SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Backblaze, the cloud provider beloved by storage professionals, announced it now supports the massive S3 ecosystem with the release of new, S3 Compatible APIs.
In practical terms, this means millions of software vendors, developers, and content creators—many stuck with legacy cloud providers before today—can now instantly plug into Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage by doing little more than pointing their data to a new destination. There’s no need to write new code, no change in workflow, and no downtime. Customers meanwhile get all the benefits of Backblaze B2: infinitely scalable, durable offsite storage at ¼ the price of other options.
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Launches S3 Compatible APIs, with Partners IBM Aspera, Veeam, Quantum May 4, 2020 Company’s scalable object storage is now available to the global business population that built workflows dependent on S3. I run the Veeam B&R 10 Community Edition and have successfully added a B2 bucket at Backblaze to the backup infrastructure. But how can I use it? When editing or creating a job, and a backup repository is to be selected, only the two Windows-type repositories are listed. Backblaze B2 has supplanted LTO as the least expensive storage to archive your Veeam backups. Backblaze B2 is now being adopted by many customers who are choosing to abandon LTO. Aside from saving money and eliminating on-premise tape infrastructure, this backup strategy allows you to automatically practice a 3-2-1 backup strategy and quickly. There are several ways Veeam v10 allows for direct to block storage but limited to Azure and AWS out of the box. Blog Post: Setting Up a Veeam to StarWind Virtual Tape Library Configuration; We set up a BackBlaze B2 account, set up a bucket, and then worked on getting things configured in as demonstrated in the above blog post. Deployed in 3 easy steps. Tiger Bridge facilitates the migration of your Veeam data from your on-prem repo to the Backblaze B2 cloud. As your dataset grows, Backblaze B2 scales transparently to match. No additional backup hardware needed and no secondary location necessary for geographic redundancy.
More than a dozen software companies committed to support this Backblaze B2 launch, including:
- IBM Aspera, for fast data transfers and streaming across any distance
- Veeam, for backup, recovery, and management of virtual and physical infrastructures
- Quantum, for capturing, creating, and sharing digital content
'Now more than ever, businesses are looking to optimize their cloud data management infrastructure for simplicity, reliability and affordability,” said Andreas Neufert, Vice President of Product Management, Alliances at Veeam. “We look forward to offering Veeam customers Backblaze B2 as a compelling new storage option.”
The S3 Compatible APIs are new, yet the company is already a well-known innovator within the world of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)—Backblaze has a devoted following and more than an exabyte of customer data under management from organizations including American Public Television, Patagonia, and Verizon’s Complex Networks.
“For years, businesses have loved our astonishingly easy-to-use cloud storage for supporting them in achieving incredible outcomes,” said Gleb Budman, Co-Founder and CEO, Backblaze. “Today we’re excited to do all the more by enabling many more businesses to use our storage with their existing tools and workflows.”
Additional software companies committed to making Backblaze B2 a compelling new option for their users, starting with the S3 compatibility public beta, include: Cinnafilm, Igneous, LucidLink, Marquis, Masstech, Primestream, Scale Logic, Storage Made Easy, Studio Network Solutions, Venera, Vidispine, and Xendata. These ISVs join a list of more than 100 others, plus hardware companies, already offering Backblaze B2 to support their customers’ cloud storage needs.
“Public cloud storage has become an integral part of the post-production process. This latest enhancement makes Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage more accessible—both for us as a vendor, and for customers,” said Eric Bassier, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Quantum. “We can now use the new S3 Compatible APIs to add Backblaze B2 to the list of StorNext compatible public cloud storage targets, taking another step toward enabling hybrid and multi-cloud workflows.'
More information can be found here. Organizations that seek to get started immediately—for themselves for free, or for their software platform users—can contact Backblaze here.
About Backblaze
Founded in 2007, Backblaze provides award-winning cloud storage to businesses and consumers. It has more than an exabyte of customer data under management. The company’s B2 Cloud Storage is purpose-built to provide simple, reliable, and affordable object storage—meaning customers can escape the cloud oligarchy and enjoy quality storage priced so they don’t have to choose between what matters and what doesn’t when it comes to their backup & archive, data organization, workflow streamlining, and more. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, Backblaze employs 150 people.
We’re in the process of configuring our backups for no more off-site physical rotations.
There are several ways Veeam v10 allows for direct to block storage but limited to Azure and AWS out of the box.
- Blog Post: Setting Up a Veeam to StarWind Virtual Tape Library Configuration
We set up a BackBlaze B2 account, set up a bucket, and then worked on getting things configured in as demonstrated in the above blog post.
We Still have a ways to go to get comfortable with working with “Tapes” in Veeam as we’ve not done tape in a _very_ long time. 😉
However, one thing that is important to us, and to our clients, is Grandfather, Father, and Son (GFS) backups.
Veeam has GFS built-in as a Tape Job: GFS Media Pools
However, we are looking to take a slightly different tact versus using the built-in feature here.
