress relented and Wyoming became a state in 1890, with women’s right to vote intact. True to its past, Wyoming’s state motto today is simply, “Equal Rights.”
Read more about Wyoming and women’s right to vote here.

Source: Jet City Comics/Joao Vieira.

The British suffragettes learned jiujitsu to defend themselves and evade arrest.
Campaigning for women’s enfranchisement was a dangerous act back in the early 20th century. Many suffragettes in the UK were incarcerated, and some were even force fed in jail as punishment for their self-imposed hunger strikes. To protect women from going to jail and facing this abuse, which could have disastrous health consequences, one suffragette had the bright idea to teach her fellow protesters jiujitsu. Edith Margaret Garrud used her martial arts background to secretly train a unit of 30 members of the Women’s Social and Political Union in self defense. The group was alternately known as “The Bodyguard” and “The Amazons,” and was highly effective at resisting arrest.
Read more about how suffragettes in the UK used martial arts to defend themselves here.

Arabella Mansfield became the first female lawyer in the United States in 1869.
Admitted to the Iowa bar, Mansfield made her career as a college educator and administrator. Despite an Iowa state law restricting the bar exam to males, Mansfield had taken it and earned high scores. Shortly after her court challenge, Iowa amended its licensing statute and became the first state to accept women and minorities into its bar.
Read more about Arabella Mansfield here.

In 1964, Patsy Mink became the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mink’s Congressional career spanned decades (1964–1977; 1990–2002). She was a key author for Title IX, a law that advanced gender equity within federal funding policies for education. This law was later renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in her honor.
Read more about Patsy Mink here.

No list of formidable Irish women would be complete without tomboy icon Gráinne Ní Mháille, aka Grace O’Malley, the notorious “Pirate Queen” of western Ireland.
Born on Clare Island in 1530, O’Malley famously cut off her hair after her father refused to take her on a voyage in case her locks got caught in the ropes. In her prime, O’Malley commanded three galleys, 20 ships, and over 200 men against her perpetual nemesis—the English—and even met with Elizabeth I before living to the ripe old age of 73.
Find out more about Grace O’Malley here.

Cork, Ireland native Annie Moore became the first immigrant to be processed through the newly-opened Ellis Island in New York on January 1, 1892.
Just 17 years old at the time, Moore looked after her two brothers on the ship voyage from Ireland to America, before going on to have 11 children of her own with German Catholic salesman Joseph Augustus Schayer. Moore died in 1924. Her previously unmarked grave was identified over eight decades later in 2006, and a Celtic Cross made from Irish Blue Limestone was later unveiled at her final resting place.
You can read more about Annie Moore here.

Source: Chicago Tribune.

Tammy Duckworth, the Illinois senator and retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, is responsible for an impressive list of firsts.
Duckworth is the first Congress member to be born in Thailand, the first to give birth while in office, the first Asian-American woman to represent Illinois in Congress, and the first woman with a disability to be elected to Congress. She lost both of her legs following a helicopter attack in the Iraq War. “People always want me to hide it in pictures,” she told Vogue in 2018. “I say no! I earned this wheelchair. It’s no different from a medal I wear on my chest. Why would I hide it?”
Find out more about her here.

In 1985, Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to be Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, leading the largest tribe in the United States.
During Mankiller’s decade-long chiefdom from 1985 to 1995, “tribal enrollment grew, infant mortality dropped, and employment rates doubled,” according to Time. In 1998, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton.
Learn more about Wilma Mankiller here.

Women in Art

Toshiko Takaezu was a trailblazer in ceramic art making during the 1970s.
Takaezu is best known for creating large, closed-vessel sculptures. At the time, fellow artists expressed shock that a woman could make such large pieces, some taller than the artist herself. Takaezu merged aspects of Japanese tea ceremony, calligraphy, and American Abstract Expressionism to create a new style from these diverse art traditions. She had a long career as an artist and teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Princeton University.
Learn more about Toshiko Takaezu here.

Emily Kauʻiomakaweliokauaionalaniokamanookalanipo Kukahiwa Zuttermeister, also known as Aunty Kauʻi, is a revered Kumu Hula (master hula teacher) from Hawaiʻi.
Zuttermeister trained in the hula pahu tradition of Samuel Pua Haʻaheo before becoming a teacher in 1935. Zuttermeister helped revitalize ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language) and culture by teaching hula. She was part of a community of leaders who raised awareness about hula as a storytelling art form created by the Hawaiian people to recall and share their knowledge.
Learn more about her here.

No one did sultry better than Anna May Wong.
The Los Angeles-born screen siren landed her breakthrough role at age 17 in 1922’s “The Toll of the Sea.” Wong was also quite the trend setter—in 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the “world’s best-dressed woman,” a massive fashion world honor at the time. Success in Hollywood came, but certainly not equal to her talent. As her Turner Classic Movie biography sums it up, stateside audiences considered Wong either “too Chinese” or “too American.” In Europe, the actress received a wider range of roles and due critical acclaim.
Learn more about Anna May Wong here.

Best known as the frontwoman of 4 Non Blondes, Linda Perry’s prolific behind-the-scenes work—as both a songwriter and producer—helped define modern pop music.
Perry worked on hit songs with P!nk, Christina Aguilera, and Alicia Keys. While a woman has never won a Grammy for Producer of the Year (Non-classical), in 2019, Perry received a nomination for the award from the Recording Academy. The singer-songwriter is one of a handful of women to achieve success in production and with her own music.
Learn more about Linda Perry here.

Delia Derbyshire was an innovator in electronic music who pushed the boundaries of technology and composition.
Derbyshire is most well-known for her electronic arrangement of the theme for “Doctor Who,” an important example of Musique Concrète. Each note was individually crafted by cutting, splicing, and stretching, or compressing, segments of analogue tape which contained recordings of a plucked string, oscillators, and white noise.
Learn more about Delia Derbyshire here.

During a two-decade career that began in the mid-1960s, Sonia Pottinger held the distinction of being Jamaica’s first female record producer.
Cutting tracks with the likes of Joe White & Chuck and Culture, her production spanned a variety of Jamaican genres, from rock-steady to ska to reggae.
Read more about Sonia Pottinger here.

Geena Davis starred in two movies about female empowerment: “Thelma & Louise” and “A League of Their Own.”
As Davis got older, she realized how unempowered women were in Hollywood. In 2004, she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to collect data comparing the number and types of male and female roles and to use that data to convince the industry of the need for change.
Listen to her speak about her career here.

Rita Moreno has influenced the entertainment industry for over 70 years as an actress, singer, and dancer.
Moreno became the first Latine woman to earn the vaunted EGOT: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. In 2004, she was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her many contributions to the arts.
Learn more about Rita Moreno here.

Women in Technology

Hedy Lamarr was much more than “the most beautiful woman in the world” during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
The Austrian-American actress was also a mathematically-minded inventor who learned about military technology from dinner party conversations between her arms-manufacturer husband and Nazi German generals, before escaping to America where she eventually invented a new torpedo guidance system for the U.S. Navy.
Read more about Hedy Lamarr’s inventions here.

Source: “The Legacy of Grace Hopper.”

Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was a STEM pioneer.
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper brought the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. The history of computer hardware invention is mostly a male-oriented affair. This isn’t unexpected given that early computers had more to do with heavy engineering than logic. However, when it comes to software, the picture is a little different. Hopper was responsible not only for the development of the Cobol language, but also for continuous advocacy within the industry to make computers and computing more accessible.
Find out more about Grace Hopper here.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace was born 200 years ago, but her name lives on.
There is often an unfairness in the reporting of the history of computing. The software people are nearly always passed over in preference for the hardware people. Ada, Countess of Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine and is generally accepted as the first programmer. Later, in the 1970s, the Ada language was named in recognition of her status as the first computer programmer. In 2009, Ada Lovelace Day was inaugurated to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Read more about her here.

In 1996, after being named a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia by NASA, Kalpana Chawla became the first woman of Indian descent to fly in space.
The shuttle orbited around earth 252 times in a little over two weeks. Chawla’s second—and last—trip to space came in 2003 when she and six other astronauts completed more than 80 experiments over the course of 16 days. She and the entire crew died when the ship disintegrated upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. In 2020, Northrop Grumman named a spacecraft after Chawla in her memory.
Read more about her here.

Share More Information on Women in History

Did you learn something new that you didn’t know before? Or, do you have a fact to share about a woman in history? Comment below and help us expand this list!

