Christie's International Real Estate in Amsterdam, North Holland represented by Pieter Joep van den Brink of Residence 365 B.V. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. Backblaze is a company offering unlimited online backup services. In June 2016, they launched the official version of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, a metered object storage service. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is characterized by price, it is the lowest price compared to other object storage services like Amazon S3.

Overview ¶

This document describes the storage locations available in Comet. The information applies to both (A) configuring a data storage location in Comet Server, and (B) configuring a Storage Vault location for a Comet Backup user (either locally in the Comet desktop client, or remotely via the Comet Server web interface).

There is a unified storage model across both Comet Server and the Comet Backup client. This means that you can use any of the supported storage locations as a data location for a Storage Role Comet Server; or, you can configure a Storage Vault in Comet Backup to enable backing up to any of the supported storage locations.

The former allows you to leverage cloud resources while still providing a completely opaque front to your customers. The latter may be more efficient and avoids double-handling the bandwidth.

Virtual storage locations ¶

As well as physical storage locations (e.g. local disk, an SFTP server, or Amazon S3), Comet also has a number of virtual storage locations available. These virtual storage locations may combine aspects of physical storage locations in order to offer additional features.

Utilizing Cloud Storage with Comet ¶

Comet supports any S3-compatible cloud storage provider. The cloud storage provider can be configured at the Comet Server level, or at the client level. It is recommended to setup cloud storage at the client level for better performance.

Utilizing cloud storage at the client level (direct-to-cloud) ¶

The backup data will go directly from the desktop client to the cloud storage provider. The cloud storage credentials will be exposed; even though the information is hidden in the Comet Backup client GUI, the customer could still discover it by network analysis or with a software debugger.

It's possible to use the direct-to-cloud method as a requestable Storage Vault. This means that you only have to setup your cloud provider details once, and then request Storage Vaults when required. Comet will manage the data within the cloud provider's bucket, and generate unique sub-directory level access keys per Storage Vault to minimize the impact this could have if the credentials are acquired.

Direct-to-cloud also applies for custom Storage Vaults; ensure credentials are exclusive to the user, i.e. generated per-user credentials with separate buckets.

Utilizing cloud storage at the Comet Server level¶

The backup data will pass through the Comet Server first and then the server will upload the data to the cloud storage provider (in memory). Cloud storage credentials won't be exposed to the client using this method. If your Comet Server is hosted in the same region as the cloud storage account, this may or may not have zero-rated bandwidth cost.

B2 Storage Room

This method can be configured at the Storage Role location in your Comet Server's setup wizard. When setting up a Storage Vault for an account, simply assign it a requestable Storage Vault. Your Comet Server will automatically create subdirectories to store the data for each new Storage Vault.

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

When using cloud storage in Comet Server as the Storage Role, the upload stream is proxied through to the cloud storage account (if possible), or buffered in memory. No data touches the local disk (no IOPS penalty). However, under memory pressure, the operating system may write to the swap file in proportion to the transfer load.