Tag Archives: Partner News

Backblaze and Parablu Team Up to Elevate Security For Microsoft 365 Users

Post Syndicated from Anna Hobbs-Maddox original https://backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-and-parablu-team-up-to-elevate-security-for-microsoft-365-users/

A decorative image showing the Backblaze and Parablu logos.

Microsoft 365 (M365) is used by more than one million companies worldwide. If you’re one of them, you know how important it is to your business. And, like anything that’s important to your business, it’s important to back it up. 

Today, backing up M365 to off-site storage just got easier and more affordable thanks to a new Backblaze Partnership with Parablu. Now, you can back up your Microsoft 365 data to Backblaze, ensuring it’s backed up both inside and/or outside of the Azure ecosystem, adding another layer of protection to your backup and recovery playbook.

What Parablu Does

Parablu specializes in data security and resiliency solutions catered to digital enterprises. Their advanced solutions ensure comprehensive protection for enterprise data while offering complete visibility into all data movement through user-friendly, centrally-managed dashboards. Their product BluVault for M365 elevates data security across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.

With Parablu, you can seamlessly control every aspect of your Microsoft 365 data, gain immediate protection against threats with advanced anomaly detection and swift recovery mechanisms for ransomware attacks, streamline administration with intuitive and efficient controls, reduce network congestion, and ensure secure data transmission with robust encryption protocols.

Why Back Up Microsoft 365 to Backblaze?

By integrating Backblaze as a storage tier outside of Azure for tools like M365, OneDrive, or Sharepoint, Parablu is providing its customers with cloud storage that’s easy to use, highly affordable at one-fifth the cost of legacy providers, secured with immutable backups, and high-performing with industry-leading small file uploads.

Key benefits for Backblaze + Parablu customers include:

  • Avoiding a Single Point of Failure: Many businesses that use M365 also back up their instance with the same service. However, backup best practices include keeping a backup copy of your data geographically and virtually separate from your production copy. While backing up your M365 data with Microsoft Azure is a great thing to do, it’s wise to keep a backup copy outside of that ecosystem as well. If Microsoft were to experience a failure, you’d still be able to recover your critical business data. 
  • Protecting Data With Immutability: When you protect your M365 data with immutability via Object Lock, you ensure no one can alter or delete that data until a given date. When you set the lock, you can specify the length of time an object should be locked. Any attempts to manipulate, copy, encrypt, change, or delete the file will fail during that time.
  • Faster Small File Uploads: Small file uploads are common for backup and archive workflows, especially when it comes to backing up the kind of data in M365—email, Word documents, simple Excel spreadsheets, etc. With Backblaze, users can expect to see significantly faster upload speeds for smaller files without any change to durability, availability, or pricing. The faster data upload bolsters security and enhances data protection by securing data with off-site backups faster, limiting the time that the data is vulnerable.

Partnering with Backblaze offers our customers a secure, cost-efficient storage alternative. We’ve witnessed a growing demand for secure, fast, and affordable storage that complements public cloud storage and we look forward to continued innovation with Backblaze.

—Randy De Meno, Chief Strategy Officer/Chief Technology Officer, Parablu

How Backblaze Integrates With Parablu

The Backblaze + Parablu partnership integrates the M365 backup power of Parablu with affordable cloud storage from Backblaze, helping you protect your M365 environment with enhanced security, compliance, and performance. The joint solution is available for customers today.

Interested in getting started? Learn more in our docs or contact Sales.

The post Backblaze and Parablu Team Up to Elevate Security For Microsoft 365 Users appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup

Backblaze Now Available via Carahsoft’s NASPO Contract

Post Syndicated from Mary Ellen Cavanagh original https://backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com/blog/backblaze-now-available-via-carahsofts-naspo-contract/

A decorative image showing three logos: Backblaze, carahsoft, and NASPO ValuePoint.

