Backblaze and unraid?

[Maverick52]

Is there a way to use Backblaze's "personal backup" plan with an unraid server?

 

I know Crashplan can, but I don't feel very confident in their service after speaking with their customer support. They basically told me I should go elsewhere.

 

edit: I think I should clarify the purpose of my unraid server and my needs. I'm a photographer so I have a decently large amount of data (and it's always growing) that is simply being stored and not changed frequently. My current workflow is to ingest my photos onto my workstations SSD, over the course of the next few days to weeks I'll perform the work I do to the photos, and then once I'm finished with the photos they'll stay on the SSD for awhile until I transfer them to my storage (which was a Synology NAS but is now a unraid server). All I'm looking for is a backup solution in case of failed drives or a natural disaster or something. 

 

If I can't use backblaze personal directly from the unraid server, I think I could still run it from my workstation and have it backup everything, but I thought it would be nice to just have it all done on the server side.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Maverick52

[Hoopster]

20 minutes ago, Maverick52 said:

Is there a way to use Backblaze's "personal backup" plan with an unraid server?

No, they specifically say they will not backup NAS devices or any network attached storage under the personal plan, although they will backup attached external USB drives. 

 

The only way to backup unRAID shares with BackBlaze is with the much more expensive B2 service.

 

https://www.backblaze.com/business-nas-backup.html

[Maverick52]

I realize there is no official method and that they want you to use B2, I was just thinking there might be a work around. I know their Windows program wont pick up mapped network drives, but I wasn't sure if anyone else had tried other solutions.

 

I know Crashplan has a docker to use and doesn't cost much more, but their customer support really made it sound like their service wouldn't be very good for large amounts of data (I was specifically inquiring about over 10 TB of data).

[Hoopster]

12 minutes ago, Maverick52 said:

I realize there is no official method and that they want you to use B2, I was just thinking there might be a work around. I know their Windows program wont pick up mapped network drives, but I wasn't sure if anyone else had tried other solutions.

 

I know Crashplan has a docker to use and doesn't cost much more, but their customer support really made it sound like their service wouldn't be very good for large amounts of data (I was specifically inquiring about over 10 TB of data).

 

CrashPlan Pro is $10 a month for unlimited data backup.  I currently have 12TB backed up with CrashPlan.  I imagine that if I ever had to restore a good chunk of that, it could take many months to get it restored.  That's why CrashPlan is the backup of last resort.  I also backup to another unRAID server/array and I backup the most important data to external USB drives.

 

My initial backup of 5TB about 5 years ago took around 3-4 months. Since then it has grown to 12TB.

[Maverick52]

19 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

 

CrashPlan Pro is $10 a month for unlimited data backup.  I currently have 12TB backed up with CrashPlan.  I imagine that if I ever had to restore a good chunk of that, it could take many months to get it restored.  That's why CrashPlan is the backup of last resort.  I also backup to another unRAID server/array and I backup the most important data to external USB drives.

 

My initial backup of 5TB about 5 years ago took around 3-4 months. Since then it has grown to 12TB.

Good to hear you're doing ok with 12TB on their service. This is from the email they sent me, which is what kind of makes me nervous of their service.

 

"10TB in isolation shouldn't be unfeasible, so long as you adjust your configuration to be very different from the defaults, but it's also really quite a substantial quantity of data, and you'll be pushing the program.

The other factor to consider is backup and restore times. We set a guideline of expecting 10GB to 30GB of uploads per day, after the first week or so. New archives can oftentimes get a good half terabyte or so into the cloud at a breakneck pace, but once a large amount of data has been uploaded, the overhead catches up with the upload process, and it settles into more normal rates. What this means is that it could take years to upload 10TB of data, and if you're using it specifically for an emergency in which your local storage is lost, destroyed, or damaged, that means that it could take a very, very long time to recover that 10TB.

It's important to consider your backup strategy carefully. For such a large quantity of data, and the desire to use it only for emergencies, you'd likely have a better experience using a service designed for long-term archival storage of massive quantities of data, such as Amazon Glacier, or Google's Cloud Storage options."

[pinion]

B2 appears to be $5 per TB per month. I'm going to try that with rclone.

[Marshalleq]

I found when restoring data from Crashplan there were a few tricks to it where you could speed it up.  I think I posted notes about it - let me see.

 

Yep here.

 

I got a 20x speed improvement.

 

There's another tip or two in the comments also.

