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Backblaze B2 ​

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is a low cost object storage with an S3 compatible API. SFTP.cloud uses that API; the native B2 API is not needed.

Step 1: in the Backblaze console ​

  1. Create a bucket. Open Buckets, choose Create a Bucket, pick a globally unique name and keep Files in Bucket are: Private. On the bucket's card, note the Endpoint, for example s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com.
  2. Create an application key. Open Application Keys, choose Add a New Application Key, give it a name, restrict it to the one bucket, and grant Read and Write.
  3. Copy the two values, shown once: the keyID is your access key ID and the applicationKey is your access secret.

INFO

Only buckets created after May 2020 have an S3 compatible endpoint. If your bucket's card shows none, create a new bucket and copy the data over.

That is it for the Backblaze side. Now to the SFTP.cloud side.

Step 2: in your SFTP.cloud Storage Connector ​

Best performance

Backblaze has no compute of its own. Place the Storage Connector on a cloud or in a data center close to the region in your bucket's endpoint, where the uplink is best.

The first thing to do is to add a new Virtual File System. For B2 in particular there are a few small but important details:

  • Type: S3 (as for any other S3 compatible object store)
  • Region: the part of the endpoint between s3. and .backblazeb2.com, for example us-west-004
  • Endpoint: https:// followed by the endpoint on the bucket's card, for example https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com
  • Use path style addressing: off. B2 serves every bucket as its own host name.

WARNING

Do not forget to press the Save button next to the Access secret after typing it in, or it will not be saved and nothing will work.

When you save, the Connector tests the storage right away. If it cannot reach it, the form stays open and says why.

Then, still in the Storage Connector UI, go to the Users page and give your users the desired access to the new VFS.

Finally ​

Test it. Connect through your SFTP.cloud WebClient, create a folder, upload some files, then browse the bucket in the Backblaze console to see them land.

In the manual

General information about storage back ends