Most teams use their Synology NAS device primarily as a common space to store active data. It’s helpful for collaboration and cuts down on the amount of storage you need to buy for each employee in a media workflow. But if your teams are geographically dispersed, a NAS device at each location will also allow you to sync specific folders across offices and protect the data in them with more reliable and non-duplicative workflows. By setting up an integrated cloud storage tier and using Synology Drive ShareSync, Cloud Sync, and Hyper Backup—all free tools that come with the purchase of your NAS device—you can improve your collaboration capabilities further, and simplify and strengthen data protection for your NAS.

• Drive ShareSync: Synchronizes folders and files across linked NAS devices.
• Cloud Sync: Copies files to cloud storage automatically as they’re created or changed.
• Hyper Backup: Backs up file and systems data to local or cloud storage.

Taken together, these tools, paired with a reasonable and reliable cloud storage, will grow your remote collaboration capacity while better protecting your data. Properly architected, they can make sharing and protecting large files easy, efficient, and secure for internal production, while also making it all look effortless for external clients’ approval and final delivery.

We’ll break out how it all works in the sections below. If you have questions, please reach out in the comments, or contact us.

Synchronizing Two or More NAS Devices With Synology Drive ShareSync

Moving media files to a NAS is a great first step towards easier sharing and ensuring that everyone on the team is working on the correct version of any given project. But taking an additional step to also sync folders across multiple NAS devices guarantees that each file is only transferred between sites once, instead of every time a team member accesses the file. This is also a way to reduce network traffic and share large media files that would otherwise require more time and resources.

With Synology Drive ShareSync, you can also choose which specific folders to sync, like folders with corporate brand images or folders for projects which team members across different offices are working on. You also have the option between a one-way and two-way sync, and Synology Drive ShareSync automatically filters out temporary files so that they’re not replicated from primary to secondary.

Backing Up and Archiving Media Files With Synology Cloud Sync and Cloud Storage

With Cloud Sync, another tool included with your Synology NAS, you can make a copy of your media files to a cloud storage bucket as soon as they are ingested into the NAS. For creative agencies and corporate video groups that work with high volumes of video and images, syncing data to the cloud on ingest protects the data while it’s active and sets up an easy way to archive it once the project is complete. Here’s how it works:

• 1. After a multiple day video or photo shoot, upload the source media files to your Synology NAS. When new media files are found on the NAS, Synology Cloud Sync makes a copy of them to cloud storage.
• 2. While the team works on the project, the copies of the media files in the cloud storage bucket serve as a backup in case a file is accidentally deleted or corrupted on the NAS.
• 3. Once the team completes the project, you can switch off Synology Cloud Sync for just that folder, then delete the raw footage files from the NAS. This allows you to free up storage space for a new project.
• 4. The video and photo files remain in the bucket for the long term, serving as archive copies for future use or when a client returns for another project.

Using Cloud Sync for Content Review With External Clients

Cloud Sync can also be used to simplify and speed up the editorial review process with clients. Emailing media files like videos and high-res images to external approvers is generally not feasible due to size, and setting up and maintaining FTP servers can be time consuming for you and complicated or confusing for your clients. It’s not an elegant way to put your best creative work in front of them. To simplify the process, create content review folders for each client, generate a link to a ZIP file in a bucket, and share the link with them via email.

Protecting Your NAS Data With Synology Hyper Backup and Backblaze B2

Last, but not least, Synology Hyper Backup can also be configured to do weekly full backups and daily incremental backups of all your NAS data to your cloud storage bucket. Disks can crash and valuable files can be deleted or corrupted, so ensuring you have complete data protection is an essential step in your storage infrastructure.

Hyper Backup will allow you to back up files, folders, and other settings to another destination (like cloud storage) according to a schedule. It also offers flexible retention settings, which allow you to restore an entire shared folder from different points in time. You can learn about how to set it up using this Knowledge Base article.

With Hyper Backup, you gain more control over setting up and managing weekly and daily backups to cloud storage. You can:

• Encrypt files before transferring them, so that your data will be stored as encrypted files.
• Choose to only encrypt files during the transfer process.
• Enable an integrity check to confirm that files were backed up correctly and can be successfully restored.
• Set integrity checks to run at specific frequencies and times.

Human error is often the inspiration to reach for a backup, but ransomware attacks are on the rise, and a strategy of recycle and rotation practices alongside file encryption helps backups remain unreachable by a ransomware infection. Hyper Backup allows for targeted backup approaches, like saving hourly versions from the previous 24 hours of work, daily versions from the previous month of work, and weekly versions from older than one month. You choose what makes the most sense for your work. You can also set a maximum number of versions if there’s a certain cap you don’t want to exceed. Not only do these smart recycle and rotation practices manage your backups to help protect your organization against ransomware, but they can also reduce storage costs.

Set Up Multi-site File Exchange With Synology NAS and Cloud Storage

To learn more about how you can set up your Synology NAS with cloud storage to implement a collaboration and data protection solution like this, one of our solutions engineers recently crafted a guide outlining how to do so with our cloud storage solution.

At the end of the day, collaboration is the soul of much creative work, and orienting your system to make the nuts and bolts of collaboration invisible to the creatives themselves, while ensuring all their content is fully protected, will set your team up for the greatest success. Synology NAS, its impressive built-in software suite, and cloud storage can help you get there.

The post Solution Roadmap: Cross-site Collaboration With the Synology NAS Toolset appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

As you get started with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, these tips and resources will get you on the right track to best serve your needs with cloud storage.

What can you do with simple, reliable, affordable Backblaze B2?

• Backup, archive, or sync servers, VMs, and NAS devices.
• Store and share videos, images, and audio.
• Replace tape backup and archive systems (LTO).
• Host and serve documents, photos, videos, and other web content.
• Build apps that demand affordable, reliable cloud storage.

For Experienced Cloud Storage Users

If you’re a developer or have more experience using cloud storage, these resources are built to help guide your onboarding.

• “12 Backblaze B2 Power Tips for Experts and Developers.”
• How to Download and Extract Data From a Backblaze B2 Snapshot.
• Mobile Phone Verification for Backblaze B2.

Have a NAS You’d Like to Link to Backblaze B2?

Would you like to get more out of your Synology or QNAP NAS? These posts enable you to easily extend your local data storage to the cloud.

• “How to Connect Your Synology NAS to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.”
• “How to Connect Your QNAP NAS to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage.”
• “Backing Up FreeNas and TrueNAS to Backblaze B2.”

Looking to Connect an Application With Backblaze B2?

Backblaze B2 has been integrated with a wide range of powerful solutions—including backup, archiving, media management, cloud computing, and many more. These help articles and on-demand webinars walk you through connecting with some of the most popular integrated applications.

• Quickstart Guide for Backup With Backblaze B2 and Veeam Cloud Tier.
• Quickstart Guide for Server Backup With Backblaze B2 and MSP360 MBS (formerly CloudBerry).
• How to Use Fastly CDN With Backblaze B2.
• Quickstart Guide for Flexify.IO to Transfer Data From Amazon S3 to Backblaze B2.
• More quickstart guides for integrations in the Backblaze Knowledge Base.