The post Learn About Women in History With Us! appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

A Refreshing Partnership: Backblaze and SoDA

Post Syndicated from Jennifer Newman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/a-refreshing-partnership-backblaze-and-soda/

Editor’s Note: SoDA and Backblaze will be at NAB 2022 and would love to tell you more about our joint solution—offering data analysis and movement, FREE during initial migration—at NAB. Set up a meeting here.

Moving all your stuff is one of the most paralyzing projects imaginable. Which is why professional movers are amazing: one tackles the dishes, a couple folks hit the mattresses and closets. And there’s one guy (probably the rookie) who gets assigned to the junk drawers and odd gadgets. Suddenly, your old house is empty and your life is safe and orderly in boxes moving across the country.

Now imagine moving your businesses’ most valuable data across the country or the world—whether it’s the organization, the security, the budgeting, or all of the above and then some—it can be absolutely paralyzing, even when your current data storage approach is holding you back and you know you need to make a change.

This is where SoDA comes in.

Essentially your professional movers in the cloud, the SoDA team analyzes your cloud or on-prem infrastructure and then orchestrates the movement, replication, or syncing of data to wherever you want it to go—limiting any downtime in the process and ensuring your data is secure in flight and structured exactly as you need it in its new home. If deciding where to send data is an issue, they’ll use the analysis of your existing setup to scope the best solution by value for your business.

The Backblaze and SoDA Partnership leverages SoDA’s data movement services to unlock Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage’s value for more businesses. The partnership offers the following benefits:

  • A cost analysis of your existing storage infrastructure.
  • A “dry run” feature that compares existing storage costs to new storage costs and any transfer costs so you “know before you go.”
  • The ability to define policies for how the data should move and where.
  • Flexibility to move, copy, sync, or archive data to Backblaze B2.
  • Migration and management via the Backblaze S3 Compatible API—easily migrate data, and then develop and manage both on-prem and cloud data via the API going forward.

Why Should You Try Backblaze and SoDA?

First: Backblaze will pay for SoDA’s services for any customer who agrees to migrate 10TB or more and commit to maintaining at least 10TB in Backblaze B2 for a minimum of one year.*

People don’t believe this when we tell them, but we’ll say it again: You won’t receive an invoice for your initial data migration, ever.

If that’s not reason enough to run a proof of concept, here’s more to think about:

Moving a couple of files to the cloud is easy peasy. But what happens if you have billions of files structured in multiple folders across multiple storage locations? You could use legacy tools or command line tools, but all of the scripting and resource management for the data in flight will be on you. You’re smart enough to do it, but if someone else is willing to pay the metaphorical movers, why deal with the hassle?

With SoDA, you do not have to worry about any of it. You define your source locations, define your destination Backblaze B2 bucket and start a transfer. SoDA takes care of the rest. That is truly easy peasy.

An Example of the Backlaze and SoDA Value Proposition

One customer we recently worked with was managing data in their own data center and having issues with reliability and SLAs for current customers. They needed availability at 99.999% as well as cost-effectiveness for future scaling. They identified Backblaze B2 as a provider that checked both boxes and Backblaze recommended SoDA for the move. The customer migrated 1PB of data (over a billion files) into B2 Cloud Storage. Other than making the decision and pointing where the data should go, the customer didn’t have to lift a finger.

Try It Today

If you’re not convinced yet, the SoDA and Backblaze teams are ready to make your life easier at any time. You can schedule a meeting here. Or you can check out the Quickstart guide to explore the solution today.

*Conditions may apply.

The post A Refreshing Partnership: Backblaze and SoDA appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How a National Nonprofit Protects Field Staff Workstations

Post Syndicated from Molly Clancy original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-a-national-nonprofit-protects-field-staff-workstations/

Image credits below: Mason Cummings, The Wilderness Society.

Saving the environment is one of the most noble tasks anyone can undertake, but the thing about the environment is that it’s notoriously rough on laptops.

For the staff of The Wilderness Society, saving wild places means trekking out into said wild with boots firmly on the ground. Whether that means shutting down copper mines that would have otherwise devastated nearby waterways or helping create public transportation routes out to public lands, The Wilderness Society is a group constantly on the move. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for dealing with backups, particularly in the geographically far-flung areas in which The Wilderness Society researchers find themselves.

Data saved on staff laptops was regularly at risk, and The Wilderness Society needed a way to protect that data from threats both natural and otherwise. Director of Information Technology, Kristin Iden, shared how she:

  • Protected essential workstation data with cloud backups.
  • Achieved a security stance that aligns with cyber insurance policies.
  • Eased the administrative burden on an IT team of two that serves more than 160 staff around the country.
Otero Mesa, New Mexico.
The Wilderness Society: A Force for Change

Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has led the effort to permanently protect 109 million acres of wilderness in 44 states. They have been at the forefront of nearly every major public lands victory. Initiatives include climate change solutions, land and water conservation, and community-led conservation.

How Workstation Backups Protect Data From Disasters

The urgency to put a solid workstation backup plan in place hit home for Kristin when her laptop was destroyed by a lightning strike. And yes, she’s aware of the irony. The IT director, one of the few who isn’t dragging their laptop across creation, is the one who lost data to natural disaster.

The Wilderness Society’s researchers find themselves all over the world as part of their mission to protect the environment. There are 14 offices from coast to coast, from Hallowell, Maine to Anchorage, Alaska. According to Kristin, “drop and destroy” events are not uncommon out in the field, whether it’s a laptop taking an accidental trip down a mountainside or into the waters of the Arctic Circle.

Add to that, as a nonprofit organization, The Wilderness Society always has to look at the bottom line. Their funding comes entirely from donors and sponsors, gifted with a purpose, and as much of it should go toward the mission as possible. In fact, Kristin had originally sought out a backup solution solely for executives as a way to save budget, but Backblaze’s affordability made it a no-brainer to extend backups out into the field.

“If somebody in the Arctic Circle drops and breaks their laptop, now I can get them back up and running within a couple of days. ”
—Kristin Iden, Director of Information Technology, The Wilderness Society

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

How to Back Up Field Staff Workstations

Kristin started with a beta test group of around 10% of the users, making sure to include a mix of field researchers, administrative workers, and executives. One important group to include in this mix was the handful of workers in truly remote regions of the country that have metered bandwidth. This obviously made regular backups difficult, but Kristin found a workaround by having them run the backup during weekly office visits.

The two members of the IT department are the sole administrators on the roughly 160 machines throughout the organization, an 80/20 mix of PC and Mac users. As such, they were able to roll out installation of Backblaze through Microsoft Intune, a mass deployment tool. The initial beta test went off without a hitch, and they took a phased approach to the remaining rollout—Backblaze was installed across the entire organization in groups of 30.

Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina.

Lightweight Backup Client Provides Peace of Mind

Kristin knew there was simply no way to prevent the inevitable destruction of user laptops out in the field. By focusing her efforts on finding the right backup solution, she was able to easily roll out to the entire organization a solution that protected their data from the rigors of nature.

Of paramount importance was simplifying the entire process for the users. They are, after all, doing the truly critical work of protecting the environment. Whether that means surveying wildlife in their native environment or working with lawmakers to craft bills that preserve nature, Kristin wanted their focus on the mission and not on their machine. With a lightweight client that doesn’t bog down machines and reliable backups she can use to provision new machines and recover data, Backblaze gave her that turnkey solution, and the peace of mind that followed.

“Admin tasks like backups are a time suck when you’re a two-person team minding 160 people running around the country trying to make sure the forests stay up. I don’t have time to babysit something constantly. With Backblaze, it just does its thing, and it lets me know when something’s not working. That’s exactly what I want out of every tool I use—just work, tell me when it isn’t, and make it easy to fix it. Backblaze just works everywhere we need it to.”
—Kristin Iden, Director of Information Technology, The Wilderness Society

Looking for a backup solution for your nonprofit organization or dispersed field staff? Learn more about Backblaze Business Backup for workstations.

The post How a National Nonprofit Protects Field Staff Workstations appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

We’re Turning 15 Today!

Post Syndicated from Backblaze original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/were-turning-15-today/

Who doesn’t like birthdays? We definitely do. And we usually celebrate ours on the Backblaze Blog because they’re fun, and we like reminiscing about the time we passed 10 petabytes of data under management and how cute exciting that was (we now have over two exabytes of data storage under management, for context).