If you’re an IT professional for a state, local government, or educational institution or you’re a reseller serving those entities, you know firsthand how complex and time consuming procurement can truly be. Onboarding a cloud storage provider that meets both your needs and your organization’s procurement requirements is a challenge. And the need for affordable and secure data storage has never been greater—an incredible 79% of educational institutions reported being hit with ransomware in the past year. 

Today, choosing Backblaze as your preferred cloud storage provider just got a lot easier. Backblaze is now available to purchase via Carahsoft’s National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint contract. 

The contract addition enables Carahsoft, The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, and Backblaze to provide cloud storage solutions to participating states, local governments, and educational institutions. The contract also comes on the heels of Backblaze’s inclusion on Carahsoft’s NYOGS- and OMNIA-approved vendor lists.

What Is the NASPO ValuePoint Contract?

NASPO ValuePoint is a cooperative purchasing program that facilitates public procurement solicitations and agreements using a lead-state model, which means one state or organization takes the lead on soliciting proposals on behalf of others and working with a sourcing team to evaluate responses and choose a vendor. By leveraging the leadership and expertise of all states and the collective purchasing power of their public entities, NASPO ValuePoint delivers the highest valued, reliable, and competitively sourced contracts, offering public entities outstanding pricing.

Benefits to Customers

As a state, local government, or educational institution, you get a number of benefits by purchasing Backblaze through Carahsoft’s ValuePoint contract, including:

  • Simplified Procurement: You don’t have to go through the hassle of setting up your own contracts or negotiating prices. You can just use the NASPO ValuePoint contract, and that hard work is already taken care of.
  • Cost Savings: Because the ValuePoint contract covers lots of states and organizations, services are purchased in bulk, which usually means cheaper prices.
  • Time Savings: You save time researching suppliers or going through a long bidding process. You can just choose from the options already approved under the contract.
  • Quality Assurance: The contract usually has strict standards for its offerings, ensuring that you as a customer get access to quality products and services.

Benefits for Resellers

Resellers who are not currently listed on the NASPO ValuePoint Contract can still reap the benefits as well (and if you’re already listed, even better). By purchasing Backblaze through Carahsoft, you will gain:

  • Access to a Larger Market: Resellers can sell Backblaze to multiple states or organizations without having to negotiate separate contracts each time. This means more potential cloud customers.
  • Streamlined Sales Process: You don’t have to spend as much time and effort trying to win individual contracts. Now that Backblaze is on the NASPO ValuePoint Contract, you’re pre-approved to sell B2 Cloud Storage and Computer Backup to all participating entities.
  • Increased Credibility: With Backblaze being part of a trusted contract like NASPO ValuePoint, you can enhance your reputation and credibility in the cloud market, potentially attracting more customers.
  • Stable Revenue Stream: Having a contract with multiple states or organizations provides a more stable and predictable revenue stream for you as a reseller, as you have access to a broader customer base.

Making It Easier to Provision Backblaze

As a public sector agency, you face some of the greatest challenges when it comes to affordably protecting and using your data given ransomware attacks and budget constraints. Carahsoft’s NASPO program cuts through this complexity with cooperative purchasing, resulting in more favorable terms and conditions and competitive pricing. 

Previously, it was hard for many state, local, educational and government institutions to benefit from the affordability and reliability that Backblaze provides. Now, Backblaze’s addition to Carahsoft’s NASPO contract streamlines procurement of B2 Cloud Storage and Backblaze Computer Backup—speeding up your acquisition timeline.

The availability of the Backblaze portfolio to NASPO members strengthens our partnership by aligning with Government procurement processes and expanding Backblaze’s reach in the Public Sector market. It is critical we support the Government as they work to modernize their cloud data storage systems to meet the demands of an increasingly digital era. By collaborating with Backblaze and our reseller partners, we can continue to expand and improve agency access to the affordable, cutting-edge solutions they need to achieve mission success.

—John Rentz, MultiCloud Team Lead, Carahsoft

How to Purchase Backblaze via Carahsoft

Backblaze’s offerings are available through Carahsoft’s NASPO ValuePoint Master Agreement #AR2472 and OMNIA Partners Contract #R191902. To purchase, reach out to your preferred reseller or contact the Backblaze team. For more information about the NASPO ValuePoint Master Agreement, contact the Carahsoft team at [email protected].