Want to Migrate Large Data Sets Quickly and Easily?

If you have dozens or even hundreds of terabytes of data, uploading it all or transferring it from another cloud service may take some planning. To learn more about alternate ways to upload your data, check out this guide on data migration tools and strategies.

And if you’d like to quickly move a data set >10 TB, let’s talk about how Backblaze can cover costs for transferring data from Amazon S3 to your Backblaze account.

We hope that gets you rolling. There’s plenty more about Backblaze B2 on our blog in the Cloud Storage category and in our Knowledge Base.

Didn’t find what you need to get started with Backblaze B2? Ask away in the comments.

The post Quickstart Guide for Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many of us to shelter in place at home, it seemed like a good opportunity to learn news things: Baking sourdough bread, sure! Tackling 2000 piece puzzles, great. Hosting virtual birthday parties on Zoom for three dozen family members? Got it! It was fun (mostly), but it quickly became clear that what seemed like a pause was actually the beginning of a whole new way of living and doing business.

And for anyone responsible for media workflows, turning to online learning during this time quickly became a clear requirement. The NAB Show, the media and entertainment industry’s huge show every April, cancelled their live event in Las Vegas and rebirthed it as an online experience a month later.

During normal times, this show was everyone in the industry’s opportunity to learn what the newest essential solutions for their workflow might be. In 2020, this wasn’t possible, despite the fact that learning how to use cloud-based tools to enable work is no longer a long-term strategic “hope for”—it’s a must-have.

After the cancellation of trade shows and other in-person events, our marketing and sales teams got together to decide how they could reach our NAB audience in the absence of face-to-face discussions at our booth on the NAB Show floor. The answer was Cloud University: an ongoing series of webinars highlighting powerful, cloud-enabled workflow solutions built with over a dozen partners, including ProMAX, CatDV, Cloudflare, iconik, and more. This series of free courses features live demos, tips, and best practices on topics like remote collaboration, content delivery, cloud migration, and workflow automation, with more to come each week.

Cloud University: Welcome to Your Class Schedule

You can always head to our Cloud University page to stay up to date with the latest classes, but we’ll include digests of past classes here, as well as callouts to additional information that might be useful to you, and some key takeaways to scan so you can tell what webinar might be most effective for you.

We hope to see you at our next online class, and of course, if there’s anything you’d like us to cover at Cloud University, don’t hesitate to say so in the comments!

FILE-SHARING 101: One-Stop Content Access Across Cloud & On-Premise Storage with Storage Made Easy

Register for June 11^th

Is it difficult or impossible for all your users to search and access content stored in different locations on different technologies? Attend this webinar to learn how to:

• Create a ‘single pane of glass’ view of content across cloud and on-premise storage
• Deliver seamless collaboration and secure file-sharing across your entire organization
• Move files faster between different storage types and locations
• Easily build rules and enforce policies through automated workflow actions

PANEL DISCUSSION: Real-World Lessons for the New Normal with APT, Youngevity and axle.ai

Register for June 18^th

The global pandemic means far more than paused production – it signals a new era of mandatory workflow flexibility and resiliency. How are media pros adapting? Attend this discussion with American Public Television, Youngevity, and axle.ai to learn:

• Immediate actions taken—what worked, what didn’t—including some surprises
• ‘No regrets’ operational changes that will serve long after the pandemic is gone
• How to think about tools and technologies for uninterrupted creation and distribution

DEMO LABORATORY: Turnkey Cloud Backup, Sync, and Restore with QNAP NAS

Start Learning Now

Want your NAS to do more than just store content? A NAS solution with built-in data protection tools can safeguard your content, too. Join this live demo and learn how to:

• Determine when to use backup vs. sync functions based on your workflow
• Enable your users to restore files and folders without any IT support
• Deploy a hybrid cloud—for the best of local and off-premise storage—in minutes
• Select the right NAS solution for your environment

CONTENT MONETIZATION 101: Unlock More Revenue from Existing Content with GrayMeta

Start Learning Now

How can you monetize content quicker by discovering information hidden inside your media files? Attend this webinar to learn how to:

• Use machine learning and AI to extract metadata from content scattered across SAN, NAS, and cloud storage
• Uncover actionable insights from words, sounds, faces, and logos detected in video and other assets
• Build time-saving workflows that identify, move, and transform content automatically
• Make your content monetization workflow more efficient to shorten time to revenue

WORKFLOW AUTOMATION 101: Fast and Foolproof Production Workflows with CatDV

Start Learning Now

How much faster could you finish projects if your workflow adapted to new demands without costly, time-consuming development? Attend this event to learn how you can automate:

• High-volume ingest and content processing using cloud compute and storage
• Proxy creation, custom tagging, and metadata extraction without undue compute costs
• Transcode and upload of files to playout servers as soon as clips are marked “approved”
• Review and approval process, and delivery to platforms like YouTube or Vimeo

DEMO LABORATORY: Effortless Multi-Office File Exchange for Real-Time Collaboration with Synology

Start Learning Now

How much easier would your life be if your team members at different sites could share large files efficiently, with everything protected in the cloud? Attend this live demo to learn how to:

• Set up cross-office collaboration with faster, simpler local access
• Reduce bandwidth consumption by syncing files on multiple NAS devices just once
• Generate shared links, files, or folders to deliver content to external clients
• Efficiently and easily backup and sync all your NAS devices to the cloud

CONTENT DISTRIBUTION 101: Ultra-Fast Worldwide Content Delivery with Cloudflare

Start Learning Now

Are you ready to take your content worldwide? You, too, can have a simple, fast, incredibly cost effective solution for your website or content service up and running in minutes. Attend this event to learn how to:

• Improve end-user experience with global caching and optimization
• Eliminate egress fees for content movement
• Compare cost savings of Backblaze and Cloudflare vs. S3 and Cloudfront
• Quickly build a pilot workflow at no cost

CONTENT AGILITY 101: Unlocking Immediate Content Value for Remote Teams & Partners with Imagen

Start Learning Now

Do you need to unlock value in your existing assets and keep your remote teams productive? You can watch this recording to learn:

• How broadcaster, sports, and corporate video creative teams can manage, distribute, and deliver content remotely
• How Imagen’s monetization and delivery features integrate with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
• How a sports video customer quickly pivoted from live events using existing content
• How Carleton College deployed a student content solution in only five days

REMOTE PRODUCTION 101: Full-Resolution Editing Environments for Distributed Teams with ProMax

Start Learning Now

Do your video editing teams need to work remotely on short notice, without sacrificing access to content stored on the main shared system? Watch this class to learn how you can:

• Rapidly deploy remote content servers that deliver full-resolution content to editors
• Keep remote and main studio content in sync, even with limited remote bandwidth
• Protect the entire content library and add flexible content delivery with cloud storage
• Reintegrate the remote environments back into the main shared system, ready to deploy to the next site