But this past year, well, things have been busy! And the last few months have been busier still. Honestly, our 15th anniversary almost slipped right by us. But, we couldn’t let such a milestone go by without marking it somehow.

Today, we thought we’d take a brief look back on our beginnings and where we are now as a public company—a little “how it started/how it’s going” retrospective to celebrate our coming of age—not to pat ourselves on the back, but to celebrate the ways our team and business have grown, especially over the past year.

How It Started

One of the things we’re most proud of is the incredible team we’ve built. Before we founded Backblaze, the five founders and two demi-founders had worked together for 20 years. So, we knew the kind of company we wanted to create when we sat down to hash out what Backblaze would be—a company that’s equally fair and good for its customers, partners, employees, investors, and the greater community.

Five co-founders; two demi-founders; 1,200 square feet; one white board; innumerable Post-Its.

The team today is a lot bigger than it once was (270+ and counting!), but when we started Backblaze, we wanted to create a culture, both internally and externally, of people who cared about each other, cared about their work, and cared about our product. We knew building that kind of culture would lead us authentically to where we are today, and we fiercely protected it. According to a few sources, we’re still doing well on that count.

How It’s Going

So, what have we been up to recently? Thus far in 2022:

  • We launched Universal Data Migration, a new service that covers all data transfer costs, including legacy provider egress fees, and manages data migration from any legacy on-premises or cloud source.
  • We enhanced our partner program with two new offerings (in addition to Universal Data Migration, which partners can also take advantage of):
    • Backblaze B2 Reserve: A predictable, capacity pricing model to empower our Channel Partners.
    • Backblaze Partner API: A new API that empowers our Alliance Partners to easily integrate and manage B2 Cloud Storage within their products and platforms.
  • We announced new partnerships with:
    • CTERA: An enterprise file services platform that extends the capabilities of traditional NAS and file servers to the cloud.
    • Catalogic: An enterprise and Kubernetes data protection solution.
    • Kasten by Veeam: A Kubernetes backup and application mobility solution.

And just a few weeks before 2021 came to a close: We went public on Nasdaq under BLZE.

Blazing it in Times Square.

As much as we’d like to reflect* on more of the great things that happened in our past, we’re more interested in keeping our heads down, working away at what’s next. Stay tuned for the next 15 years.


*If you ARE interested in celebrating some past milestones with us, we put together this nifty chart of some other key milestones that happened between our founding date, 4/20/2007 (yes yes, we were founded on 4/20 with a CEO whose name is Budman, we’ve heard it all before) and when we went public. We thought we’d share it here (obviously we can’t help ourselves, we really do love reminiscing).

Click to enlarge.

The post We’re Turning 15 Today! appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Ransomware Takeaways From Q1 2022

Post Syndicated from Molly Clancy original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ransomware-takeaways-from-q1-2022/

The impact of the war in Ukraine is evolving in real time, particularly when it comes to the ransomware landscape. Needless to say, it dominated the ransomware conversation throughout Q1 2022. This quarter, we’re digging into some of the consequences from the invasion and what it means for you in addition to a few broader domestic developments.

Why? Staying up to date on ransomware trends can help you prepare your security infrastructure in the short and long term to protect your valuable data. In this series, we share five key takeaways based on what we saw over the previous quarter. Here’s what we observed in Q1 2022.

This post is a part of our ongoing series on ransomware. Take a look at our other posts for more information on how businesses can defend themselves against a ransomware attack, and more.

➔ Download The Complete Guide to Ransomware E-book

1. Sanctions and International Attention May Have Depressed Some Ransomware Activity

Following the ground invasion, ransomware attacks seemed to go eerily quiet especially when government officials predicted cyberattacks could be a key tactic. That’s not to say attacks weren’t being carried out without being reported, but the radio silence was notable enough that a few media outlets wondered why.

International attention may be one reason—cybercriminals tend to be wary of the spotlight. Having the world’s eyes on a region where much cybercrime originates seems to have pushed cybercriminals into the shadows. The sanctions imposed on Russia have made it more difficult for cybercrime syndicates based in the country to receive, convert, and disperse payment from victims. The war also may have caused some chaos within ransomware syndicates and fomented fears that cyberinsurers would not pay for claims. As a result, we’ve seen a slowing of ransomware incidents in the first quarter, but that may not last.

Key Takeaway: While ransomware attacks may be down short-term, no one should be lulled into thinking the threat is gone, especially with government agencies on high alert and warnings from the highest levels that businesses should still be on guard.

2. Long-term Socioeconomic Impacts Could Trigger a New Wave of Cybercrime

As part of their ongoing analysis, cyber security consultants Coveware, illustrated how the socioeconomic precarity caused by sanctions could lead to a larger number of people turning to cybercrime as a way to support themselves. In their reporting, they analyzed the number of trained cyber security professionals who they’d expect to be out of work given Russia’s rising unemployment rate in order to estimate a pool of potential new ransomware operators. To double the number of individuals currently acting as ransomware operators, they found that only 7% of the newly unemployed workforce would have to convert to cybercrime.

They note, however, that it remains to be seen what impact a larger labor pool would have since new entrants looking for fast cash may not be as willing to put in the time and effort to carry out big game tactics that typified the first half of 2021. As such, Coveware would expect to see an increase in attacks on small to medium-sized enterprises (which already make up the largest portion of ransomware victims today) and a decline in ransom demands with new operators hoping to make paying up more attractive for victims.

Key Takeaway: If the threat materializes, new entrants to the ransomware game are likely to try to fly under the radar, which means we would expect to see a larger number of small to medium-sized businesses targeted with ransoms that won’t make headlines, but that nonetheless hurt the businesses affected.

3. One Ransomware Operator Paid the Price for Russian Allegiance; Others Declared Neutrality

In February, ransomware group Conti declared their support for Russian actions and threatened to retaliate against Western entities targeting Russian infrastructure. But Conti appears to have miscalculated the loyalty of its affiliates, many of whom are likely pro-Ukraine. The declaration backfired when one of their affiliates leaked chat logs following the announcement. Shortly after, LockBit, another prolific ransomware group, took a cue from Conti’s blunder, declaring neutrality and swearing off any attacks against Russia’s many enemies. Their reasoning? Surprisingly inclusive for an organized crime syndicate:

“Our community consists of many nationalities of the world, most of our pentesters are from the CIS including Russians and Ukrainians, but we also have Americans, Englishmen, Chinese, French, Arabs, Jews, and many others in our team… We are all simple and peaceful people, we are all Earthlings.”

As we know, the ransomware economy is a wide, interconnected network of actors with varying political allegiances. The actions of LockBit may assuage some fears that Russia would be able to weaponize the cybercrime groups that have been allowed to operate with impunity within its borders, but that’s no reason to rest easy.

Key Takeaway: LockBit’s actions and words reinforce the one thing we know for sure about cybercriminals: Despite varying political allegiances, they’re unified by money and they will come after it if it’s easy for the taking.

4. CISA Reports the Globalized Threat of Ransomware Increased in 2021

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a statement in March summarizing the trends they saw throughout 2021. They outlined a number of tactics that we saw throughout the year as well, including:

  • Targeting attacks on holidays and weekends.
  • Targeting managed service providers.
  • Targeting backups stored in on-premises devices and in the cloud.

Among others, these tactics pose a threat to critical infrastructure, healthcare, financial institutions, education, businesses, and nonprofits globally.

Key Takeaway: The advisory outlines 18 mitigation strategies businesses and organizations can take to protect themselves from ransomware, including some of the top strategies as we see it: protecting cloud storage by backing up to multiple locations, requiring MFA for access, and encrypting data in the cloud.

5. Russia Could Use Ransomware to Offset Sanctions

Despite our first observation that ransomware attacks slowed somewhat early in the quarter, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an alert in March that Russia may employ state-sponsored actors to evade sanctions and bring in cryptocurrency by ramping up attacks. They warned financial institutions, specifically, to be vigilant against these threats to help thwart attempts by state-sponsored Russian actors to extort ransomware payments.

The warnings follow an increase in phishing and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that have persisted throughout the year and increased toward the end of February into March as reported by Google’s Threat Analysis Group. In reports from ThreatPost covering the alert as well as Google’s observations, cybersecurity experts seemed doubtful that ransomware payouts would make much of a dent in alleviating the sanctions, and noted that opportunities to use ransomware were more likely on an individual level.

Key Takeaway: The warnings serve as a reminder that both individual actors and state-sponsored entities have ransomware tools at their disposal to use as a means to retaliate against sanctions or simply support themselves, and that the best course of action is to shore up defenses before the anticipated threats materialize.