More About Carahsoft

Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, supporting public sector organizations across federal, state and local government agencies and education and healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator® for our vendor partners, Carahsoft delivers solutions for multicloud, cybersecurity, DevSecOps, big data, artificial intelligence, open source, customer experience and engagement, and more.

The post Backblaze Now Available via Carahsoft’s NASPO Contract appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Object Storage Simplified: Introducing Powered by Backblaze

Post Syndicated from Elton Carneiro original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/powered-by-announcement-2024/

A decorative image showing the Backblaze logo on a cloud hovering over a power button.

Today, we announced our new Powered by Backblaze program to give platform providers the ability to offer cloud storage without the burden of building scalable storage infrastructure (something we know a little bit about). 

If you’re an independent software vendor (ISV), technology partner, or any company that wants to incorporate easy, affordable data storage within your branded user experience, Powered by Backblaze will give you the tools to do so without complex code, capital outlay, or massive expense.

Read on to learn more about Powered by Backblaze and how it can help you enhance your platforms and services. Or, if you’d like to get started asap, contact our Sales Team for access.  

Benefits of Powered by Backblaze

  • Business Growth: Adding cloud services to your product portfolios can generate new revenue streams and/or grow your existing margin.
  • Improved Customer Experience: Take the complexity out of object storage and deliver the best solutions by incorporating a proven object cloud storage solution.
  • Simplified Billing: Reduce complex billing by providing customers with a single bill from a single provider. 
  • Build Your Brand:  Improve customer expectations by providing cloud storage with your company name for consistency and brand identity.

What Is Powered by Backblaze?

Powered by Backblaze offers companies the ability to incorporate B2 Cloud Storage into their products so they can sell more services or enhance their user experience with no capital investment. Today, this program offers two solutions that support the provisioning of B2 Cloud Storage: Custom Domains and the Backblaze Partner API.

How Can I Leverage Custom Domains?

Custom Domains, launched today, lets you serve content to your end users from the web domain or URL of your choosing, with no need for complex code or proxy servers. Backblaze manages the heavy lifting of cloud storage on the back end.

Custom Domains functionality combines CNAME and Backblaze B2 Object Storage, enabling the use of your preferred domain name in your files’ web domain or URLs instead of using the domain name that Backblaze automatically assigns.

We’ve chosen Backblaze so we can have a reliable partner behind our new Edge Storage solution. With their Custom Domain feature, we can implement the security needed to serve data from Backblaze to end users from Azion’s Edge Platform, improving user experience.

—Rafael Umann, CEO, Azion, a full stack platform for developers

How Can I Leverage the Backblaze Partner API?

The Backblaze Partner API automates the provisioning and management of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage storage accounts within a platform. It allows for managing accounts, running reports, and creating a bundled solution or managed service for a unified user experience.

We wrote more about the Backblaze Partner API here, but briefly: We created this solution by exposing existing API functionality in a manner that allows partners to automate tasks essential to provisioning users with seamless access to storage.

The Backblaze Partner API calls allow you to:

  • Create accounts (add Group members)
  • Organize accounts in Groups
  • List Groups
  • List Group members
  • Eject Group members

If you’d like to get into the details, you can dig deeper in our technical documentation.

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

How to Get Started With Powered by Backblaze

To get started with Powered by Backblaze, contact our Sales Team. They will work with you to understand your use case and how you can best utilize Powered by Backblaze. 

What’s Next?

We’re looking forward to adding more to the Powered by Backblaze program as we continue investing in the tools you need to bring performant cloud storage to your users in an easy, seamless fashion.

The post Object Storage Simplified: Introducing Powered by Backblaze appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Leveraging Backblaze Drive Stats to Boost Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Sales: A Guide for Reseller Partners

Post Syndicated from Mary Ellen Cavanagh original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/leveraging-backblaze-drive-stats-to-boost-backblaze-b2-cloud-storage-sales-a-guide-for-reseller-partners/

A decorative image image showing a variety of images related to Backblaze and cloud storage.