DEMO LABORATORY: Truly Painless Backup and Sync with Goodsync

Start Learning Now

Do you need rock-solid backup and synchronization of your critical systems and high-value folders, but aren’t sure where to start? Watch this class to learn how to set up reliable backup and sync in minutes, and pick up best practices along the way. Topics covered include:

• Goodsync overview for Mac, Windows, Linux, and NAS systems
• One minute setup—configuring Goodsync with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
• Five different ways to initiate backup and synchronization jobs
• Best practices with real-world examples from our customers

DEMO LABORATORY: Cloud-to-Cloud Data Migration with Flexify.IO

Start Learning Now

Want your cloud storage spending to go farther for you, but concerned about the cost or complexity of moving between clouds? Fear not. In this class, you’ll learn how Flexify.IO and Backblaze can help you:

• Easily and inexpensively transfer data from one cloud provider to another
• Eliminate downtime during cloud-to-cloud migration
• Choose the right cloud storage to meet your workflow needs

DEMO LABORATORY: A Hybrid Cloud Approach to Media Management with iconik

Start Learning Now

In their move toward cloud workflows, content owners are looking for solutions that manage content stored on-premises seamlessly with content in the cloud. Backblaze partner iconik built their smart media management system with this hybrid cloud approach in mind. With iconik, you don’t have to wait for all your content to be in the cloud before you and your creative team can take advantage of their cloud-based platform. In this class, iconik expert Mike Szumlinski details how you can:

• Get started with cloud-based media management without migrating any content
• Search and preview all your content from any device, anywhere
• Add collaborators on the fly, including view-only licenses at no charge
• Instantly ingest content stored in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage into iconik

CLOUD TRANSCODING 101: Powerful Pay-As-You-Go Video Transcoding with Qencode

Start Learning Now

How could more compact transcoding help your customers load and playback videos faster, and help your bottom line too? Attend this event and learn how you can:

• Optimize your video files for fast load times on low bandwidth connections
• Cut content library storage and CDN costs by reducing file sizes
• Get the highest video quality possible at low bitrates, automatically

QUALITY CONTROL 101: Streamlining Quality Control Delivery with Venera Technologies

Start Learning Now

How, if at all, does quality control (QC) help you deliver more, better, and faster? QC might sound scary or boring, yet a cloud-based solution can instantly and automatically flag errors, adjust formatting for changing delivery standards, and more. Attend this webinar to learn how to:

• Choose a QC strategy that works for your whole team
• Use QC tools to flag content errors in even the fastest-paced workflow
• Adopt best practices for efficiency in rising and falling workloads

SOLUTION DEEP DIVE: Tapping the Power of Cloud Copy and Sync with Rclone

Start Learning Now

Rclone is the powerful, free open-source tool at the heart of many copy, sync, and cloud migration workflows. Join rclone’s creator to go deep on using its simple command line interface to:

• Optimize your copy/sync in line with best practices
• Mirror storage for security without adding complexity
• Transfer data reliably despite limited bandwidth and/or intermittent connection

HARD DRIVE STATS 101: Backblaze Hard Drive Report: Q3 2020 Deep Dive Q&A

Start Learning Now

The newest report published October 20 is based on over 153,727 spinning hard drives. Author Andy Klein will be on hand to answer your range of questions and give insights on requested topics such as:

• Emerging trends from Q3 2020
• Key metrics such as Drive Days and Annualized Failure Rate
• How to download and compile the raw data for your own reports

CONTENT DELIVERY 101: Freeing Cloud Content With Backblaze and Fastly

Start Learning Now

Do you see your site or service’s growth hindered by the unnecessary costs and complexities of a closed platform? Are you unsure how to make a change with zero user-impact? Join this live talk to learn:

• How to avoid commonly limiting content storage and platform issues
• How to design and architecture best practices to deliver a scalable, cost-effective solution
• How to transform storage content dynamically and deliver it faster globally
• How to serve content resiliently while executing change and storage migration

The post Cloud University—Online and in Session Today appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Getting started with cloud storage is easy. You can sign up for an account in seconds, and in minutes you can have directories full of files from your latest project in your cloud account, accessible to you and anyone you want to share the files with. If you have dozens or even hundreds of terabytes of data already, however, uploading it all into your cloud storage bucket, or transferring it there from another cloud service will take a bit of careful planning.

Six Rapid Data Ingestion Tools for Moving Files to the Cloud

Thankfully, whether you’re looking to transfer a significant amount of data from your on-premises solution to the cloud, or you’d like to escape the grips of a cloud storage provider like Amazon S3 without breaking your budget, Backblaze has worked hard to ensure you have any number of pathways to, from, and around the cloud. We’ve gathered six of our favorite services and partnerships for transferring or migrating your data.

Quick and Affordable Uploads to the Cloud with the Fireball

Many of our customers have used our Backblaze Fireball rapid ingest service to migrate large data sets from their on-premises environments into Backblaze cloud storage quickly, affordably, and securely.

How it works: we send you a Backblaze Fireball, a 96TB hard drive array with 10GigE connectivity. You copy files to the Fireball directly or through a data transfer tool of your choice. (Backup, sync, and archive tools are great for that.) Once you’re done, return the Fireball to Backblaze and we’ll securely upload the files to your Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage account inside one of our data centers. Fireball service is priced at $550 per 30-day rental, which gives you a comfortable window of time to load your data.

This service has proved to be a customer favorite because even with high speed internet connections, it can take months to transfer data sets to the cloud. Fireball can get you up and running in weeks. For example, after KLRU—the PBS affiliate in Austin, Texas—completed their digital restoration project of more than four decades of Austin City Limits shows, they used the Fireball to efficiently load the entire 40 terabyte video library into B2 Cloud Storage.

Similarly, creative agency Baron & Baron jump-started their entrance into cloud backups with the Fireball. Using Archiware, they created full backups of all of their servers into Fireballs, which were then uploaded securely into their B2 account much quicker than if they’d backed up over their internet connection.

As popular as the Fireball is, not all of our customers use it to get started. Some don’t have dozens of terabytes to upload at once. Others have access to high-speed internet connections, or their content wasn’t organized enough to justify renting a Fireball for a single bulk upload to the cloud. These customers opted for other pathways to migrate their data into the cloud that we’ll outline below.

No Rush? Try Internet Transfers with Cyberduck and Transmit 5

If you don’t have a huge digital library to upload or don’t generate terabytes of data every day, your existing internet connection may be sufficient for your transfer. And with the right tools you won’t have to wait too long. B2 Cloud Storage is integrated with two tools—Cyberduck and Transmit 5—that use multi-threading to transfer large files much faster.

• Cyberduck runs on both macOS and Windows. It’s open-source, free software, but their team of volunteers will gladly accept donations to help them develop, maintain, and distribute it.
• Transmit 5 by Panic runs on macOS. You can try it out for free for seven days or keep it forever for $45 per license. Volume discounts are available.

If you want to learn more about how multi-threading makes this speed boost possible, you can read more about the basics of threading here. The short version is that before transmission, large files are broken into chunks that are simultaneously transferred across multiple threads, then recompiled after transmission is complete. If you’re transferring video, high-resolution photos, or other large files, these file transfer tools are well-worth the effort of installing them, and more than worth their inexpensive cost.

