{"id":81885,"date":"2018-03-27T07:50:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T14:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=81885"},"modified":"2025-12-12T13:05:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:05:46","slug":"introducing-backblazes-rapid-ingest-service-fireball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/introducing-backblazes-rapid-ingest-service-fireball\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Backblaze\u2019s Rapid Ingest Service: B2 Fireball"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note, 12 February 2021:<\/strong> The Backblaze Fireball<\/a> has grown to hold 96TB of customer data, and with 10GigE network capability, it\u2019s even faster for migrating large data sets to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage<\/a>. Please refer to our Fireball<\/a> page for up-to-date pricing information.<\/div>\n

At Backblaze, we like to put ourselves in the customer\u2019s shoes. Specifically, we ask questions like \u201chow can we make cloud storage more useful?\u201d There is a long list of things we can do to help \u2014 over the last few weeks, we\u2019ve addressed some of them when we lowered the cost of downloading<\/a> data to $0.01 \/ GB. Today, we are pleased to publicly release our rapid ingest service, Fireball<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is the Backblaze B2 Fireball?<\/h3>\n

The Fireball is a hardware device, specifically a NAS device. Any Backblaze B2 customer can order it from inside their account. The Fireball device can hold up to 70 terabytes of data. Upon ordering, it ships from a Backblaze data center to you. When you receive it, you can transfer your data onto the Fireball using your internal network. Once your data transfer is complete, you send it back to a Backblaze data center. Finally, inside our secure data center, your data is uploaded from the Fireball to your account. Your data remains encrypted throughout the process. Step by step instructions can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"What<\/a><\/p>\n

Why Use the Fireball?<\/h3>\n
\u201cWe would not have been able to get this project off the ground without the B2\u00a0Fireball.\u201d \u2014\u00a0James\u00a0Cole, KLRU (Austin City Limits)<\/span><\/div>\n

For most customers, transferring large quantities of data isn\u2019t always simple. The need can arise as you migrate off of legacy systems (e.g. replacing LTO<\/a>) or simply on a project basis (e.g. transferring video shot in the field to the cloud). An common approach is to upload your data via the internet to the cloud storage vendor of your choosing. While cloud storage vendors don\u2019t charge for uploads, you have to pay your network provider for bandwidth. That\u2019s assuming you are in a place where the bandwidth can be secured.<\/p>\n

Your data is stored in megabytes (\u201cMB\u201d) but your bandwidth is measured in megabits per second (\u201cMbps\u201d). The difference<\/a>? An 80 Mbps upload connection will transfer no more than 10 MB per second. That means, in your best case scenario, you might be able to upload 50 terabytes in 50 days, assuming you use nearly all of your upload bandwidth for the upload.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking to migrate old backups from LTO or<\/a> even a large project, a 3 month lag time is not operationally viable. That\u2019s why multiple cloud storage<\/a> providers have introduced rapid ingest devices.<\/p>\n

How It Compares: Backblaze B2 Fireball vs AWS Snowball vs GCS Transfer Appliance<\/h2>\n
“We found the B2\u00a0Fireball much simpler and easier to use than Amazon’s Snowball. WunderVu had been looking for a cloud solution for security and simplicity, and B2 hit every check box.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Aaron\u00a0Rhodes, Executive Producer, WunderVu<\/span><\/div>\n

Every vendor that offers a rapid ingest service only lets you upload to that vendor\u2019s cloud. For example, you can\u2019t use an Amazon Snowball to upload to Google Cloud Storage. This means that when considering a rapid ingest service, you are also making a decision on what cloud storage vendor to use. As such, one should consider not only the cost of the rapid ingest service, but also how much that vendor is going to charge you to store and download your data.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nDevice Capacity<\/span><\/td>\nService Fee<\/span><\/td>\nShipping<\/span><\/td>\nCloud Storage<\/span>
\n$\/GB\/Month<\/span><\/td>\n		Download<\/span>
\n$\/GB<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Backblaze\u00a0B2<\/span><\/td>\n70 TB<\/span><\/td>\n$550
\n(30\u00a0day\u00a0rental)<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n		$75<\/span><\/td>\n$0.005<\/span><\/td>\n$0.01<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Amazon\u00a0S3<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n50 TB<\/span><\/td>\n$200
\n(10\u00a0day\u00a0rental)<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n		$? <\/span>*<\/sup><\/td>\n$0.021
\n+320%<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n		$0.05+
\n+500%<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Google\u00a0Cloud<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n100 TB<\/span><\/td>\n$300
\n(10\u00a0day\u00a0rental)<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n		$500<\/span><\/td>\n$0.020
\n+300%<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n		$0.08+
\n+800%<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

*<\/sup>AWS does not estimate shipping fees at the time of the Snowball order.<\/p>\n

To make the comparison easier, let\u2019s create a hypothetical case and compare the costs incurred in the first year. Assume you have 100 TB as an initial upload. But that\u2019s just the initial upload. Over the course of the year, let\u2019s consider a usage pattern where every month you add 5 TB, delete 2 TBs, and download 10 TBs.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nTransfer Cost<\/span><\/td>\nCloud Storage<\/a>\u00a0Fees<\/span><\/td>\nTotal Transfer +
\nCloud\u00a0Storage<\/a>\u00a0Fees<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Backblaze\u00a0B2<\/span><\/td>\n$1,250 <\/span>
\n(2\u00a0Fireballs)<\/span><\/td>\n		$9,570<\/span><\/td>\n$10,820<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Amazon\u00a0S3<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n$400<\/span>
\n(2 Snowballs)<\/span><\/td>\n		$36,114<\/span><\/td>\n$36,514<\/span>
\n+337%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Google\u00a0Cloud<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n$800 <\/span>
\n(1\u00a0transit)<\/span><\/td>\n		$39,684<\/span><\/td>\n$40,484<\/span>
\n+374%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Just looking at the first year, Amazon is 337% more expensive than Backblaze and Google is 374% more expensive than Backblaze.<\/p>\n

Put simply, Backblaze offers the lowest cost, high performance cloud storage<\/a> on the planet. During our public beta of the Fireball program we\u2019ve had extremely positive feedback around how the Fireball enables customers to get their projects started in a time efficient and cost effective way. We hope you\u2019ll give it a try<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Backblaze\u2019s rapid ingest service, Fireball<\/i>, graduates out of public beta. Our device holds 70 terabytes of customer data and is perfect for migrating large data sets to Backblaze’s B2 Cloud Storage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":82079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[443,7],"tags":[291,468],"class_list":["post-81885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backblaze-news","category-cloud-storage","tag-b2","tag-b2cloud","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Look at Our Fireball Rapid Data Transfer and Ingest Service<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Fireball is a hardware device, specifically a NAS device. The device holds 70 terabytes of customer data and is perfect for migrating large data sets. 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