If you’re a reseller partner, we know it’s hard to cut through the noise and get potential clients interested in the services you sell. It helps when you’re able to share relevant, useful, truly valuable information with them to build your brand and engage potential clients in prospective services. 

The Backblaze Drive Stats reports can be a powerful tool in your arsenal. They not only provide insights into drive reliability but also empower you to better position and sell Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. So, let’s dig into what Drive Stats are and how you can use them to serve your clients.

What Are Drive Stats?

The Backblaze Drive Stats reports include a comprehensive set of data that Backblaze openly shares about the performance and reliability of the hard drives that we use in our data centers. The data we publish is excellent for building trust with customers—it’s unique in the industry, regularly covered in industry media, and used by everyone from IT admins to research institutions to inform their strategies. Use it to level up your understanding of hard drives in general—including how they affect cloud storage infrastructure—and to build trust with end users around Backblaze in particular.

How Can I Use Drive Stats as a Reseller?

Identifying and Addressing Customer Concerns

You probably encounter customer concerns regarding the potential risks associated with data storage—both on premises and in the cloud—all the time. With Drive Stats, you can speak to those concerns with hard data on drive failure rates. This data-driven approach empowers customers to make optimal operational decisions and positions you as a knowledgeable, trusted advisor in their cloud storage journey.

Tailoring Solutions to Customer Needs

Every business has unique data storage and backup requirements, often a combination of on premises and cloud based data storage. In crafting the proper storage solution for your clients, you are often confronted with cost versus reliability trade-offs. The Backblaze Drive Stats reports provide a dependable source of unbiased drive reliability statistics when local data storage is required. With the Drive Stats data at hand, you can apply your knowledge and experience to confidently propose and deliver a comprehensive, cost-effective data storage and backup solution at a fair price that meets your customers’ unique needs.

Educating Customers on Data Management Best Practices

Beyond selling a product, you play a vital role in educating your customers on best practices for data management. Backblaze Drive Stats provide you with valuable insights that can be shared with your clients to help them make informed decisions about their storage strategy. By educating customers on the factors that contribute to reliable and efficient data storage, you position yourselves as trusted advisors in the rapidly evolving world of cloud technology.

Drive Stats as Your Competitive Advantage

In the competitive landscape of cloud storage solutions, reseller partners can gain a strategic advantage by harnessing the power of Backblaze Drive Stats as an effective, valuable, and powerful piece of content. The stats not only enhance transparency and build trust with customers but also empower resellers to effectively address concerns, tailor solutions, and educate clients on data management best practices. By leveraging this valuable resource, resellers can position themselves as leaders in the market and drive the success of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.

The post Leveraging Backblaze Drive Stats to Boost Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Sales: A Guide for Reseller Partners appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Run AI/ML Workloads on CoreWeave + Backblaze

Post Syndicated from Pat Patterson original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-run-ai-ml-workloads-on-coreweave-backblaze/

A decorative image showing the Backblaze and CoreWeave logos superimposed on clouds.

Backblaze compute partner CoreWeave is a specialized GPU cloud provider designed to power use cases such as AI/ML, graphics, and rendering up to 35x faster and for 80% less than generalized public clouds. Brandon Jacobs, an infrastructure architect at CoreWeave, joined us earlier this year for Backblaze Tech Day ‘23. Brandon and I co-presented a session explaining both how to backup CoreWeave Cloud storage volumes to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage and how to load a model from Backblaze B2 into the CoreWeave Cloud inference stack.

Since we recently published an article covering the backup process, in this blog post I’ll focus on loading a large language model (LLM) directly from Backblaze B2 into CoreWeave Cloud.

Below is the session recording from Tech Day; feel free to watch it instead of, or in addition to, reading this article.