Edited November 10, 2021 by Marshalleq

[chronocide]

I've been on BackBlaze's Personal backup plan for a long long time and I'm hopeful I can stay on it as I migrate from an unvirtualized Windows 10 PC into a Windows 10 VM running on Unraid.

Currently all the data I'm interested in protecting is on a USB attached drive array.  I'll migrate my BackBlaze license into a Windows 10 VM and just resume backing up that same USB attached disk array on day 1.

I've created a new, large ZFS pool and from day 2 forward, I will migrate big chunks of data into the ZFS pool and then serialize (zfs send) backups of the datasets back onto the attached USB.  Once it's all backed up and tested, i can delete the original source directory on the USB attached disk array.  By doing this one directory at a time (there are about 6-8 or so major directories), i wont need to 2x the data stored on the attached USB device.

It's going to take a long time but when I'm done, the attached USB device will just be backups and snapshots.

If anyone sees big holes in this, please let me know as I haven't started yet.

Edited November 13, 2021 by chronocide

[VKapadia]

Have you tried the Backblaze_Personal_Backup container available on CA? Looks like it runs Backblaze Personal on WINE and you can give it access to upload your whole array. haven't tried it yet, but I will once I finish setting up my server (just started with Unraid two days ago).

[Hawkins12]

 

On 4/27/2022 at 2:30 PM, VKapadia said:

Have you tried the Backblaze_Personal_Backup container available on CA? Looks like it runs Backblaze Personal on WINE and you can give it access to upload your whole array. haven't tried it yet, but I will once I finish setting up my server (just started with Unraid two days ago).

I am testing this however, i must have a permission issue.  When I go to test a backup of my file, I get an error  Not sure how to remedy

[Meannekes]

@Hawkins12

You have to execute this in the unraid Terminal 

docker exec --user app Backblaze_Personal_Backup ln -s /drive_d/ /config/wine/dosdevices/d:

 

But i tested this yesterday and everything that i backup also writes to my SSD Drive (the Docker is there) for a short time.

So this Solution will wear down the SSD..

[Ray Richland]

Here's my idea. I'm looking at Backblaze Personal vs B2, and Duplicati + OneDrive (for limited cloud backups up to the 6TB I get with Microsoft O365).  I'm also looking at SyncThing, where a remote endpoint at a friends house (who is also obsessed like me with building out technology with large amounts of storage for no reason at all). If we're following a 3-2-1 backup strategy, and we're open to having double the online storage that we need at home, we could split that storage into to local arrays. One is a NAS available to equipment and users on the premises, another is effectively a Windows or Mac box in the same environment with direct-attached storage. This machine is configured as backup target on the local network (with whatever software makes sense for that given the clients on the local network), and has the Backblaze personal client running on it. It syncs the backups that are deposited onto it up to the cloud.

[172pilot]

On 5/12/2022 at 6:26 PM, Hawkins12 said:

 

I am testing this however, i must have a permission issue.  When I go to test a backup of my file, I get an error  Not sure how to remedy

Given 7 months or so of hindsight, what's your opinion of this idea?  I built a second UnRaid just to put a Windows VM on it, using large virtual disk files on each physical disk so I could use the UnRaid parity and just keep extending the virtual Windows drive forever, and it's working but performance is horrible.  For scale, I currently have about 30tb on it across maybe 5 disks.

 

[Hawkins12]

On 1/24/2023 at 7:03 PM, 172pilot said:

Given 7 months or so of hindsight, what's your opinion of this idea?  I built a second UnRaid just to put a Windows VM on it, using large virtual disk files on each physical disk so I could use the UnRaid parity and just keep extending the virtual Windows drive forever, and it's working but performance is horrible.  For scale, I currently have about 30tb on it across maybe 5 disks.

 

Sorry for my delayed response.

 

Because I only had a small bit of files, I downloaded the backups on my PC and transferred them back to Unraid.  Not the most ideal but I am not a big tech/code guy to understand all the behind-the-scenes permission issues.  And calling support I didn't feel viable as the person would not understand Unraid or how it all works. 

[SnowyCollection]

On 4/27/2022 at 7:30 PM, VKapadia said:

Have you tried the Backblaze_Personal_Backup container available on CA? Looks like it runs Backblaze Personal on WINE and you can give it access to upload your whole array. haven't tried it yet, but I will once I finish setting up my server (just started with Unraid two days ago).

Hey, I was wondering if you eventually got around to using Backblaze for your backups.

I also have a ~60TB array and want to back it up, but B2 gets expensive real fast especially since my array is constantly growing.

I wanna know if it is viable or even possible with large data