One Backblaze media customer took this approach for migrating their decades-old digital archive to the cloud. They started by backing up their active projects to the cloud to protect against far-too-often accidental deletions. Then, in the background, they gradually copied their archive of finished projects and raw footage from on-premises storage to the cloud. The complete archive migration took months to finish, but that was acceptable given their ability to maintain their copies on existing on-premises storage during the process.

Boost Large File Transfers with FileCatalyst

If your existing internet bandwidth is sufficient for your day-to-day needs, but you occasionally need to transfer high volumes of data quickly—for example, after videotaping a weekend conference—look to fast file transport solutions like FileCatalyst.

FileCatalyst accelerates file transfers between remote locations even when there is high network latency or packet loss—in other words, when the connection is unreliable and weak—allowing you to send at speeds up to 10Gbps. Optimized for large data sets, its proprietary technologies include UDP-based protocol that’s much faster than standard TCP (the other main protocol computers use to communicate over the internet).

As a software-only solution, FileCatalyst doesn’t require customers to add special hardware or make bandwidth upgrades. Service starts at $300/month, and is available as a month-to-month subscription with no additional data transfer charges or bandwidth caps. Consumption pricing and perpetual license pricing are also available.

FileCatalyst has been integrated with Backblaze cloud storage for two years and is a solution we recommend to customers who need to transfer data on the order of 10 terabytes or more per day. With this solution you can get all the footage from that weekend conference transferred and available to editors come Monday morning.

Pay-As-You-Go with MASV Fast File Transfer

MASV is a recent Backblaze integration that also offers fast file transfer services, but on a pay-as-you-go basis. MASV runs in your web browser, so you don’t need to download and install any software. This simplicity makes MASV perfect for delivering content to and from clients who would rather login and drag-and-drop files than download software and train their team.

Have you ever struggled with keeping content for collaborative teams organized? With MASV, you can provide a simple Portals page where contributors can upload huge media files and share across the team members without requiring direct access to the project’s cloud storage buckets. MASV not only moves the large files faster, but also makes it easier for contributors to get started, and reduces the risk of disruption. And MASV’s pay-as-you-go 25 cents/GB pricing means you only pay for what the team actually uses. A free 7-day trial lets you test it out.

Smart Applications for a “Hybrid Cloud” Approach with iconik

Knowing that their customers increasingly are keeping their data on different types of storage simultaneously, some vendors are building their applications to access and manage data wherever it’s stored, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

B2 Cloud Storage is integrated with iconik, a media asset management (MAM) platform that was designed with this hybrid cloud approach in mind. With iconik, all your assets appear in the same visual interface, regardless of where they’re stored. The cloud-based MAM generates and stores proxies or thumbnails in the cloud, but keeps full-resolution files in their original location. iconik downloads the full-resolution files to the user only when needed.

This hybrid cloud is great when you want the flexibility of the cloud, but want to migrate there in stages. As we’ve noted above, it can take time to move everything to the cloud and it’s easier for people to do it on their own schedule. According to their recent Media Stats Report, iconik customers are making good use of this flexibility, with 53% of iconik-managed assets stored in the cloud and 47% stored on-premises.

Backblaze customer Fin Films took this approach when they moved to the cloud. Owner Chris Aguilar was painfully aware of how vulnerable content on aging hard drives can be; he had to pay a drive reconstruction team to salvage footage before. So, Fin Films uploaded their most irreplaceable content to B2 cloud storage first, then began gradually moving other content.

As they were migrating content to their new cloud archive, Fin Films rolled out iconik to manage their assets better. iconik’s “bring your own storage” approach meant that they didn’t have to pull down their content from Backblaze and upload it to iconik. And iconik’s pay-as-you-use-it pricing allowed Chris Aguilar to add collaborators on the fly, and share his content quickly by adding view-only licenses at no charge. Pricing for iconik starts at $250/month for a small team.

Move from Cloud to Cloud with Flexify.IO

Sometimes the difficulty isn’t getting data into the cloud, it’s moving data from one cloud service to another. Transferring your data from one cloud storage service to another isn’t as easy or inexpensive as you might hope. Cloud providers offer different capabilities and more significantly, dramatically different pricing. As is true with moving your household, hiring experts to do the job can save you a lot of time and stress. Enter Flexify.IO.

Flexify.IO offers cloud data migration services that simplify moving or copying your data between cloud storage providers. The service ensures maximum throughput by using cloud internet connections, as opposed to your local internet bandwidth, and eliminates downtime during migration. And it’s now fully integrated with Backblaze cloud storage, with special pricing for migrating data from AWS to Backblaze.

Video production company AK Productions recently used Flexify.IO to move their video content to B2 Cloud Storage from Google Cloud Storage. They had found their Google cloud service took hours to manage—time they couldn’t afford to spend while growing their business. They were also worried about the privacy of their clients’ important data on Google.

Partnering with Flexify.IO, Backblaze successfully migrated 12 terabytes of data stored on Google Cloud to B2 Cloud Storage in 12 hours. Transferring that amount of data via standard business connections can take weeks, months, or even longer. AK Productions was able to achieve all of this with no disruption to their project workflows. Even with the cost of egress fees from Google, the business will break even and start realizing significant cost savings in approximately six months.

So Many Choices for So Many Pathways to the Cloud

We know choosing the right path to the cloud for your organization when there are so many choices can be difficult. For that reason, we’ve created the Backblaze Cloud University, a series of on demand webinars covering media workflows.

The post Pathways to the Cloud: Six Tools for Moving Your Files appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Who hasn’t considered starting their own online business?

Do a quick internet search for “how to start an online business” and you’ll find a wealth of platforms available to help get you started—Shopify, Squarespace, and the list goes on and on. But if your business idea is centered around video, audio, or images, you’ll need to search beyond the standard tools. Something built for a standard consumer-focused storefront almost certainly wasn’t built to manage large numbers of huge files.

Here at Backblaze we’re working with a growing number of entrepreneurs who are scaling their dreams by using Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage to fuel media-oriented online businesses. And today, we’re sharing a conversation we had with Backblaze customer Andrew Knox, who built the industry’s largest independent music licensing marketplace using cloud services.

A performer and composer in his own right, Andrew worked for years as a matchmaker between artists who wanted to be discovered, and filmmakers, ad agencies, and other creatives searching for the perfect music for their next production. After seeing an opportunity in the music licensing market and finding media-capable cloud services, he launched Kontent Core, a music service that not only connects musicians, music labels and creatives, but also helps them navigate complex licensing negotiations—all built without him having to buy and maintain any servers or storage of his own.

Choosing To Launch a Business with Zero CapEx

Janet Lafleur: Many thanks for taking the time, Andrew. So, to start, tell us what music licensing was like in the dark ages, that is: before Kontent Core?

Andrew Knox: It was a heavy paper pushing, phone calling, CD filing and brain hurting task that took a lot of time. The entire music catalogue from over 15 publishers from the past 30 years was logged in my head. Now I can access 80 different catalogues with over 2.5M tracks without having to remember which CD number the track I’m thinking of was on. It makes it a lot easier to do my job quickly and efficiently: Now, you can get licensing rates as well as find the perfect track even when your head is a little foggy trying to remember where you stumbled upon it yesterday.