More About CoreWeave

In the Tech Day session, Brandon covered the two sides of CoreWeave Cloud: 

  1. Model training and fine tuning. 
  2. The inference service. 

To maximize performance, CoreWeave provides a fully-managed Kubernetes environment running on bare metal, with no hypervisors between your containers and the hardware.

CoreWeave provides a range of storage options: storage volumes that can be directly mounted into Kubernetes pods as block storage or a shared file system, running on solid state drives (SSDs) or hard disk drives (HDDs), as well as their own native S3 compatible object storage. Knowing that, you’re probably wondering, “Why bother with Backblaze B2, when CoreWeave has their own object storage?”

The answer echoes the first few words of this blog post—CoreWeave’s object storage is a specialized implementation, co-located with their GPU compute infrastructure, with high-bandwidth networking and caching. Backblaze B2, in contrast, is general purpose cloud object storage, and includes features such as Object Lock and lifecycle rules, that are not as relevant to CoreWeave’s object storage. There is also a price differential. Currently, at $6/TB/month, Backblaze B2 is one-fifth of the cost of CoreWeave’s object storage.

So, as Brandon and I explained in the session, CoreWeave’s native storage is a great choice for both the training and inference use cases, where you need the fastest possible access to data, while Backblaze B2 shines as longer term storage for training, model, and inference data as well as the destination for data output from the inference process. In addition, since Backblaze and CoreWeave are bandwidth partners, you can transfer data between our two clouds with no egress fees, freeing you from unpredictable data transfer costs.

Loading an LLM From Backblaze B2

To demonstrate how to load an archived model from Backblaze B2, I used CoreWeave’s GPT-2 sample. GPT-2 is an earlier version of the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 LLMs used in ChatGPT. As such, it’s an accessible way to get started with LLMs, but, as you’ll see, it certainly doesn’t pass the Turing test!

This sample comprises two applications: a transformer and a predictor. The transformer implements a REST API, handling incoming prompt requests from client apps, encoding each prompt into a tensor, which the transformer passes to the predictor. The predictor applies the GPT-2 model to the input tensor, returning an output tensor to the transformer for decoding into text that is returned to the client app. The two applications have different hardware requirements—the predictor needs a GPU, while the transformer is satisfied with just a CPU, so they are configured as separate Kubernetes pods, and can be scaled up and down independently.

Since the GPT-2 sample includes instructions for loading data from Amazon S3, and Backblaze B2 features an S3 compatible API, it was a snap to modify the sample to load data from a Backblaze B2 Bucket. In fact, there was just a single line to change, in the s3-secret.yaml configuration file. The file is only 10 lines long, so here it is in its entirety:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: s3-secret
  annotations:
     serving.kubeflow.org/s3-endpoint: s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com
type: Opaque
data:
  AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: <my-backblaze-b2-application-key-id>
  AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: <my-backblaze-b2-application-key>

As you can see, all I had to do was set the serving.kubeflow.org/s3-endpoint metadata annotation to my Backblaze B2 Bucket’s endpoint and paste in an application key and its ID.

While that was the only Backblaze B2-specific edit, I did have to configure the bucket and path where my model was stored. Here’s an excerpt from gpt-s3-inferenceservice.yaml, which configures the inference service itself:

apiVersion: serving.kubeflow.org/v1alpha2
kind: InferenceService
metadata:
  name: gpt-s3
  annotations:
    # Target concurrency of 4 active requests to each container
    autoscaling.knative.dev/target: "4"
    serving.kubeflow.org/gke-accelerator: Tesla_V100
spec:
  default:
    predictor:
      minReplicas: 0 # Allow scale to zero
      maxReplicas: 2 
      serviceAccountName: s3-sa # The B2 credentials are retrieved from the service account
      tensorflow:
        # B2 bucket and path where the model is stored
        storageUri: s3://<my-bucket>/model-storage/124M/
        runtimeVersion: "1.14.0-gpu"
        ...

Aside from storageUri configuration, you can see how the predictor application’s pod is configured to scale from between zero and two instances (“replicas” in Kubernetes terminology). The remainder of the file contains the transformer pod configuration, allowing it to scale from zero to a single instance.