What This All Means for You

The changing political landscape will continue to shape the ransomware economy in new and unexpected ways. Being better prepared to avoid or mitigate the effects of ransomware makes more and more sense when you can’t be sure what to expect. Ransomware protection doesn’t have to be costly or confusing. Check out our ransomware protection solutions to get started.

The post Ransomware Takeaways From Q1 2022 appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Announcing Backblaze B2’s Universal Data Migration

Post Syndicated from Jeremy Milk original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/announcing-backblaze-b2-universal-data-migration/

Your data is valuable. Whether you’re sequencing genomes, managing a media powerhouse, or running your own business, you need fast, affordable, ready access to it in order to achieve your goals. But, you can’t get the most out of your data if it’s locked-in to a provider where it’s hard to manage or time-consuming to retrieve. Unfortunately, due to egress fees and closed, “all-in-one” platforms, vendor lock-in is currently trapping too many companies.

Backblaze can help: Universal Data Migration, a new service launched today, covers all data transfer costs, including legacy provider egress fees, and manages data migration from any legacy on-premises or cloud source. In short, your migration to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is on us.

Many of the businesses we’ve spoken to about this didn’t believe that the service was free at first. But seriously—you will never see an invoice for your transfer fees, any egress fees levied by your legacy vendor when you pull data out, or for the assistance in moving data.

If you’re still in doubt, read on to learn more about how Universal Data Migration can help you say goodbye to vendor lock-in, cold delays, and escalating storage costs, and hello to B2 Cloud Storage gains, all without fears of cost, complexity, downtime, or data loss.

How Does Universal Data Migration Work?

Backblaze has curated a set of integrated services to handle migrations from pretty much every source, including:

  • Public cloud storage
  • Servers
  • Network attached storage (NAS)
  • Storage area networks (SAN)
  • Tape/LTO solutions
  • Cloud drives

We cover data transfer and egress costs and facilitate the migration to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. The turnkey service expands on our earlier Cloud to Cloud Migration services as well as transfers via internet and the Backblaze Fireball rapid ingest devices. These offerings are now rolled up into one universal service.

“I thought moving my files would be the hardest part of the process, and it’s why I never really thought about switching providers before, but it was easy.”
—Tristan Pelligrino, Co-founder, Motion

We do ask that companies who use the service commit to maintaining at least 10TB in Backblaze B2 for a minimum of one year, but we expect that our cloud storage pricing—a quarter the cost of comparable services—and our interoperability with other cloud services, will keep new customers happy for that first year and beyond.

Outside of specifics that will vary by your unique infrastructure and workflows, migration types include:

  • Cloud to cloud: Reads from public cloud storage or a cloud drive (e.g., Amazon S3 or Google Drive) and writes to Backblaze B2 via inter-cloud bandwidth.
  • On-premises to cloud: Reads from a server, NAS, or SAN and writes to Backblaze B2 over optimized cloud pipes or via Backblaze’s 96TB Fireball rapid ingest device.
  • LTO/tape to cloud: Reads tape media, from reel cassettes to cartridges and more, and writes to Backblaze B2 via a high-speed, direct connection.

Backblaze also supports simple internet transfers for moving files over your existing bandwidth—with multi-threading to maximize speed.

How Much Does Universal Data Migration Cost?

Not to sound like a broken record, but this is the best part—the service is entirely free to you. You’ll never receive a bill. Backblaze incurs all data transfer and legacy vendor egress or download fees for inbound migrations >10TB with a one-year commitment. It’s pretty cool that we can help save you money; it’s even cooler that we can help more businesses build the tech stacks they want using unconflicted providers to truly get the most out of their data.

Fortune Media Reduces Storage Costs by Two-thirds With Universal Data Migration

 
After divesting from its parent company, Fortune Media rebuilt its technology infrastructure and moved many services, including data storage, to the cloud. However, the initial tech stack was expensive, difficult to use, and not 100% reliable.

Backblaze B2 offered a more reliable and cost-effective solution for both hot cloud storage and archiving. In addition, the platform’s ease of use would give Fortune’s geographically-dispersed video editors a modern, self-service experience, and it was easier for the IT team to manage.

Using Backblaze’s Cloud to Cloud Migration, now part of Universal Data Migration, the team transferred over 300TB of data from their legacy provider in less than a week with zero downtime, business disruption, or egress costs, and was able to cut overall storage costs by two-thirds.

“In the cloud space, the biggest complaint that we hear from clients is the cost of egress and storage. With Backblaze, we saved money on the migration, but also overall on the storage and the potential future egress of this data.”
—Tom Kehn, Senior Solutions Architect at CHESA, Fortune Media’s technology systems integrator

Even More Benefits

What else do you get with Universal Data Migration? Additional benefits include:

  • Truly universal migrations: Secure data mobility from practically any source.
  • Support along the way: Simple, turnkey services with solution engineer support to help ensure easy success.
  • Safe and speedy transfers: Proven to securely transfer millions of objects and petabytes of data, often in just days.

Ready to Get Started?

The Universal Data Migration service is generally available now. To qualify, organizations must migrate and commit to maintaining at least 10TB in Backblaze B2 for a minimum of one year. For more information or to set up a free proof of concept, contact the Backblaze Sales team.

The post Announcing Backblaze B2’s Universal Data Migration appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Backblaze Partner API: The Details

Post Syndicated from Elton Carneiro original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-partner-api-the-details/

Last week, we announced enhancements to our partner program that make working with Backblaze even easier for current and future partners. We shared a deep dive into the first new offering—Backblaze B2 Reserve—on Friday, and today, we’re digging into another key element: the Backblaze Partner API. The Backblaze Partner API enables independent software vendors (ISVs) participating in Backblaze’s Alliance Partner program to add Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage as a seamless backend extension within their own platform.

Read on to learn more about the Backblaze Partner API and what it means for existing and potential Alliance Partners.

What Is the Backblaze Partner API?

With the Backblaze Partner API, ISVs participating in Backblaze’s Alliance Partner program can programmatically provision accounts, run reports, and create a bundled solution or managed service which employs B2 Cloud Storage on the back end while delivering a unified experience to their users.

By unlocking an improved customer experience, the Partner API allows Alliance Partners to build additional cloud services into their product portfolio to generate new revenue streams and/or grow existing margin.

Why Develop the Backblaze Partner API?

We heard frequently from our existing partners that they wanted to provide a more seamless experience for their customers when it came to offering a cloud storage tier. Specifically, they wanted to keep customers on their site rather than requiring them to go elsewhere as part of the sign up experience. We built the Partner API to deliver this enhanced customer experience while also helping our partners extend their services and expand their offerings.

“Our customers produce thousands of hours of content daily, and, with the shift to leveraging cloud services like ours, they need a place to store both their original and transcoded files. The Backblaze Partner API allows us to expand our cloud services and eliminate complexity for our customers—giving them time to focus on their business needs, while we focus on innovations that drive more value.”
—Murad Mordukhay, CEO, Qencode

What Does the Partner API Do, Specifically?

To create the Backblaze Partner API, we exposed existing functionality to allow partners to automate tasks like creating and ejecting member accounts, managing Groups, and leveraging system-generated reports to get granular billing and usage information—outlining user tasks individually so users can be billed more accurately for what they’ve used.

The API calls are:

  • Account creation (adding Group members).
  • Organizing accounts in Groups.
  • Listing Groups.
  • Listing Group members.
  • Ejecting Group members.

Once the Partner API is configured, developers can use the Backblaze S3 Compatible API or the Backblaze B2 Native API to manage Group members’ Backblaze B2 accounts, including: uploading, downloading, and deleting files, as well as creating and managing the buckets that hold files.

How to Get Started With the Backblaze Partner API

If you’re familiar with Backblaze, getting started is straightforward:

  1. Create a Backblaze account.
  2. Enable Business Groups and B2 Cloud Storage.
  3. Contact Sales for access to the API.
  4. Create a Group.
  5. Create an Application Key and set up Partner API calls.

Check out our documentation for more detailed information on getting started with the Backblaze Partner API. You can also reach out to us via email at any time to schedule a meeting to discuss how the Backblaze Partner API can help you create an easier customer experience.