The primary reason for that is to keep things simple for anyone to come along and figure out how things were set up if the primary site is lost to a disaster.
A second reason is that we can gain some control over our GFS configuration and storage requirements that is otherwise not built-in to Veeam v10 at this time. A key is that we replicate to B2 via VTL.
While good notes that are up to date are also a critical part of this process, a quick visual set of queues provides an immediate understanding of what data is where and how to get to it.
Our first step is to set up our new B2 Buckets.
- Bucket 1: Current Live Backups
- Bucket 2: Quarterly Bucket: Keep Files 90 Days
- Bucket 3: Bi-Annual Bucket: Keep Files 180 Days
- Bucket 4: Annual Bucket: Keep Files 365 Days
- Bucket 5: Permanent Bucket: No Delete
Obviously, something to keep in mind is that each bucket will contain a series of FULL backups. That means we need to be mindful of the overall cost of our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solution.
After we have created the Buckets and recorded their IDs we move on to setting up our Virtual Tape Library.
Veeam Backblaze B2 Software
Since we already have our target device set up for our day to day backup needs with those backups being sent up to B2 via our VTL we will now set up a new device for each of our new buckets.
- Virtual Tape Library
- Name: VTL-Quarterly, VTL-BiAnnual, VTL-Annual, VTL-Permanent
- Make sure to uncheck “Fill Storage Slots with Empty Tapes after Create”
- A new VTL# will show up for each of the above:
- Create Tape
- Set the drive location for the tapes
- Set Number of Tapes and GB Size
- We set a smaller GB size for each tape to break apart the upload process
- Set up Cloud Replication
- Use the Master KeyID and applicationKey
- Bucket: Quarterly-Bucket
- Tape File Retention Settings
- Replicate Immediately
- Tick: Create new empty tapes..
- Keep local copy 7 Days
- Keep Copy in Cloud
- Quarterly: 115 Days
- Bi-Annual: 195 Days
- Annual: 380 Days
- Permanent: Leave
We are leaving a bit of overlap out of the gate. Once we get into working with the process over the next year or so we’ll refine these settings according to our needs.
Once we’ve finished setting up our VTL and tapes we will see:
Veeam Media Pools: Unrecognized (30)
Note the new HP MSL G3 Series 9.50 tape library that also showed up.
- Right click on the Media Pools folder and Add media pool
- Give it a name
- Verify that we have the right HP
- In our case, when we set up this VTL we created 30 tapes to start with
- Leave the Add tapes from Free media pool automatically…
- Click Next
- On the Retention tab tick the Move all offline tapes from this media pool…
- Since we did not set up a vault ahead of time name it
- Tick Protect all tapes moved to this media vault automatically
- Options: and set an encryption key for the backup
- Click on the Unrecognized (30) media folder
- Highlight all tapes
- Right click and Move to media pool
- Select the VTL Quarterly Pool (or subsequent pool)
- Click Yes
- Click Close
Repeat the above process for each backup type needed.
We now have our libraries in place. So, the next step is to create a FULL backup job on the required cycle date.
The schedule would look something like:
- Today: Annual
- 90 Days: Quarterly
- 180 Days: Bi-Annual
- 270 Days: Quarterly
- 365 Days: Annual
We end up with the needed FULL backup files for our GFS schedule. As a result, keep in mind that the local repository, whether shared with the daily backups or dedicated, will need enough free storage to host the backups.
From there, we need to set up our Tape Job to push those backups to our VTL.
- On the Home tab click on Tape Job and select Backups…
- Give it a name: Annual B2 Backup
- Select the Backup Job created above for each cycle
- Media Pool: VTL Annual Pool
- Click Next until …
- On Options
- Tick: Eject Media upon job completion
- Advanced: Set e-mail address for job report
- Schedule: Run the job automatically After this job: VTL Annual
Repeat the above process for the Bi-Annual and Quarterly jobs.
Once we have completed the above process and the backups have been working for a year we would have our GFS backups.
Since BackBlaze has been around for quite a while, is open with their business model and product designs, and bucked the hard disk industry to publish their quarterly drive reliability stats, we believe that they provide the best cloud storage out there at this time.
We are evaluating the other options that we could use with Veeam’s built-in setup, but for now we’re really liking what we see in the Veeam –> StarWind VTL –> BackBlaze B2 setup.
Using our method we end up with at most three FULL backup’s worth of storage in B2. We believe this to be the best balance between protection and overall storage costs.
Veeam Backblaze B2 Plus
When the time comes, we can run a copy job on any one of those backup buckets to our Permanent Bucket keeping in mind that we would need to parse the data in there at some point.
And remember: The only known good backup is one fully restored to bare metal or bare hypervisor!
Veeam Backup To Cloud
Stay safe and healthy everyone! 🙂
Philip Elder
Microsoft High Availability MVP
MPECS Inc.
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