JL: Sounds like a huge improvement, but take us from point A to B. What pushed you to launch the business? Was it how manual everything was in the past? Or something else?

AK: It was competition. There was a platform that was launched that disrupted the industry in a negative way. All of my friends and clients (and friends who are also clients) said that I should create my own platform. They were familiar with my process, and knew I could develop a better system that would be more business friendly for artists and publishers and users.

JL: Okay, let’s talk about the early days of Kontent Core. We understand that your friends were urging you to launch this service. How did you know that you wanted it to be a cloud-based operation?

AK: It had to be cloud-based because there’s no other efficient way to deliver a ton of content to the user. In the old days, people used hard drives that they had to update themselves. I knew we had to be flexible so our clients could access content from anywhere in the world. For early stage companies the answer is pretty simple: Cloud is inexpensive and you don’t have to worry about anything breaking. I had a server for my studio and it lasted 5 years, then crashed. It was a waste of money.

Cloud is inexpensive and you don’t have to worry about anything breaking. I had a server for my studio and it lasted 5 years, then crashed. It was a waste of money.

JL: That makes sense. But there are a lot of cloud storage services out there, why did you choose Backblaze?

AK: Cloud storage is important because we have a lot of music that is sent to us every month and we need to easily keep it updated. Backblaze not only has great customer service but it is also very affordable, which is obviously valuable for our tight-margin business. We can keep costs down for our clients and we don’t have to charge our artists to be on Kontent Core because the costs work for us and our business model. Because of Backblaze, we can offer a free marketplace for our artists. That’s key because artists don’t have a lot of cash to pay for monthly storage to get their music heard by decision makers.

JL: So how do the artists actually get discovered? How does a potential licensee search for music on the site and share it with their team?

AK: There are several options. They can choose individual tracks, create playlists, or create a link to downloadable playlists and share all of the above via email. Many of our clients want to send downloadable links to their decision makers, but we need to make sure that the sharing stops there. We don’t want the music to get spread all throughout the universe. We are very protective of the content that is on our platform. Other sharing systems don’t have the security or care about the content that is being shared. We do because we are a professional platform.

JL: Once the licensee decides they like something enough to use it in production, how does Kontent Core manage the licensing and permissions?

AK: We act as agent for the music publishing companies that live on Kontent Core. The license is on our paper. All licensing and administration is managed via our patent-pending administration system. Everything is buttoned up. We are not an aggregator—we have agreements with all of the Kontent Core content creators. We also offer E&O insurance on every license so our clients can trust that every track is protected and we have their back if there’s ever any issue.

Because of Backblaze, we can offer a free marketplace for our artists. That’s key because artists don’t have a lot of cash to pay for monthly storage to get their music heard by decision makers.

JL: What does the marketplace actually look like? How many choices does a licensee have? How many artists and labels have you signed on?

AK: We have over 2.5M music and SFX tracks on our platform from over 70 professional and well known providers. Indie labels, Production Music, Individual artists and soon we will be adding beats and loops from reputable producers.

JL: Since you founded Kontent Core, you’ve also founded a remastering service to give clients’ audio content greater depth, definition, clarity and stereo imaging. Does ReMasterMedia also use cloud storage and cloud compute services?

AK: ReMasterMedia is a cloud-based audio mastering service we are providing for Kontent Core content creators to master their music tracks as well as other clients that want to master their music, podcasts, or commercials specifically for internet and broadcast distribution. Recently we partnered up with a radio station that uses our online service to optimize digital downloads before they play the songs on the air. We are looking into implementing storage capabilities with Backblaze for our ReMasterMedia clients to store their mastered files as well as leveraging it for other machine learning and AI capabilities.

JL: With cloud services you don’t have to predict how much storage or compute power your business will need because you’re not buying hardware. How important was that for you? Did you have any idea how much content you’d be hosting?

AK: We never know at a given time how much content we will be receiving from our content providers so knowing that we can easily scale up or down depending on the storage needs is very important. From a cost point of view, we don’t want to invest in storage that is just sitting there waiting for us to utilize it nor do we want to maintain it.

Knowing that we can easily scale up or down depending on storage needs is very important. From a cost point of view, we don’t want to invest in storage that is just sitting there, waiting for us to utilize it.

JL: And are your cloud costs predictable and affordable? Have there been any surprises?

AK: They are pretty stable. No surprises yet!

JL: What’s the most popular feature that you didn’t expect?

AK: Our budget search is amazing. Clients have certain budgets they need to work within and all they need to do is put in the data parameters and then start a search. Only music that will fit within their budget will be returned. We also have statistics directly connected to the front end of our platform so users can check and see anonymously what genres are popular, what type of clearances are being licensed the most, what are popular search words, etc. Data is king and we don’t hide it up in the castle.

JL: We’re definitely with you on that front. Keeping data available and useful is at the core of our service. But of course we’re dying to know, what’s next for Kontent Core?

AK: That’s top secret! Invest in us and we will tell you. We are currently raising funds to build version 2 of our platform which will increase our scalability, UI/UX, and provide more versatile content for different markets.

JL: All right, all right we’ll wait and see. What about what’s next for you? You’re a talented performer and composer, when you get done with your workday, what instrument do you pick up? And what are you working on?

AK: My main instrument is my voice. So I carry it with me all day and sing a lot of different themes. There’s always an original tune or two that I’m noodling around in my head so when I do have time one day to sit down and compose, my symphony will just easily pour out… or maybe it will be an opera or musical… who knows. I’m still noodling.

JL: What about us, then? If Backblaze wants to license a theme song, do you have any recommendations?

AK: Oh, what a great question. Here’s an easy answer: “Just Like Fire” by Pink, featured in the movie “Alice Through The Looking Glass.”

JL: Excellent, we’ll kick that around and see if people here are ready to adopt it. We have already had one song written in our honor, so there is a precedent for it…

The post Launching a Zero-Infrastructure Media Business appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Everything that makes working at a creative agency exciting also makes it challenging. With each new client, creative teams are working on something different. One day they’re on site, shooting a video for a local business, the next they’re sifting through last year’s concert footage for highlights to promote this year’s event. When their juices are flowing, it’s as easy for them to lose track of the files they need as it is for them to lose track of time.

If you’re tasked with making sure a team’s content is protected every day, as well as ensuring that it’s organized and saved for the future, we have some tips to make your job easier. Because we know you’d rather be working on your own projects, not babysitting backups or fetching years-old content from a dusty archive closet.

Since we’re sure you’re not making obvious mistakes—like expecting creatives to manually archive their own content, or not having a 3-2-1 backup strategy—we’ll focus on the not-so-obvious tips. Many of these come straight from our own creative agency customers who learned the hard way, before they rolled out a cloud-based backup and archive solution.