The post Backblaze Partner API: The Details appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Backblaze B2 Reserve: The Details

Post Syndicated from Elton Carneiro original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-b2-reserve-the-details/

Yesterday, we announced enhancements to our partner program that make working with Backblaze even easier for current and prospective partners. Today, we’re digging into a key offering from that program: Backblaze B2 Reserve. Backblaze B2 Reserve brings more value to the Backblaze community of Channel Partners and opens up our easy, affordable cloud storage to many more.

Read on to learn more about Backblaze B2 Reserve and what it means for existing and potential Channel Partners.

What Is Backblaze B2 Reserve?

Predictable, affordable pricing is our calling card, but for a long time our Channel Partners have had a harder time than other customers when it came to accessing this value. Backblaze B2 Reserve brings them a capacity-based, annualized SKU which works seamlessly with channel billing models. The offering also provides seller incentives, Tera-grade support, and expanded migration services to empower the channel’s acceleration of cloud storage adoption and revenue growth.

Why Launch Backblaze B2 Reserve?

Short story, we heard a lot of feedback from our partners about how much they loved working with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, except for the service’s pricing model—which limited their ability to promote it to customers. Backblaze B2 is charged on a consumption-based model, meaning you only pay for what you use. This works great for many of our customers who value pay-as-you-go pricing, but not as well for those who value fixed, predictable, monthly or annual bills.

Customers who are more accustomed to planning for storage provisioning want to pay for cloud storage on a capacity-based model similar to how they would for on-premises storage. They buy what they expect to use up front, and their systems and processes are set up to utilize storage in that way. Additionally, the partners who include Backblaze B2 as part of packages they sell to their customers wanted predictable pricing to make things easier in their sales processes.

Backblaze B2 Reserve is a pricing package built to answer these needs—serving the distributors and value-added resellers who want to be able to present B2 Cloud Storage to their current and prospective customers.

How Does Backblaze B2 Reserve Work?

The Backblaze B2 Reserve offering is capacity-based, starting at 20TB, with key features, including:

  • Free egress up to the amount of storage purchased per month.
  • Free transaction calls.
  • Enhanced migration services.
  • No delete penalties.
  • Tera support.

A customer can purchase more storage by buying 10TB add ons. If you’re interested in participating or just want to learn more, you can reach out to us via email to schedule a meeting.

How Is Backblaze B2 Reserve Different From Backblaze B2?

The main difference between Backblaze B2 Reserve and Backblaze B2 is the way the service is packaged and sold. Backblaze B2 uses a consumption model—you pay for what you use. Backblaze B2 Reserve uses a capacity model—you pay for a specific amount of storage up front.

“Backblaze’s ease and reliability, paired with their price leadership, has always been attractive, but having their pricing aligned with our business model will bring them into so many more conversations we’re having across the types of customers we work with.”
—Mike Winkelmann, Cinesys-Oceana

Ready to Get Started?

If you’re going to NAB, April 23-27th, we’ll be there, and we’d love to see you—click here to book a meeting. We’ll also be at the Channel Partners Conference, April 11-14th. Otherwise, reach out to us via email to schedule a chat. Let’s talk about how the new program can move your business forward.

The post Backblaze B2 Reserve: The Details appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Announcing Partner Program Enhancements

Post Syndicated from Elton Carneiro original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/announcing-partner-program-enhancements/

Here at Backblaze, we can definitively say that we get by with a little (okay, a lot of) help from our friends. We’ve always been committed to building an open, transparent, and interoperable ecosystem which has helped us grow an incredible partner network. We provide easy, affordable, and trusted cloud storage as a neutral partner, and they provide all manner of services, products, and solutions that use our storage. But there’s always room for improvement, right?

Which is why, today, we’re enhancing our partner program with two major new offerings:

  • Backblaze B2 Reserve: A predictable, capacity pricing model to empower our Channel Partners.
  • Backblaze Partner API: A new API that empowers our Alliance Partners to easily integrate and manage B2 Cloud Storage within their products and platforms.

Read on to learn a bit more about each component, and stay tuned throughout this week and next for deeper dives into each element.

Capacity Pricing With Backblaze B2 Reserve

Backblaze B2 Reserve is a new offering for our Channel Partners. Predictable, affordable pricing is our calling card, but for a long time our Channel Partners had a harder time than other customers when it came to accessing this value. Backblaze B2 Reserve brings them a capacity-based, annualized SKU which works seamlessly with channel billing models. The offering also provides seller incentives, Tera-grade support, and expanded migration services to empower the channel’s acceleration of cloud storage adoption and revenue growth.

The key benefits include:

  • Enhanced margin opportunity and a predictable pricing model.
  • Easier conversations with customers accustomed to an on-premises or capacity model.
  • Discounts and seller incentives.

The program is capacity based, starting at 20TB, with key features, including:

  • Free egress up to the amount of storage purchased per month.
  • Free transaction calls.
  • Enhanced migration services.
  • No delete penalties.
  • Tera support.

It’s all of the same great functionality folded in. Partners get more margin, seller incentives, and a predictable growth model for customers.

“Backblaze’s ease and reliability, paired with their price leadership, has always been attractive, but having their pricing aligned with our business model will bring them into so many more conversations we’re having across the types of customers we work with.”
—Mike Winkelmann, Owner of CineSys Inc.

User Management and Usage Reporting With the Backblaze Partner API

The Backblaze Partner API empowers independent software vendors participating in Backblaze’s Alliance Partner Program to add Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage as a seamless backend extension within their own platform, where they can programmatically provision accounts, run reports, and create a bundled solution or managed service for a unified user experience. By unlocking an improved customer experience for the partner, the Partner API allows Alliance Partners to build additional cloud services into their product portfolio to generate new revenue streams and/or grow existing margin.

Features of the Partner API include:

  • Account provisioning.
  • Managing a practically unlimited number of accounts or groups.
  • Comprehensive usage reporting.

In using the Partner API, partners can offer a proprietary branded, bundled solution with a unified bill, or create a solution that is “Powered by Backblaze B2.”

“Our customers produce thousands of hours of content daily, and, with the shift to leveraging cloud services like ours, they need a place to store both their original and transcoded files. The Backblaze Partner API allows us to expand our cloud services and eliminate complexity for our customers—giving them time to focus on their business needs, while we focus on innovations that drive more value.”
—Murad Mordukhay, CEO at Qencode

Other Benefits

To unlock the value inherent in Backblaze B2 Reserve and the Partner API, Backblaze is offering free migration to help customers painlessly copy or migrate their data from practically any source into B2 Cloud Storage.

This service supports truly free data mobility without complexity or downtime, including coverage of all data transfer costs and any egress fees charged by legacy vendors. Stay tuned for more on this feature that benefits both partners and all of our customers.

The addition of Tera support brings the benefit of a four-hour target response time for email support and named customer contacts to ensure that partners and their end users can troubleshoot at speed.

What’s Next?

These are the first of many features and programs that Backblaze will be rolling out this year to make our partners’ experience working with us better. Tomorrow, we’ll dive deeper into the Backblaze B2 Reserve offering. On Monday, we’ll offer more detail on the Backblaze Partner API feature. In the coming months, we’ll be sharing even more. Stay tuned.

Want to Learn More?

Reach out to us via email to schedule a meeting. If you’re going to the Channel Partners Conference, April 11–14th, we’ll be there and we’d love to see you! If not, reach out and we’d be happy to start a conversation about how the new program can move your business forward.

The post Announcing Partner Program Enhancements appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Backup Solutions for Medical Offices

Post Syndicated from Molly Clancy original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backup-solutions-for-medical-offices/

If you are responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of a medical office’s IT systems, including data backups, your job has never been more important. Since offices started shifting to electronic health records, managing IT systems for medical practices has presented a unique set of challenges—the amount of data you have to manage has grown, data is subject to HIPAA regulations, and recently, your data became even more of a target for cybercriminals as they zeroed in on health facilities over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, 560 healthcare facilities were affected by ransomware according to a report by Emsisoft, a cybersecurity firm. Medical offices manage high volumes of personally identifiable information like social security numbers and patient data, and, as IT managers of medical offices can probably attest, they may not have the resources to afford dedicated cybersecurity staff, making them attractive to cybercriminals looking for vulnerable targets.

But, HIPAA requirements and cybersecurity aren’t the only reason to back up your medical practice’s data—your data is one of your most important assets and making sure it’s safe and accessible keeps your practice running smoothly.

Whether you outsource some of your IT tasks, like backups, to a managed service provider (MSP) or you manage everything in house with network attached storage (NAS) or other hardware, understanding backup best practices and the different cloud options available can help you make the best decisions to protect your important data.

