Anyone using Google Cloud Storage with Restic in the US?
How is the performance backing up?
How does storage classes work, do you have to wait 365 days for example to get archive pricing, or can you set it ahead of time and get penalized if you move/delete before then?
Is BackBlaze B2 a better option pricewise? In 5+ years, I never touched anything from my offsite backup, but I always keep a copy offsite. I just have 1-2TB of storage, but I will be increasing that a litlte as I start backing up my NAS. I know using B2 is easy, but I’m more concerned with price/speed as I don’t plan on downloading often.
Is there a way to test backups easily (ideally automated) to ensure you got a good copy up there.
As for the Cloud - there’s also Wassabi S3 which is cheaper then Backblaze B2 and stands just before AWS Glacier Deep Archive …
For verification from restic side there’s restic check but that costs a full restore because it will download all data - there’s no other way with a cloud provider I’m afraid (don’t do that with deep glacier). There’s a flag --with-cache=true but that`s largely pointless if you want to verify if the data in the remote repository is actually safe.
As for Google: Just skip it if you can there was until recently a single reason to us them and that was the (unofficial) unlimited storage perks - but that is now effecitevly gone with prices increased, and still all the good all throtteling and unreliability.
A much better option would be running a secondary NAS with Minio S3/restic rest-server with --append-only enabled on a proper file-system e.g. btrfs/zfs which you can regulary scrub to check for bitrot … or even cheaper: Offline-Backup USB-Drive that you take weekly and rotate yourself.
Or them all combined … you see there are lots of options (and more)
In the end to more copies you have, the more likely it will safe your ass in the case of disasters.
It really helps enforcing yourself to these disasters once in a while …
Wasabi is considerably more than B2 ($6.99 vs $5/TB).
For verification from restic side there’s restic check but that costs a full restore because it will download all data - there’s no other way with a cloud provider I’m afraid
Actually you can have it check specific amounts, --read-data-subset=1G for example will check a random 1GB section of your data.
A much better option would be running a secondary NAS with Minio S3/restic rest-server with --append-only enabled on a proper file-system e.g. btrfs/zfs which you can regulary scrub to check for bitrot … or even cheaper: Offline-Backup USB-Drive that you take weekly and rotate yourself.
If I did this route, I would just use ZFS send to syncronize encrypted snapshots. This is also considerably more expensive for just a couple TB of data. This would be my preferred option if it wasn’t for the cost.
As for Google: Just skip it if you can there was until recently a single reason to us them and that was the (unofficial) unlimited storage perks
Google and Amazon costs are 1/5th even B2 (which is the cheapest viable option I know) if you use Archive class storage. That’s a pretty significant benefit if it is truly only for disaster recovery.
Well seems like they’ve increased their monthly prices just recently - my bad.
However Wassabi doesn’t charge for Download/API/egress - much unlike Backblaze, so you can do as much restic check `s as you want and recover as much as you want too.
That favors Wassabi as soon as you really need it for restore - even if its just for a few files once in a while. Otherwise if you really only need it for absolute disaster recovery go for Deep Glacier …
I still strictly recommend against Google as a Storage Provider because they’re flawky overall - its much more likely that your data goes pooooof one day because they decided its not worth it anymore … that and their HIDDEN API-Limits were always funky to work around … e.g. (not sure if that`s the right examples - were just quick searches):
That is ontop of the official documentation from:
It seems like they change it once in a while, per account, maybe per day - you basically never know . I personally experienced what happens if you for example get enforced to change your subscription and then cancel it → data goes immediately poof, EVEN if the month is still ongoing… until you resubscribe, that’s nothing I`d like to see from a business product (which they are targeting with their storage).
And Google is standing on much thinner digital ground lately if you ask me
I am a satisfied wasabi user, however this statement isn’t correct (unless things have changed very recently). You are allowed to download a maximum of your total storage content in a month.
According to the following post backblaze have raised their price to $6 and now allowed up to 3 x storage free egress per month.
I’ve been using Google Cloud Storage in the US for daily back up of ~100 GiB for many years, and I’m happy. I use multi-region with the Nearline storage class. Nearly all the costs are byte storage and multi-region replication, so restic isn’t adding any significant cost overhead with Class A and B operations. It’s pretty easy to see how you’re being billed (after-the-fact) if you want to check. I described the process and gave a query I use at Regional vs Nearline vs Coldline (google storage) - #7 by m-d-brown.