5 Tips for Creative Agencies to Manage Their Backups and Archives

Tip #1—Save everything when a client’s project is completed

For successful creative agencies, there’s no such thing as “former” clients, only clients that you haven’t worked with lately. That means your job managing client data isn’t over when the project is delivered. You need to properly archive everything: not just the finished videos, images or layouts, but all the individual assets created for the project and all the raw footage.

It’s not unusual for clients to request raw footage, even years after the project is complete. If you only saved master copies and can’t send them all of their source footage, your client may question how you manage their content, which could impact their trust in you for future projects.

The good news is that if you have an organized, accessible content archive, it’s easy to send a drive or even a download link to a client. It may even be possible for you to charge clients to retrieve and deliver their content to them.

Update per comment from ScarfMonster: Keep in mind that some clients may limit how long you can retain their content on your storage. Since different clients have different requirements, you’ll need to put processes in place to retain or delete content per specific client agreements.

Tip #2—Stop using external drives for backup or archive

If your agency uses external disk drives to back up or archive your projects, you’re not alone. Creative teams do it because it’s dead simple: you plug the drive in, copy project files to it, unplug the drive, and put it on a shelf or in a drawer. But there are some big problems with this.

First, since external drives are removable, they’re easily misplaced. It’s not unusual for someone to take a drive offsite to work on a project and forget to return it. Second, removable drives can fail over time after being damaged by physical impacts, water, magnetic fields, or even “bit rot” from just sitting on a shelf. Finally, locating client files in a stack of drives can be like finding a needle in a haystack, especially if the editor who worked on the project has left the agency.

Tip #3—Organize your archive for self-service access

Oh, the frustration of knowing you already have a clip that would be perfect for a new project, but… who knows where it is? With the right tools in place, a producer’s frustration doesn’t mean you’ll have to drop everything and join their search party. Even if you’re not sure you need a full-featured MAM, your time would be well-spent to find a solution that allows creatives to search and retrieve files from the archive on their own.

Look for software that lets them browse through thumbnails and proxies instead of file names, and allows them to search based on metadata. Your archive storage shouldn’t force you to be on site and instantly available to load LTO tapes and retrieve those clips the editor absolutely and positively has to have today.

Tip #4—Schedule regular tests for backup restores and archive retrievals

When you first set up your backup system, I’m sure you checked that the backups were firing off on schedule, and tested restoring files and folders. But have you done it lately? Since the last time you checked, any number of things could have changed that would break your backups.

Maybe you added another file share that wasn’t included in the initial set up. Perhaps your backup storage has reached capacity. Maybe an operating system upgrade on a workstation is incompatible with your backup software. Perhaps the automated bill payment for a backup vendor failed. Bad things can happen when you’re not looking, so it’s smart to schedule time at least once a month to test your backups and restores. Ditto for testing your archives.

Tip #5 – Plan for long-term archive media refresh

If your agency has been in business more than a handful of years, you probably have content stored on media that’s past its expiration date. (Raise your hand if you still have client content stored on Betacam.) Drive failures increase significantly after 4 years (see our data center’s latest hard drive stats), and tape starts to degrade around 15 years. Even if the media is intact, file formats and other technologies can become obsolete quicker than you can say LTO-8. The only way to ensure access to archived content is to migrate it to newer media and/or technologies. This unglamorous task sounds simple—reading the data off the old media and copying it to new media—but the devil is in the details.

Of course, if you backup or archive to Backblaze B2 cloud storage, we’ll migrate your data to newer disk drives for you as needed over time. It all happens behind the scenes so you don’t ever need to think about it. And it’s included free with our service.

Want to see how all these tips works together? Join our live webinar co-hosted with Archiware on Tuesday, December 10, and we’ll show you how Baron & Baron, the agency behind the world’s top luxury brands from Armani to Zara, solved their backup and archive challenges.

The post Top 5 Not-So-Obvious Backup & Archive Tips for Creative Agencies appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Start spreading the news, we’re leaving next week.
We’re going to be a part of it, NAB New York!

Did you know that NAB Show — the premiere technology expo for media & entertainment held every year in Las Vegas — also offers a fall show in New York City? They do. And yes, we’ll be there. We couldn’t turn down an event in the media capital of the nation, if not the world.

New York City is home to the Big Four broadcast networks, and is a global center for newspaper, book, and magazine publishing, the music industry, independent filmmaking, and online media. That makes New York a great place to visit existing customers and to meet new ones.

New York Customers That Backblaze

A number of New York-based creative agencies are B2 customers, including Baron & Baron, the agency that’s the driving force behind some of the world’s most celebrated luxury fashion and beauty brands. Our creative director and co-founder, Casey, got a big kick out of laying out their case study. It’s not every day that he gets to work with eye-catching imagery from the likes of Coach, Dior, and Armani. But that’s just one agency of many long-term B2 customers based in New York City. That’s not surprising since seven of the top eight global advertising agencies are headquartered in NYC. (Cue the theme music to Mad Men.)

New York City is also ground central for the growing number of online media companies, from online-only news outlets like Huffpost, Business Insider, Vox, and Vice, to digital-first brands and online instructional sites like B2 customer Panna Cooking. Being digital natives, it’s no surprise that online media companies have been quick to adopt cloud storage.

Finally, one-third of all American independent films are produced in New York City. (Don’t tell Hollywood!) At NAB New York we will be debuting a new case study for a documentary filmmaker whose craft has him riding the waves all over the world. Watching his films, you can almost feel the spray on your face and the waves beneath your feet.

Visit Backblaze at NAB New York

If you’ll be in New York on October 16-17, please stop by our booth #N756 at the Javits Center. We’ll be celebrating 10 years of our Backblaze Storage Pod, so we’ll have our latest pod in our booth for you to get up close and personal with one of Silicon Valley’s first open-source hardware projects. If you want to spend more time exploring how B2 could fit into your workflow, our calendars are open for you to schedule an appointment and we’ll have a special gift waiting for you.

Our distributor PVT will also offer live demos across the aisle in their booth #N757, showing B2 in action with integrated workflow applications from Archiware and iconik. You can also visit other integrated application partners at their own booths, including CatDV #N660, EditShare #N345, Facilis #N136, FileCatalyst #N159, GB Labs #N359, and GrayMeta #N1120.

Finally, if you don’t have a pass to the show, register using our code NY9776 and the expo hall, on-floor sessions, and select networking events are completely FREE.

Only in New York Top Picks from Backblaze Staff

Of course, a trip to New York City isn’t all business. The Backblaze folks attending the show make a point of carving out time for some of their favorite things you can only experience in New York. And we’d like to share some of our faves with you.

Nilay Patel, Vice President of Sales
When Nilay can squeeze it in, he heads to the Upper East Side for a real gentleman’s haircut at Paul Molé barber shop, New York City’s first. After that, he’ll be ready to stroll in style down the High Line park and up to the rooftop bar at the Standard Hotel.

Terry LoBianco, Director of Sales
Terry feels inspired by the grand architecture of New York City, and Grand Central Terminal’s Beaux Arts design is among her favorites. Her plan is to stop in for cocktails at the Campbell Bar inside the station. She’ll be having a Manhattan of course!