In this guide for backing up medical offices, learn more about:

  • Records retention.
  • Backup strategies.
  • Backing up NAS devices.
  • Working with MSPs.

How Long Should a Medical Office Keep Records?

One of the first pieces of the puzzle to understand when planning your data backup strategy is how long you’ll need to keep medical records and the regulatory requirements that govern retention.

Unfortunately, there’s no standard timeline, and there are a lot of factors to consider. Each state has different rules and statute limitations. Some federal regulations apply as well. And different patients will fall under different guidelines—namely, you’ll probably want to retain records longer for minors. The easiest answer is to retain records for as long as the strictest rule applies.

Start to develop your retention policy by checking the state and federal regulations that may apply to your practice. The American Health Information Management Association provides a comprehensive guide on all of the state, federal, accreditation agency, and other regulations that apply to retention requirements here.

With all of these moving parts and an ever-growing data set, managing data storage for medical offices within budget can be a notorious balancing act. But, today, affordable cloud storage is making it easier for medical practices to establish much simpler and more robust retention strategies rather than fine-tuning and calibrating their strategies to manage data with limited on-premises resources.

What Is the HIPAA Regulation for Storage of Medical Records?

A common misconception is that HIPAA stipulates retention requirements for medical records. HIPAA does not govern how long medical records must be retained, but it does govern how long HIPAA-related documentation must be retained. Any HIPAA-related documentation, including things like policies, procedures, authorization forms, etc., must be retained for six years according to guidance in HIPAA policy § 164.316(b)(2)(i) on time limits. Some states may have longer or shorter retention periods. If your state’s period is shorter, HIPAA supersedes state regulations.

How Long Does a Medical Office Need to Keep Insurance EOBs?

Explanations of benefits, or EOBs, are documents from insurance providers that explain the amounts insurance providers will pay for services. Retention periods for these documents vary by state as well. Additionally, insurance providers may stipulate how long records must be kept.

The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

If understanding how long you need to keep records is the first step in structuring your medical practice’s backup plan, the second is understanding what a good backup strategy looks like.

The 3-2-1 backup strategy is a tried and true method for protecting data. It means keeping at least three copies of your data on two different media (i.e. devices) with at least one off-site, generally in the cloud. For a medical office, we can use a simple X-ray file as an example. That file should live on two different devices on-premises, let’s say a machine reserved for storing X-rays which backs up to a NAS device. That’s two copies. If you then back up your NAS device to cloud storage, that’s your third, off-site copy.

The Benefits of Backing Up Your Medical Office

You might wonder why you need three copies. There are some compelling benefits that make a strong case for using a 3-2-1 strategy rather than hoping for the best with fewer copies of your data.

  1. Fast access to files. When you accidentally delete a file, you can restore it quickly from either your on-site or cloud backup. And if you need a file while you’re away from your desk, you can simply log in to your cloud backup and access it immediately.
  2. Quick recoveries from computer crashes. Keeping one copy on-site means you can quickly restore files if one of your machines crashes. You can start up another computer and get immediate access, or you can restore all of the files to a replacement computer.
  3. Reliable recoveries from damage and disaster. Floods, fires, and other disasters do happen. With a copy off-site, your data is one less thing you have to worry about in that unfortunate event. You can access your files remotely if needed and restore them completely when you are able.
  4. Safe recoveries from ransomware attacks. Keeping an off-site copy in the cloud, especially if you take advantage of features like Object Lock, can better prepare you to recover from a ransomware attack.
  5. Compliance with regulatory requirements. As mentioned above, medical practices are subject to retention regulations. Using a cloud backup solution that offers AES encryption helps your practice achieve compliance.

What Are the HIPAA Regulations for Backups and Disaster Recovery?

The HIPAA Security Final Rule, which went into full effect in 2005, and the HITECH Act of 2009 outline specific requirements for how medical practices protect the privacy and security of patient information. The HIPAA text that applies to backups and disaster recovery can be found here and the HITECH Act can be found here. There are three main requirements:

  1. Medical offices must have a data backup plan. The rule states that you must “maintain retrievable exact copies of electronic protected health information.”
  2. Data at rest must be encrypted.
  3. Medical offices must have a disaster recovery plan where data can be restored in a loss event.

You also need to document these procedures and test them regularly. Cloud backups help you achieve compliance with HIPAA and HITECH by keeping a copy of your data off-site while still retrievable.

Using NAS for Medical Offices

Many medical offices rely on NAS to manage their data on-site. NAS is essentially a computer connected to a network that provides file-based data storage services to other devices on the network. The primary strength of NAS is how simple it is to set up and deploy.

NAS is frequently the next step up for a small practice that is using external hard drives or direct attached storage, which can be especially vulnerable to drive failure. Moving up to NAS offers medical offices and independent practitioners a number of benefits, including:

  • The ability to share files locally and remotely.
  • 24/7 file availability.
  • Data redundancy.
  • Integrations with cloud storage that provides a location for necessary, automatic data backups.

If you’re interested in upgrading to NAS, check out our Complete NAS Guide for advice on provisioning the right NAS for your needs and getting the most out of it after you buy it.

➔ Download Our Complete NAS Guide

Hybrid Cloud Strategy for Medical Practices: NAS + Cloud Storage

Most NAS devices come with cloud storage integrations that enable businesses to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy for their data. A hybrid cloud strategy uses a private cloud and public cloud in combination. To expand on that a bit, a hybrid cloud refers to a cloud environment made up of a mixture of typically on-premises, private cloud resources combined with third-party public cloud resources that use some kind of orchestration between them. In this case, your NAS device serves as the on-premises private cloud, as it’s dedicated to only you or your practice, and then you connect it to the public cloud.

Some cloud providers are already integrated with NAS systems. (Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is integrated with NAS systems from Synology and QNAP, for example.) Check if your preferred NAS system is already integrated with a cloud storage provider to ensure setting up cloud backup, storage, and sync is as easy as possible.

Your NAS should come with a built-in backup manager, like Hyper Backup from Synology or Hybrid Backup Sync from QNAP. Once you download and install the appropriate backup manager app, you can configure it to send backups to your preferred cloud provider. You can also fine-tune the behavior of the backup jobs, including what gets backed up and how often.
Now, you can send backups to the cloud as a third, off-site backup and use your cloud instance to access files anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

Using an MSP for Medical Practices

Many medical practices choose to outsource some or all IT services to an MSP. Making the decision of whether or not to hire an MSP will depend on your individual circumstances and comfort level. Either way, coming to the conversation with an understanding of your backup needs and the cloud backup landscape can help.

When seeking out an MSP, make sure to ask about the cloud provider they’re using and how they charge for storage and data transfer. And if you’re not using an MSP, compare costs from different cloud providers to make sure you’re getting the most for your investment in backing up your data.

Cloud Storage and Your Medical Practice

Whether you’re managing your data infrastructure in house with NAS or other hardware, or you’re planning to outsource your IT needs to an MSP, cloud storage should be part of your backup strategy. To recap, having a third copy of your data off-site in the cloud gives you a number of benefits, including:

  • Fast access to your files.
  • Quick recoveries from computer crashes.
  • Reliable recoveries from natural disasters and theft.
  • Protection from ransomware.
  • Compliance with HIPAA requirements and other federal and state regulations.

Have questions about choosing a cloud storage provider to back up your medical practice? Let us know in the comments. Ready to get started? Click here to get your first 10GB free with Backblaze B2.

The post Backup Solutions for Medical Offices appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

No Fooling Around: Hollywood Loves Backups

Post Syndicated from original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/no-fooling-around-hollywood-loves-backups/

Have you ever noticed something for the first time and then couldn’t stop noticing it? For example, you buy a brand new Kia Soul and then every car that catches your eye on the road for the foreseeable future is a Kia Soul, and you think to yourself, “Oh hey, it’s my car buddy!” Well, that’s called the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency bias. It’s not just when you notice something for the first time either. Working at Backblaze over the last 11 years, there’s one thing I cannot escape in my daily life: backups.

Seriously, whenever I am watching a TV show or movie, any time there’s a subplot (or main plot) of backing up, I often think, “Well now, there’s a great example of why you should back up!” This manifests in me trying to get screen captures and create gifs to highlight the importance of backups.