Running an LLM on CoreWeave Cloud

Spinning up the inference service involved a kubectl apply command for each configuration file and a short wait for the CoreWeave GPU cloud to bring up the compute and networking infrastructure. Once the predictor and transformer services were ready, I used curl to submit my first prompt to the transformer endpoint:

% curl -d '{"instances": ["That was easy"]}' http://gpt-s3-transformer-default.tenant-dead0a.knative.chi.coreweave.com/v1/models/gpt-s3:predict
{"predictions": ["That was easy for some people, it's just impossible for me,\" Davis said. \"I'm still trying to" ]}

In the video, I repeated the exercise, feeding GPT-2’s response back into it as a prompt a few times to generate a few paragraphs of text. Here’s what it came up with:

“That was easy: If I had a friend who could take care of my dad for the rest of his life, I would’ve known. If I had a friend who could take care of my kid. He would’ve been better for him than if I had to rely on him for everything.

The problem is, no one is perfect. There are always more people to be around than we think. No one cares what anyone in those parts of Britain believes,

The other problem is that every decision the people we’re trying to help aren’t really theirs. If you have to choose what to do”

If you’ve used ChatGPT, you’ll recognize how far LLMs have come since GPT-2’s release in 2019!

Run Your Own Large Language Model

While CoreWeave’s GPT-2 sample is an excellent introduction to the world of LLMs, it’s a bit limited. If you’re looking to get deeper into generative AI, another sample, Fine-tune Large Language Models with CoreWeave Cloud, shows how to fine-tune a model from the more recent EleutherAI Pythia suite.

Since CoreWeave is a specialized GPU cloud designed to deliver best-in-class performance up to 35x faster and 80% less expensive than generalized public clouds, it’s a great choice for workloads such as AI, ML, rendering, and more, and, as you’ve seen in this blog post, easy to integrate with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, with no data transfer costs. For more information, contact the CoreWeave team.

The post How to Run AI/ML Workloads on CoreWeave + Backblaze appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Cloud 101: Data Egress Fees Explained

Post Syndicated from Molly Clancy original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-101-data-egress-fees-explained/

A decorative article showing a server, a cloud, and arrows pointing up and down with a dollar sign.

You can imagine data egress fees like tolls on a highway—your data is cruising along trying to get to its destination, but it has to pay a fee for the privilege of continuing its journey. If you have a lot of data to move, or a lot of toll booths (different cloud services) to move it through, those fees can add up quickly. 

Data egress fees are charges you incur for moving data out of a cloud service. They can be a big part of your cloud bill depending on how you use the cloud. And, they’re frequently a reason behind surprise AWS bills. So, let’s take a closer look at egress, egress fees, and ways you can reduce or eliminate them, so that your data can travel the cloud superhighways at will. 

What Is Data Egress?

In computing generally, data egress refers to the transfer or movement of data out of a given location, typically from within a network or system to an external destination. When it comes to cloud computing, egress generally means whenever data leaves the boundaries of a cloud provider’s network. 

In the simplest terms, data egress is the outbound flow of data.

A photo of a stair case with a sign that says "out" and an arrow pointing up.
The fees, like these stairs, climb higher. Source.

Egress vs. Ingress?

While egress pertains to data exiting a system, ingress refers to data entering a system. When you download something, you’re egressing data from a service. When you upload something, you’re ingressing data to that service. 

Unsurprisingly, most cloud storage providers do not charge you to ingress data—they want you to store your data on their platform, so why would they? 

Egress vs. Download

You might hear egress referred to as download, and that’s not wrong, but there are some nuances. Egress applies not only to downloads, but also when you migrate data between cloud services, for example. So, egress includes downloads, but it’s not limited to them. 

In the context of cloud service providers, the distinction between egress and download may not always be explicitly stated, and the terminology used can vary between providers. It’s essential to refer to the specific terms and pricing details provided by the service or platform you are using to understand how they classify and charge for data transfers.

How Do Egress Fees Work?