Skip Levens, Director of Product Marketing
I don’t know if it qualifies as traditional New York pizza, but Skip is salivating just remembering the pizza the team had at Tappo Thin Crust Pizza last year. Like a good native Californian, Skip craves the salads at Tappo too. And after he tears down our booth, he hopes to catch the opening of the Chelsea Film Festival that’s a hop, skip, and a jump from Javits.

Elton Carneiro, Director of Partnerships
Poor Elton. He’s been craving Goa-style food at Bombay Bread Bar. But alas, celebrity Chef Floyd Cardoz closed up shop just two weeks before his arrival. He’s crossing his fingers that it will reopen somewhere else in the city. Anyone know? If not, Elton will have to wait for a trip to Mumbai.

Vincent Montez, Business Development Representative
Vincent was quick to report that the Flat Iron Room was his top pick. His dream is to splurge for the pricey Ultimate Japanese whisky flight, but given his budget, he’ll probably settle on the more reasonably priced and geographically appropriate New York flight.

Pavithra Hari, Senior Sales Engineer
Pavithra has it all planned. First she’ll hit the Halal Guys original food truck on 53rd & 6th, then take the subway to the Empire State Building for the long elevator ride to the top. She’s well aware that there’s a Halal Guys restaurant a few blocks from Backblaze headquarters, but it’s just not the same.

Patrick Thomas, Head of Publishing
Leave it to Patrick to find the most healthy and introspective activities of the team: jogging on the Hudson River Greenway, sipping Japanese matcha tea at Ippodo, and if he’s lucky, catching an event at the New York City Poetry Society.

Janet Lafleur, Senior Product Marketing Manager
Sadly, Janet won’t be joining the crew in New York this year — someone has to hold down the fort. But she already has a plan for NAB New York 2020: jazz and soul food at Red Rooster in Harlem. Red Rooster comes highly recommended by Shaneika, a Backblaze account executive and native New Yorker. The seafood jambalaya will have to wait.

The post We <span style='color: red;'>♥</span> New York appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Prost! Skål! Cheers! Celebrate with us as we travel to Amsterdam for IBC, the premier conference and expo for media and entertainment technology in Europe. The show gives us a chance to raise a glass with our partners, customers, and future customers across the pond. And we’re especially pleased that IBC coincides with the opening of our new European data center.

How will we celebrate? With the Backblaze Partner Crawl, a rolling series of parties on the show floor from 13-16 September. Four of our Europe-based integration partners have graciously invited us to co-host drinks and bites in their stands throughout the show.

If you can make the trip to IBC, you’re invited to toast us with a skål! with our Swedish friends at Cantemo on Friday, a prost! with our German friends at Archiware on Saturday, or a cheers! with UK-based friends at Ortana and GB Labs on Sunday or Monday, respectively. Or drop in every day and keep the Backblaze Partner Crawl rolling. And if you can’t make it to IBC this time, we encourage you to raise a glass and toast anyway.

Skål! on Friday With Cantemo

Cantemo’s iconik media management makes sharing and collaborating on media effortless, regardless of wherever you want to do business. Cantemo announced the integration of iconik with Backblaze’s B2 Cloud Storage last fall, and since then we’ve been amazed by customers like Everwell, who replaced all their on-premises storage with a fully cloud-based production workflow. For existing Backblaze customers, iconik can speed up your deployment by ingesting content already uploaded to B2 without having to download files and upload them again.
You can also stop by the Cantemo booth anytime during IBC to see a live demo of iconik and Backblaze in action. Or schedule an appointment and we’ll have a special gift waiting for you.

Join us at Cantemo on Friday 13 September from 16:30-18:00 at Hall 7 — 7.D67

Prost! on Saturday With Archiware

With the latest release of their P5 Archive featuring B2 support, Archiware makes archiving to the cloud even easier. Archiware customers with large existing archives can use the Backblaze Fireball to rapidly import archived content directly to their B2 account. At IBC, we’re also unveiling our latest joint customer, Baron & Baron, a creative agency that turned to P5 and B2 to back up and archive their dazzling array of fashion and luxury brand content.

Join us at Archiware on Saturday 14 September from 16:30-18:00 at Hall 7 — 7.D35

Cheers! on Sunday With Ortana

Ortana integrated their Cubix media asset management and orchestration platform with B2 way back in 2016 during B2’s beta period, making them among our first media workflow partners. More recently, Ortana joined our Migrate or Die webinar and blog series, detailing strategies for how you can migrate archived content from legacy platforms before they go extinct.

Join us at Ortana on Sunday 15 September from 16:30-18:00 at Hall 7 — 7.C63

Cheers! on Monday With GB Labs

If you were at the NAB Show last April, you may have heard GB Labs was integrating their automation tools with B2. It’s official now, as detailed in their announcement in June. GB Labs’ automation allows you to streamline tasks that would otherwise require tedious and repetitive manual processes, and now supports moving files to and from your B2 account.

Join us at GB Labs Monday 16 September from 17:00-18:00 at Hall 7 — 7.B26

Say Hello Anytime to Our Friends at CatDV

CatDV media asset management helps teams organize, communicate, and collaborate effectively, including archiving content to B2. CatDV has been integrated with B2 for over two years, allowing us to serve customers like UC Silicon Valley, who built an end-to-end collaborative workflow for a 22 member team creating online learning videos.

Stop by CatDV anytime at Hall 7 — 7.A51

But we’re not the only ones making a long trek to Amsterdam for IBC. While you’re roaming around Hall 7, be sure to stop by our other partners traveling from near and far to learn what our joint solutions can do for you:

• EditShare (shared storage with MAM) Hall 7 — 7.A35
• ProMax (shared storage with MAM) Hall 7 — 7.D55
• StorageDNA (smart migration and storage) Hall 7 — 7.A32
• FileCatalyst (large file transfer) Hall 7 — 7.D18
• eMAM (web-based DAM) Hall 7 — 7.D27
• Facilis Technology (shared storage) Hall 7 — 7.B48
• GrayMeta (metadata extraction and insight) Hall 7 — 7.D25
• Hedge (backup software) Hall 7 — 7.A56
• axle ai (asset management) Hall 7 — 7.D33
• Tiger Technology (tiered data management) Hall 7 — 7.B58

We’re hoping you’ll join us for one or more of our Partner Crawl parties. If you want a quieter place and time to discuss how B2 can streamline your workflow, please schedule an appointment with us so we can give you the attention you need.

Finally, if you can’t join us in Amsterdam, open a beer, pour a glass of wine or other drink, and toast to our new European data center, wherever you are, in whatever language you speak. As we say here in the States, Bottoms up!

The post A Toast to Our Partners in Europe at IBC appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Eighteen months ago, the few remaining LTO tape drive manufacturers announced the availability of LTO-8, the latest generation of the Linear Tape-Open storage technology. Yet today, almost no one is actually writing data to LTO-8 tapes. It’s not that people aren’t interested in upgrading to the denser LTO-8 format that offers 12 TB per cartridge, twice LTO-7’s six TB capacity. It’s simply that the two remaining LTO tape manufacturers are locked in a patent infringement battle. And that means LTO-8 tapes are off the market indefinitely.