In today’s post, in lieu of an April Fool’s prank, we’re opting to have some good, clean fun and take a stroll down pop culture lane with some highlights of backups in Hollywood. Some of them we found ourselves, and some we found through a service I learned about from TikTok (Yay, learning through social media!), yarn.co. Read on to check out our top 10 list of backups in pop culture (and one backup fail).

      11. Are there any “Supernatural” fans in the house?

      10. “Parks and Recreation:” Donna saves the day.

      9. Maybe not computer related, but I can’t help but include “Austin Powers.”

      8. Not backing up, but having a backup plan helps recover from hacking and ransomware…

      7. Live-action “The Lion King:” Sometimes I think of myself and Backblaze as a digital Pumbaa.

      6. “Altered Carbon:” We couldn’t agree more—you cannot be without backup at this crucial time, or any time!

      5. Anyone who’s seen “Tiger King” surely remembers this scene.

      4. “MacGyver:” Having backups helps you get back up and running quickly!

    And there’s nothing better than the 3-2-1 backup strategy!

      3. “My Little Pony” also knows what’s up when it comes to a thorough backup strategy.

      2. One of the greatest shows of all time, “The Wire,” breaking it all down.

      1. This one’s my all-time favorite. Chief O’Brien talks backups on “Star Trek:”

And One Backup Fail

This is a very bad idea…

Have a favorite of your own? Post it in the comments below!

The post No Fooling Around: Hollywood Loves Backups appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Talk to Your Family About Backups

Post Syndicated from original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-talk-to-your-family-about-backups/

Talking to your family can be hard. Especially when it comes to topics that are as uncomfortable as backups. Today, March 31st, is World Backup Day, and we want to reduce the number of April Fools this year by making sure everyone is backed up. Do your family and friends have a good backup strategy in place? If not, we have a few different approaches you can take when broaching the conversation and some key concepts that will arm you with the knowledge to fight backup negligence, one friend and family member at a time.

The Subtle Nudge

Sometimes a simple reminder is the easiest way to go. Here are a couple of simple prompts that you might want to utilize if you think a simple reminder might do the trick:

  • Fun fact: Did you know that today is World Backup Day? You have a backup right? I use Backblaze, and it’s pretty great.
  • Don’t be an April Fool, back up your data! Today is World Backup Day, and Backblaze is a great service if you aren’t using one.
  • Backblaze is a great service for backing up your computer, and it’s World Backup Day today, so you know what to do.
  • I lost my data once. It was horrible. Don’t be like me—use Backblaze. (Oh, you’ve never lost data? Eh. A little white lie never hurt anyone when it comes to backing up.)

Oh, and don’t forget to send them to Backblaze.com!

The Intervention

Sometimes a simple nudge just won’t suffice and you need to really sit someone down and explain things to them. If that happens, we have a few different talking points that you may want to utilize about the benefits of backing up online:

  • Think of backing up as insurance for your data. In case something happens to the computer you are using, your data can still be protected.
  • If you have an online backup, all the data that’s backed up from your computer is available online, so you can access it even if your computer is offline, lost, or stolen.
  • Online backup services like Backblaze have mobile apps that allow you to access your backed up data on the go, from anywhere you have an internet connection.
  • Ransomware is on the rise, and having an off-site backup like Backblaze can help you recover from a malicious attack because your data will still be intact elsewhere, even if your computer is infected with ransomware or malware.

Full-on Family IT Management

Taking matters into your own hands is also an option. With Backblaze, our Groups feature allows you to take control and get your family backed up. Creating a Group that you manage is a piece of cake:

  • Log in to www.backblaze.com.
  • Go into your Account Settings and enable Business Groups.
  • Create a Group (you can find instructions here).
  • Invite your family to the Group.
  • Make sure they install the Backblaze service on their computer (That’s the only manual step on their machine.) and we’ll handle the rest!

One thing to note is that your Group can be managed or unmanaged. In an unmanaged Group, people will individually create Backblaze accounts and will be able to recover data on their own without the Group manager being able to access it. In a managed Group, both the individual and the Group manager would be able to access and recover data from the backed up accounts!

Knowledge Is Power

Before going into these conversations, it’s also important to be prepared with the cold hard facts about backing up and best practices in general. Below, we’ve listed a few things that are important to know and could be helpful in the discussions above:

Refer-a-friend

Backblaze has a refer-a-friend program that gives you a free month of backup for every person you refer who signs up for an account and purchases a license. Plus, they also get a month for free—this is a great way to get your friends and family started!

The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

This is a concept that we wholeheartedly love at Backblaze and have written a lot about. The gist is that everyone should have at least three copies of their data: two on-site and one off-site. The on-site copy can include the original, but make sure that the second copy is on a different medium like an external hard drive. The off-site copy should be in an accessible location, ideally using a cloud-based system like Backblaze.

Extended Version History

Many services that sync your data have limited retention history, so if you remove or change something on your computer, it’ll also get removed or changed in other locations as well. Backblaze has 30 days of version history by default, but we offer Extended Version History for one year or forever in order to keep your data backed up for longer, just in case!

Password Best Practices

This is a general internet tip, but make sure that you are using different passwords for every website or service that you have an account with. This can absolutely get unruly, and so we recommend using a password manager like BitWarden, LastPass, or 1Password. They’re all great and can help you keep things organized and secure.

Two-factor Verification

Having strong passwords is a great first step to internet and account security. The next best thing to do is to enable two-factor verification. The most common form of doing this is with time-based, one-time passwords (ToTP). They typically live inside of apps (like the password managers above) or with dedicated ones like Google Authenticate. Another option is to use your phone number and get SMS-delivered ToTP, but that’s considered less secure since phone numbers can be spoofed.

Hopefully this overview of how to talk to your friends and family about backing up for World Backup Day was helpful, and maybe you learned something new in the process! If you’ve had this “talk” before and have an interesting angle that worked to get folks across the finish line and backing up, let us know in the comments below!

The post How to Talk to Your Family About Backups appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Bring Your File System to the Cloud With Backblaze + CTERA

Post Syndicated from Jennifer Newman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/bring-your-file-system-to-the-cloud-with-backblaze-ctera/

You know your file system. You love your file system (suspend your disbelief for a moment). You can find what you need (mostly). The hierarchy makes sense (kind of). Anyway—the point is, it’s convenient and it works.

You also know object storage offers scalability and cost savings that you’d love to tap into to either replace or extend your on-premises file servers or NAS. But how do you move your data to the cloud safely and securely without overhauling your entire file system to work with object storage?

Through a new partnership with CTERA, you can extend your corporate file system to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage while maintaining all of your existing permissions, file structures, and security protocols.

➔ Sign Up for the Webinar

The joint solution unlocks meaningful opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises. Through the partnership, you can:

  • Store all of your unstructured data in one centralized place, while maintaining instant and reliable access.
  • Retire legacy file servers and NAS devices along with the time and expense required to maintain them.
  • Empower a remote workforce and multi-site collaboration.
  • Establish a resilient disaster recovery, business continuity, and ransomware mitigation plan.
  • Optimize your budget with pay-as-you-go cloud storage pricing that’s a quarter the price of equivalent offerings.

“If you’re tired of buying new equipment every three years; replacing hard drives; paying for maintenance, or power, or space in a data center; and all of the headaches of managing remote user access, then the CTERA and Backblaze partnership is perfect for you. The setup is incredibly easy and the immediate budget and staffing relief will give you resources to tackle new opportunities. You’ll never have to—or want to—upgrade your NAS again.”
—Nilay Patel, VP of Sales, Backblaze

How It Works

CTERA’s Enterprise File Services Platform, through their core global file system technology, extends the capabilities of traditional NAS and file servers to the cloud. The joint solution provides fast local file access via cached files in CTERA’s Edge Filers, while storing the primary copy of your data in hot storage with Backblaze B2 for just $5/TB per month with a 99.9% uptime SLA.

Users across your enterprise have access to shared files via their Windows, Mac, or mobile devices, and data generated at the edge is automatically backed up to Backblaze B2 and accessible across your organization. The flexibility and extensibility of the Backblaze B2 + CTERA partnership consolidates your remote IT infrastructure and reduces the burden on your IT team to manage remote devices.

For customers that have distributed sites across the U.S. and EU, regions can be defined within CTERA and Backblaze B2 to ensure data is GDPR compliant. CTERA also offers an SDK for developers, enabling them to automatically configure Edge Filers and synchronize to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage using infrastructure as code.

