Comments on: A Guide to Clouds: Object, File, and Block

By: Sabdiel Rivera

Sabdiel Rivera — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 20:16:33 +0000

Excellent article. This is exactly what I was looking for. These courses I am taking talk about the Cloud Storage Types like everybody and their mamas know what it is :/

By: jerry

jerry — Fri, 01 May 2020 12:48:58 +0000

Patrick, thanks for your well written article but after reading it I am unsure how this affects me, the potential user of Backblaze. What actions might I take that would determine which type of storage I will be using? Do I specify that when I open an account, or is it determined by the application I use to get my data to BB? For example, if I use Synology’s Cloud Sync, vs MSP’s Cloudberry, vs BB’s Web app, is there an implicit choice being made?

By: Patrick Thomas

Patrick Thomas — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 12:53:32 +0000

In reply to Jon Forrest. Thanks for the feedback, Jon! We tried to keep this a touch higher up for users attempting to gain a broad-strokes sense of the different storage types. But we'll keep your comment in mind for future updates to the text.

By: Jon Forrest

Jon Forrest — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 00:45:59 +0000

While the goal of this page is admirable, I think it causes more questions than it resolves. For example, what are the non-financial reasons why would you use object storage rather than file storage? As of now, there’s no difference between how much you can put in S3 compared to EFS. File storage is based on file systems, which have more complex semantics than object storage. If you need the features that this difference provides, then the choice is clear. That fact that so many people use pseudo-filenames in S3 shows that there’s no functional reason for object storage. In this case, the choice is probably based on cost and access patterns. There’s much more to be said about this.

Also, you say “These files are, in turn, organized in folders, and these folders are then arranged into directories”. This statement will confuse people new to storage concepts. There’s no difference between folders and directories.

By: Patrick Thomas

Patrick Thomas — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 14:45:55 +0000

In reply to Justin Winokur. Good point, Justin! For people who are more organizationally minded and don't have huge scaling on the horizon, this is definitely a reasonable approach.

By: Justin Winokur

Justin Winokur — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 12:48:28 +0000

I feel like it is worth mentioning that a lot of people use object storage as if it were file-storage and organize things into pseudo-folders by name. So while everything is flat and there is no concept of directories, a file names “this/is/my/file” will show as being in folders. That is how a lot of tools handle it including, if I recall correctly, B2’s web view.