The pain of this delay is most acute for media professionals who are always quick to adopt higher capacity storage media for video and audio files that are notorious storage hogs. As cameras get more sophisticated, capturing in higher resolutions and higher frame rates, the storage capacity required per hour of content shoots through the roof. For example, one hour of ProRes UltraHD requires 148.72 GB storage capacity, which is four times more than the 37.35 GB required for one hour of ProRes HD-1080. Meanwhile, falling camera prices are encouraging production teams to use more cameras per shoot, further increasing the capacity requirements.

Since its founding, the LTO Consortium has prepared for storage growth by setting a goal of doubling tape density with each LTO generation and committed to releasing a new generation every two to three years. While this lofty goal might seem admirable to the LTO Consortium, it puts customers with earlier generations of LTO systems in a difficult position. New generation LTO drives at best can only read tapes from the two previous generations. So once a new generation is announced, the clock begins ticking on data stored on deprecated generations of tapes. Until you migrate the data to a newer generation, you’re stuck maintaining older tape drive hardware that may be no longer supported by manufacturers.

How Manufacturer Lawsuits Led to the LTO-8 Shortage

How the industry and the market arrived in this painful place is a tangled tale. The lawsuit and counter-lawsuit that led to the LTO-8 shortage is a patent infringement dispute between Fuji and Sony, the only two remaining manufacturers of LTO tape media. The timeline is complicated, starting in 2016 with Fujifilm suing Sony, then Sony counter-suing Fuji. By March 2019, US import bans of LTO products of both manufacturers were in place.

In the middle of these legal battles, LTO-8 drive manufacturers announced product availability in late 2017. But what about the LTO-8 tapes? Fujifilm says they’re not currently manufacturing LTO-8 and have never sold them. And Sony says its US imports of LTO-8 have been stopped and won’t comment about when they will begin shipping again per the dispute. So no LTO-8 for you!

Note that having only two LTO tape manufacturers is a root cause of this shortage. If there were still six LTO tape manufacturers like there were when LTO was launched in 2000, a dispute between two vendors might not have left the market in the lurch.

Weighing Your Options — LTO-8 Shortage Survival Strategies

If you’re currently using LTO for backup or archive, you have a few options for weathering the LTO-8 shortage.

The first option is to keep using your current LTO generation and wait until the disputes settle out completely before upgrading to LTO-8. The downside here is you’ll have to buy more and more LTO-7 or LTO-6 tapes that don’t offer the capacity you probably need if you’re storing higher resolution video or other capacity-hogging formats. And while you’ll be spending more on tapes than if you were able to use the higher capacity newer generation tapes, you’ll also know that anything you write to old-gen LTO tapes will have to be migrated sooner than planned. LTO’s short two to three year generation cycle doesn’t leave time for legal battles, and remember, manufacturers guarantee at most two generations of backward compatibility.

A second option is to go ahead and buy an LTO-8 library and use LTO-7 tapes that have been specially formatted for higher capacity called LTO Type M (M8). When initialized as Type M media, LTO-7 can hold nine TB of data instead of the standard six TB LTO-7 cartridge initialized as Type A. That puts it halfway up to the 12 TB capacity of an LTO-8 tape. However, this extra capacity comes with several caveats:

• Only new, unused LTO-7 cartridges can be initialized as Type M.
• Once initialized as Type M, they cannot be changed back to LTO-7 Type A.
• Only LTO-8 drives in libraries can read and write to Type M, not standalone drives. [Correction: Standalone LTO-8 drives can read and write LTO-7 Type M tapes. Initializing them, however, requires special utilities to initialize LTO 7 tapes as Type M in stand-alone drives.]
• Future LTO generations — LTO-9, LTO-10, etc. — will not be able to read LTO-7 Type M.

So if you go with LTO-7 Type M for greater capacity, realize it’s still LTO-7, not LTO-8, and when you move to LTO-9, you won’t be able to read those tapes.

Managing Tape is Complicated

If your brain hurts reading this as much as mine does writing this, it’s because managing tape is complicated. The devil is in the details, and it’s hard to keep them all straight. When you have years or even decades of content stored on LTO tape, you have to keep track of which content is on which generation of LTO, and ensure your facility has the drive hardware available to read them, and hope that nothing goes wrong with the tape media or the tape drives or libraries.

In general, new drives can read two generations back, but there are exceptions. For example, LTO-8 can’t read LTO-6 because the standard changed from GMR (Giant Magneto-Resistance) heads to TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance Recording) heads. The new TMR heads can write data more densely, which is what drives the huge increase in capacity. But that means you’ll want to keep an LTO-7 drive available to read LTO-5 and LTO-6 tapes.

Beyond these considerations for managing the tape storage long-term, there are the day-to-day hassles. If you’ve ever been personally responsible for managing backup and archive for your facility, you’ll know that it’s a labor-intensive, never-ending chore that takes time from your real job. And if your setup doesn’t allow users to retrieve data themselves, you’re effectively on-call to pull data off the tapes whenever it’s needed.

A Third Option — Migrate from LTO to Cloud Storage

If neither of these options to the LTO-8 crisis sounds appealing, there is an alternative: cloud storage. Cloud storage removes the complexity of tape while reducing costs. How much can you save in media and labor costs? We’ve calculated it for you in LTO Versus Cloud Storage Costs — the Math Revealed. And cloud storage makes it easy to give users access to files, either through direct access to the cloud bucket or through one of the integrated applications offered by our technology partners.

At Backblaze, we have a growing number of customers who shifted from tape to our B2 Cloud Storage and never looked back. Customers such as Austin City Limits, who preserved decades of concert historical footage by moving to B2; Fellowship Church, who eliminated Backup Thursdays and freed up staff for other tasks; and American Public Television, who adopted B2 in order to move away from tape distribution to its subscribers. What they’ve found is that B2 made operations simpler and their data more accessible without breaking their budget.

Another consideration: once you migrate your data to B2 cloud storage, you’ll never have to migrate again when LTO generations change or when the media ages. Backblaze takes care of making sure your data is safe and accessible on object storage, and migrates your data to newer disk technologies over time with no disruption to you or your users.

In the end, the problem with tape isn’t the media, it’s the complexity of managing it. It’s a well-known maxim that the time you spend managing how you do your work takes time away from what you do. Having to deal with multiple generations of both tape and tape drives is a good example of an overly complex system. With B2 Cloud Storage, you can get all the economical advantages of tape as well as the disaster recovery advantages of your data being stored away from your facility, without the complexity and the hassles.

With no end in sight to this LTO-8 shortage, now is a good time to make the move from LTO to B2. If you’re ready to start your move to alway available cloud storage, Backblaze and our partners are ready to help you.

Migrate or Die, a Webinar Series on Migrating Assets and Archives to the Cloud

If you’re facing challenges managing LTO and contemplating a move to the cloud, don’t miss Migrate or Die, our webinar series on migrating assets and archives to the cloud.

The post Out of Stock: How to Survive the LTO-8 Tape Shortage appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.