#+date:        <2023-06-28 Wed 00:00:00>
#+title:       Setup and Usage Instructions for Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage for Backup Purposes
#+description: Methodical guide for configuring and utilizing Backblaze B2 cloud storage services to perform reliable and secure offsite data backups.
#+slug:        backblaze-b2
#+filetags:    :cloud-storage:backup:backblaze:

* 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