“We’re seeing a massive shift from traditional NAS to cloud NAS, from edge to core access, as organizations evolve and expand. CTERA is committed to providing the widest choice of cloud to our customers. The Backblaze-CTERA partnership establishes a compelling, new, cost-effective storage option for companies that wish to tier their data to the cloud for redundancy and collaboration.”
—Oded Nagel, Chief Strategy Officer, CTERA

About CTERA

CTERA is the edge-to-cloud file services leader, powering more than 50,000 connected sites and millions of corporate users. CTERA offers the industry’s most feature-rich global file system, enabling enterprises to centralize file access from any edge location or device without compromising performance or security. The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform makes it easy for organizations to consolidate legacy NAS, backup and disaster recovery systems, and collaboration platforms while reducing costs by up to 80% versus legacy solutions. CTERA is trusted by the world’s largest companies, including McDonald’s, GE, Unilever, and Live Nation, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense and other government organizations worldwide.

Interested in Learning More?

Join us for a webinar on April 27, 2022 at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST to discover how to tier your file structure intelligently into Backblaze B2 with CTERA—register here. Anyone interested in exploring the solution today can check out the CTERA Solution Brief.

The post Bring Your File System to the Cloud With Backblaze + CTERA appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Calling All Security Researchers: Join the Backblaze Bug Bounty Program

Post Syndicated from Ola Nordstrom original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/calling-all-security-researchers-join-the-backblaze-bug-bounty-program/

Here at Backblaze, we help people build applications, host content, manage media, back up and archive data, and more securely in the cloud—and that “securely” part of the equation has always been paramount. We use a variety of tools and techniques to stay ahead of any potential security threats, including our participation over the past year plus in the Bugcrowd security platform. Today, we are opening up our Bugcrowd Bug Bounty Program to all security researchers.

Now, anyone can join Bugcrowd and start hacking away at our desktop and mobile apps, APIs, or web applications in order to help us find any vulnerabilities and strengthen the security of our services. Read on to learn more about the program and the other measures we take to spot and address potential security vulnerabilities.

Join Ola Nordstrom, Lead Application Security Engineer; Chris Vickery, Senior Risk Assessment Specialist; and Pat Patterson, Chief Developer Evangelist, on April 21, 2022 at 1 p.m. PDT to learn more about why we decided to implement the Bugcrowd Bug Bounty Program, how it fits into the Backblaze security portfolio, and how you can join in on either side: as hacker or hackee.
 
➔ Register for the Webinar Today

How Backblaze Keeps Customer Data Safe

Over the years, Backblaze has consistently invested in maintaining and upgrading its security portfolio. User files are encrypted by default, we also support server-side encryption for the Backblaze S3 Compatible API, and have doubled the size of our Security team over the last year under the leadership of CISO Mark Potter.

But all those security features and frankly all software, not just Backblaze, are vulnerable to security bugs that can expose user information and data. Oftentimes, these are caused by implementation mistakes or changes in how a piece of software is used over time. The recent Log4j (aka Log4Shell) vulnerability affected nearly everyone due to its ubiquitous use across software platforms and the industry as a whole.

I’ve been working to secure software my whole career. Before the advent of crowdsourced security platforms such as Bugcrowd, managing vulnerability reports was a painful task. Emails, typically sent to [email protected], were copied back and forth between bug tracking platforms. Reviewing submissions and gathering metrics was difficult since every engineering team or organization always had their own process for tagging and categorizing bug reports. Everything was copied back and forth to make any sense of the data (Think Excel spreadsheets!). In a world where zero-day vulnerabilities are commonplace, such processes are just too slow and you end up playing catch-up with the bad guys.

How Does Bugcrowd Fit Into the Backblaze Security Portfolio?

Bugcrowd takes the grunt work out of the process to let us focus on addressing the vulnerability and communicating with researchers. Bugcrowd encourages white hat hackers to attack businesses, find vulnerabilities in their software and processes, and aid in guiding the remediation of those vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by anyone else.

What’s more, and perhaps most important to security researchers around the world, is that Bugcrowd allows us to pay security researchers for finding vulnerabilities. Without Bugcrowd, Backblaze wouldn’t have a cost-effective way to pay for a bug report from a researcher in another country or another continent. It’s only fair we pay for the work they do to help us out, and in addition, having a public program ensures transparency and fairness for everyone.

How You Can Join the Backblaze Bugcrowd Bug Bounty Program

Backblaze’s private beta has been running for over a year, but now that the program is public, any interested security researcher can sign up to hack away the company’s in-scope products and networks. If you think you’ve found a vulnerability or you’d like more information about the in-scope products, URLs, or bounty ranges, check out the Backblaze Bugcrowd Bug Bounty Program here. And, don’t forget to register for our webinar to learn more about the program.

The post Calling All Security Researchers: Join the Backblaze Bug Bounty Program appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Scale a Storage-heavy Startup

Post Syndicated from Molly Clancy original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-scale-a-storage-heavy-startup/

No developer likes to feel stuck with a cloud vendor, especially when you’re paying for the trap. Being locked in because the expense of moving is prohibitive or the risk of service disruption is too great can be singularly frustrating. Unfortunately, Gavin Wade, Founder and CEO of CloudSpot, found himself in exactly that position.

Gavin shared how he restructured his cloud architecture (containing more than 700TB of images under management), enabling him to:

  • Cut storage costs in half.
  • Slow the rate at which storage costs compound by half.
  • Cut data transfer costs by 90%.
  • Lower breakeven customer volume.
  • Increase margins.
What Is CloudSpot?

CloudSpot is a software as a service (SaaS) business platform based in Irvine, CA that makes professional photographers’ lives easier. The CloudSpot app allows photographers to deliver images digitally to clients in beautiful galleries through a seamless system.

Amazon Web Services gave CloudSpot free credits for storage. When those credits ran out, CloudSpot would have happily left to avoid escalating storage costs but felt trapped by high egress fees.

“We had a few internal conversations where we concluded that we were stuck with Amazon. That’s never a good feeling in business.”
—Gavin Wade, Founder & CEO, CloudSpot

How CloudSpot Solved for Escalating Storage Costs

In the short term, CloudSpot’s development team, led by their vice president of engineering, took a few key steps to manage costs:

  1. They untangled their monolithic system into a cluster of microservices.
  2. They moved to a Kubernetes environment where images upload directly to storage, then CloudSpot’s microservices retroactively query the data they need.

The transition to microservices made their infrastructure more nimble, but Gavin still had to reluctantly cut key promotional offers like free migration for prospective customers in order to maintain margins.

When Cost-cutting Measures Still Don’t Suffice

Even after optimizing workflows, storage costs continued to snowball. Namely:

  • The service grew—customers were uploading five times the previous year’s volume.
  • Gavin wanted to position the company for triple-digit growth in the upcoming year.

They decided to move their production data to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. The potential ROI of switching to Backblaze B2 was too substantial to ignore for a data-heavy startup, and Backblaze’s Cloud to Cloud Migration service allowed them to move 700TB of data in one day with zero transfer fees.

Migrating Storage Clouds Without Service Disruption

CloudSpot’s data is accessed frequently, and the CloudSpot development team had to make sure customers saw no disruptions. To do so, they supported both environments—on Amazon S3 and Backblaze B2—simultaneously for one week to ensure everything was working. Then, they disabled uploads to Amazon S3 and redirected new uploads to Backblaze B2.

“It was like changing the tires on a car while it’s flying down the road at 100 mph,” but a change that resulted in no loss of operational efficiency, speed, or reliability.
—Gavin Wade, Founder & CEO, CloudSpot

Cloud to Cloud Migration Is Not Out of Reach

Like many developers, Gavin thought he was trapped in a walled garden with Amazon S3. Improving CloudSpot’s workflows unlocked the switch to Backblaze B2, enabling CloudSpot to:

  • Structure workflows using best-of-breed providers.
  • Reintroduce free migration.
  • Grow margins.
  • Demonstrate savvy decision-making to future investors.

“Software margins are expected to be high. If you can take a big cut of that, it allows you to scale more rapidly. It just makes our story so much better, especially as a SaaS business looking to scale, grow, and raise capital.”
—Gavin Wade, Founder & CEO, CloudSpot

Unlocking Capacity to Scale With Backblaze B2

Read more about how CloudSpot overcame vendor lock-in to realize exponential growth, and check out our Cloud to Cloud Migration offer and partners—we’ll pay for your data transfer if you need to move more than 10TB out of Amazon.

The post How to Scale a Storage-heavy Startup appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.