Data egress fees are charges incurred when data is transferred out of a cloud provider’s environment. These fees are often associated with cloud computing services, where users pay not only for the resources they consume within the cloud (such as storage and compute) but also for the data that is transferred from the cloud to external destinations.

There are a number of scenarios where a cloud provider typically charges egress: 

  • When you’re migrating data from one cloud to another.
  • When you’re downloading data from a cloud to a local repository.
  • When you move data between regions or zones with certain cloud providers. 
  • When an application, end user, or content delivery network (CDN) requests data from your cloud storage bucket. 

The fees can vary depending on the amount of data transferred and the destination of the data. For example, transferring data between regions within the same cloud provider’s network might incur lower fees than transferring data to the internet or to a different cloud provider.

Data egress fees are an important consideration for organizations using cloud services, and they can impact the overall cost of hosting and managing data in the cloud. It’s important to be aware of the pricing details related to data egress in the cloud provider’s pricing documentation, as these fees can contribute significantly to the total cost of using cloud services.

Why Do Cloud Providers Charge Egress Fees?

Both ingressing and egressing data costs cloud providers money. They have to build the physical infrastructure to allow users to do that, including switches, routers, fiber cables, etc. They also have to have enough of that infrastructure on hand to meet customer demand, not to mention staff to deploy and maintain it. 

However, it’s telling that most cloud providers don’t charge ingress fees, only egress fees. It would be hard to entice people to use your service if you charged them extra for uploading their data. But, once cloud providers have your data, they want you to keep it there. Charging you to remove it is one way cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do that. 

What Are AWS’s Egress Fees?

AWS S3 gives customers 100GB of data transfer out to the internet free each month, with some caveats—that 100GB excludes data stored in China and GovCloud. After that, the published rates for U.S. regions for data transferred over the public internet are as follows as of the date of publication:

  • The first 10TB per month is $0.09 per GB.
  • The next 40TB per month is $0.085 per GB.
  • The next 100TB per month is $0.07 per GB.
  • Anything greater than 150TB per month is $0.05 per GB. 

But AWS also charges customers egress between certain services and regions, and it can get complicated quickly as the following diagram shows…

Source.

How Can I Reduce Egress Fees?

If you’re using cloud services, minimizing your egress fees is probably a high priority. Companies like the Duckbill Group (the creators of the diagram above) exist to help businesses manage their AWS bills. In fact, there’s a whole industry of consultants that focuses solely on reducing your AWS bills. 

Aside from hiring a consultant to help you spend less, there are a few simple ways to lower your egress fees:

  1. Use a content delivery network (CDN): If you’re hosting an application, using a CDN can lower your egress fees since a CDN will cache data on edge servers. That way, when a user sends a request for your data, it can pull it from the CDN server rather than your cloud storage provider where you would be charged egress. 
  2. Optimize data transfer protocols: Choose efficient data transfer protocols that minimize the amount of data transmitted. For example, consider using compression or delta encoding techniques to reduce the size of transferred files. Compressing data before transfer can reduce the volume of data sent over the network, leading to lower egress costs. However, the effectiveness of compression depends on the nature of the data.
  3. Utilize integrated cloud providers: Some cloud providers offer free data transfer with a range of other cloud partners. (Hint: that’s what we do here at Backblaze!)
  4. Be aware of tiering: It may sound enticing to opt for a cold(er) storage tier to save on storage, but some of those tiers come with much higher egress fees. 

How Does Backblaze Reduce Egress Fees?

There’s one more way you can drastically reduce egress, and we’ll just come right out and say it: Backblaze gives you free egress up to 3x the average monthly storage and unlimited free egress through a number of CDN and compute partners, including Fastly, Cloudflare, Bunny.net, and Vultr. 

Why do we offer free egress? Supporting an open cloud environment is central to our mission, so we expanded free egress to all customers so they can move data when and where they prefer. Cloud providers like AWS and others charge high egress fees that make it expensive for customers to use multi-cloud infrastructures and therefore lock in customers to their services. These walled gardens hamper innovation and long-term growth.

