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+#+title: Getting Started with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
+#+date: 2023-06-28
+#+description: An introduction to the free ttier of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.
+#+filetags: :sysadmin:
+
+* Overview
+Backblaze [[https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html][B2 Cloud
+Storage]] is an inexpensive and reliable on-demand cloud storage and
+backup solution.
+
+The service starts at $5/TB/month ($0.005/GB/month) with a download rate
+of $0.01/GB/month.
+
+However, there are free tiers:
+
+- The first 10 GB of storage is free.
+- The first 1 GB of data downloaded each day is free.
+- Class A transactions are free.
+- The first 2500 Class B transactions each day are free.
+- The first 2500 Class C transactions each day are free.
+
+You can see which API calls fall into categories A, B, or C here:
+[[https://www.backblaze.com/b2/b2-transactions-price.html][Pricing
+Organized by API Calls]].
+
+For someone like me, who wants an offsite backup of their server's
+=/home/= directory and various other server configs that fall under 10
+GB total, Backblaze is a great solution from a financial perspective.
+
+* Create An Account
+To start with Backblaze, you'll need to
+[[https://www.backblaze.com/b2/sign-up.html][create a free account]] -
+no payment method is required to sign up.
+
+Once you have an account, you can test out the service with their web
+GUI, their mobile app, or their CLI tool. I'm going to use the CLI tool
+below to test a file upload and then sync an entire directory to my
+Backblaze bucket.
+
+* Create a Bucket
+Before you can start uploading, you need to create a bucket. If you're
+familiar with other object storage services, this will feel familiar. If
+not, it's pretty simple to create one.
+
+As their webpage says:
+
+#+begin_quote
+A bucket is a container that holds files that are uploaded into B2 Cloud
+Storage. The bucket name must be globally unique and must have a minimum
+of 6 characters. A limit of 100 buckets may be created per account. An
+unlimited number of files may be uploaded into a bucket.
+
+#+end_quote
+
+Once you click the =Create a Bucket= button on their webpage or mobile
+app, you need to provide the following:
+
+- Bucket Unique Name
+- Files in Bucket are: =Private= or =Public=
+- Default Encryption: =Disable= or =Enable=
+- Object Lock: =Disable= or =Enable=
+
+For my bucket, I created a private bucket with encryption enabled and
+object lock disabled.
+
+Once your bucket is created, you can test the upload/download feature on
+their web GUI or mobile app! At this point, you have a fully functional
+bucket and account.
+
+* Linux CLI Tool
+** Installation
+To install the =b2= CLI tool, you'll need to download it from the
+[[https://www.backblaze.com/docs/cloud-storage-command-line-tools][CLI
+Tools]] page. I recommend copying the URL from the link that says
+=Linux= and using wget to download it, as shown below.
+
+Once downloaded, make the file executable and move it to a location on
+your =$PATH=, so that you can execute that command from anywhere on the
+machine.
+
+#+begin_src sh
+wget <b2_cli_url>
+chmod +x b2_linux
+mv b2_linux /usr/bin/b2
+#+end_src
+
+** Log In
+The first step after installation is to log in. To do this, execute the
+following command and provide your =<applicationKeyId>= and
+=<applicationKey>=.
+
+If you don't want to provide these values in the command itself, you can
+simply execute the base command and it will request them in an
+interactive prompt.
+
+#+begin_src sh
+# if you want to provide the keys directly:
+b2 authorize-account [<applicationKeyId>] [<applicationKey>]
+
+# or, if you don't want your keys in your shell history:
+b2 authorize-account
+#+end_src
+
+** Upload a Test File
+In order to test the functionality of the CLI tool, I'll start by
+uploading a single test file to the bucket I created above. We can do
+this with the =upload_file= function.
+
+The command is issued as follows:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+b2 upload_file <bucket_name> <local_file> <remote_file>
+#+end_src
+
+In my situation, I executed the following command with my username.
+
+#+begin_src sh
+b2 upload_file my_unique_bucket /home/<user>/test.md test.md
+#+end_src
+
+To confirm that the file was uploaded successfully, list the files in
+your bucket:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+b2 ls <bucket_name>
+#+end_src
+
+#+begin_src txt
+test.md
+#+end_src
+
+** Sync a Directory
+If you have numerous files, you can use the =sync= function to perform
+functionality similar to =rsync=, where you can check what's in your
+bucket and sync anything that is new or modified.
+
+The command is issued as follows:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+b2 sync <source file location> <B2 bucket destination>
+#+end_src
+
+In my case, I can sync my user's entire home directory to my bucket
+without specifying any of the files directly:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+b2 sync /home/<user>/ "b2://<bucketName>/home/<user>"
+#+end_src
+
+* Caveats
+** Timing of Updates to the Web GUI
+When performing actions over a bucket, there is a slight delay in the
+web GUI when inspecting a bucket or its file. Note that simple actions
+such as uploading or deleting files may have a delay of a few minutes up
+to 24 hours. In my experience (<10 GB and ~20,000 files), any actions
+took only a few minutes to update across clients.
+
+** Symlinks
+Note that symlinks are resolved by b2, so if you have a link from
+=/home/<user>/nas-storage= that symlinks out to a =/mnt/nas-storage=
+folder that has 10TB of data, =b2= will resolve that link and start
+uploading all 10TB of data linked within the folder.
+
+If you're not sure if you have any symlinks, a symlink will look like
+this (note the =->= symbol):
+
+#+begin_src sh
+> ls -lha
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   20 Jun 28 13:32 nas -> /mnt/nas-storage/
+#+end_src
+
+You can recursively find symlink in a path with the following command:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+ls -lR /path/to/search | grep '^l'
+#+end_src