Developer(s) Backblaze Inc. Platform Windows, macOS | Development status Active Type Online backup service | |
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Operating system Available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean | ||
Backblaze is an online backup tool that allows Windows and macOS users to back up their data to an offsite data center. The service is designed for end-users, providing unlimited storage space and supporting unlimited file sizes.
Contents
Overview
Backblaze allows the user to back up data continuously, manually, when the computer is idle, or on an hourly schedule. The service makes use of AES encryption for security, and uses data compression and bandwidth throttling to reduce upload and download times. Files that need to be restored can be delivered in the form of a digital download, on an external USB hard drive up to 4 TB or a USB flash drive up to 128 GB.
Data replication
Data uploaded onto Backblaze's data center is sharded into 17 data shards plus three parity shards for each file. Parity shard bits are computed by the Reed–Solomon error correction algorithm. The shards are stored in 20 storage pods, each in a separate cabinet to increase resilience to a power loss to an entire cabinet. While Backblaze only has a single data center, Backblaze states that its Vault architecture is designed with 99.99999% annual durability.
Encryption
Backblaze utilizes a combination of AES and SSL encryption to protect user data. All data is stored on Backblaze StoragePods encrypted with the user's private key, which is secured with the user's password and username. Users desiring additional security and privacy wishing to take a Trust No One approach may also use the passphrase system which encrypts the private key with a passphrase not stored on Backblaze servers. However, because decryption of private keys is done server side, this level of security is unlikely to protect against a government subpoena or serious data breach.
StoragePod open design
In 2009 and 2011, Backblaze released CAD drawings of the computer case used by the storage servers in its datacenters. With commercial off-the-shelf components such as x64 processors, disks, and motherboards, high-density storage servers can be built at a lower cost than commercial ones.
In February 2013, version 3.0 of the pod was introduced with increased storage capacity and other upgrades.
In March 2014, version 4.0 of the pod was introduced which is faster, simpler and less expensive, and then a "tweaked" version 4.5 in March 2015.
In November 2015, version 5.0 of the storage pod was released, in which the motherboard, CPU, and SATA cards were upgraded, and the memory was increased to 32GB.