Free Egress = A Better, Multi-Cloud World

The bottom line: the high egress fees charged by hyperscalers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft are a direct impediment to a multi-cloud future driven by customer choice and industry need. And, a multi-cloud future is something we believe in. So go forth and build the multi-cloud future of your dreams, and leave worries about high egress fees in the past. 

The post Cloud 101: Data Egress Fees Explained appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

HYCU + Backblaze: Protecting Against Data Loss

Post Syndicated from Jennifer Newman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hycu-backblaze-protecting-against-data-loss/

A decorative image showing the Backblaze and HYCU logos.

Backblaze and HYCU, the fastest-growing leader in multi-cloud data protection as a service (DPaaS) are teaming up to provide businesses a complete backup solution for modern workloads with low-cost scalable infrastructure—a must-have for modern cyber resilience needs.

Read on to learn more about the partnership, how you can benefit from affordable, agile data protection, and a little bit about a relevant ancient poetic art form.

HYCU + Backblaze: The Power of Collaboration

Within HYCU’s DPaaS platform, shared customers can now select Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage—an S3 compatible object storage platform that provides highly durable, instantly available hot storage—as a destination for their HYCU backups. 

With more applications in use across the modern data center, visibility and the ability to protect that mission-critical data has never been at more of a premium. Our collaboration with Backblaze now offers joint customers a cost-effective and scalable data protection solution combining the best in backup and recovery with Backblaze’s streamlined and secure cloud storage.

—Subbiah Sundaram, SVP Product, HYCU, Inc.

The Data Sprawl Problem

On average, businesses and organizations have upwards of 200 different sets of data or “data silos” spread across a growing number of applications, databases, and physical locations. This data sprawl isn’t just hard to manage, it opens up more opportunities for cybercriminals to inject ransomware and gain access to systems. 

HYCU gives customers the power to protect every byte while also managing all their business critical data in one place. Powered by the world’s first development platform for data protection, HYCU is the only DPaaS platform that can scale to protect all of your data—wherever it resides. Most importantly, it gives customers the ability to recover from disaster almost instantly, keeping them online and in business, with an average recovery time of 10 minutes. 

Backblaze and HYCU:

Keeping data safe for all

at one-fifth the cost.

By combining HYCU data protection with Backblaze B2 Storage Cloud, customers can see up to 80% lower costs in comparison to using providers like AWS for their storage, which means that combining the two can be a force multiplier for a businesses’ ability to fully protect their data and scale efficiently and reliably.

Data protection:

Once challenging, now easy—

HYCU and B2.

The partnership offers the following benefits:

  • Performance: With a 99.9% uptime service level agreement (SLA) and no cold delays or speed premiums, storing data in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage means joint customers have instant access to their data whenever and wherever they need it. 
  • Affordability: Existing customers can reduce their total cost of ownership by switching backup tiers with interoperable S3 compatible storage, and institutions and businesses who may not have been able to afford hyperscaler-based solutions can now protect their data.
  • Compliance and Security: With Backblaze B2’s Object Lock feature, the partnership also offers an additional layer of security through data immutability, which protects backups from ransomware and satisfies evolving cyber insurance requirements.

These benefits can prove particularly useful for higher education institutions, schools, state and local governments, nonprofits, and others where maximizing tight budgets is always a priority.

What’s in a Name?

For the poetically minded among our readership (there must be a few of you, right?), you may have noticed a haiku or two above. And that’s not a coincidence.

The humble haiku inspired the name for HYCU. In true poetic fashion, the name serves more than one purpose—it’s also an acronym for “hyperconverged uptime,” making the least amount of letters do the most, as they should.

Making Data Protection Easier

This partnership adds a powerful new data protection option for joint customers looking to affordably back up their data and establish a disaster recovery strategy. And, this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more from this partnership, including integrations with HYCU’s other data protection offerings in the future. 

Interested in getting started? Learn more in our docs.

The post HYCU + Backblaze: Protecting Against Data Loss appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.