Backblaze is S3-compatible. It, and every other S3-compatible service, can be used right now. However, we are adding a direct Backblaze integration for those who don't know that but it's really just a copy/paste of the S3 integration with wording changed to say Backblaze instead of AWS S3.

When you say they can be used right now, I assume you mean just on V5?

 

When you say they can be used right now, I assume you mean just on V5?

Our entire cloud network is on B2. Hundreds of terabytes. 

 

Our entire cloud network is on B2. Hundreds of terabytes. 

B2 maybe good, but I'd possibly suggest you're storing up a whole load of hassle (support wise) for yourselves by saying any other compatible s3 service is ok, as some of them definitely aren't. Cloudflare R2 caused us some issues on 4.7.19 with caching and the IPS system could never delete from it properly. In the past google cloud buckets were problematic as well. 

 

I was always under the impression that IPS only supported Amazon S3.

Pretty sure that was the case, as AllAstronauts had to develop dedicated plugins/apps to make the S3-compatible services actually compatible with the IPS S3-implementation at the time. 

But I guess moving from S3 to Backblaze should be easy now. In theory. Someone else self-hosted with large files please try it first. I would be extremely anxious to start a move and possibly end up stuck with a locked task and partially moved files. 

We'll have the B2 stuff in the next release (v4.7.20). There's a few minor tweaks in there.

 

We'll have the B2 stuff in the next release (v4.7.20). There's a few minor tweaks in there.

Last I tried B2 with IC4, I had exceptions in IN_DEV mode. I assume you have thoroughly tested B2 IN_DEV now and everything would just work?

I think the issue was that IC4 was setting an ACL on an object in the bucket when B2 only supports public or private buckets and no ability to set permissions on a path within the bucket.

Also, I remember some issues with downloading attachments vs just loading as an image using the Bacblaze file URLs. 

I worked around these issues by just implementing my own B2 storage method using the AWS S3 SDK which avoided all compatibility issues with Backblaze’s B2 S3 API. Big advantage, especially if uploading multi-gigabytes files to IC4’s chunked uploads and then uploading the temp file to B2. 

If I had to do it again, I would just use flysystem composer package and flexibly store my files anywhere I wanted. 

Finally, I should disclose I’m a huge shareholder of Backblaze and Cloudflare since both these services don’t lock you into huge AWS storage and bandwidth bills if you ever get to a scale where infrastructure costs matters a lot. 

Not currently using IC4 on any of my sites, but hope to deploy an IC5 app sometime in 2025. This app will require long lived files to be stored in one bucket and short lived files (less than 90 days) in another bucket. 

The files will be uploaded to a 1TB Cloudflare R2 bucket and offloaded to a Backblaze B2 bucket as they age and the Cloudflare bucket cache nears the 1TB limit. 

Doing this because Cloudflare allows free accounts to serve unlimited bandwidth out of an R2 bucket for no bandwidth charges. Backblaze B2 has free bandwidth up to 3 times the GBs stored so it is very economical for older files that still need to be accessible online. 

Yes, there will be some tweaks to allow B2 to work with Invision Community in 4.7.20 (and soon for v5).

Sorry late to the topic, this is my config currently I don't mind everything going to uploads. In the past when I had to look at specific attachments related to a particular app it made it much easier to download that directory offline and find the items in the date stamped folder much easier then pulling down the entire dataset. Ideally if that was automagically handled I wouldn't mind.

How is the change going to happen and should I make changes now prior to upgrade to v5?

Could one app be targeted for S3 or is it all or nothing?

I am also too curious about BackBlaze B2 just started using it for many other projects. I would like to know if based on the current size of our uploads folder is there some very basic cost estimator, that you could surface to make an informed decision before moving. - nobody wants to get a billing surprise.

If you want to make things as smooth are possible, then yes, getting ready in advance by moving them all would be a good step.

In terms of costing, thats something you would need to go through with backblaze. We are unable to provide specific costings for external providers