Also you can choose from a vast array of other cloud options using ‘Cloud Sync Tasks’ its just that StorJ happens to be the provider TrueNAS is more tightly integrated with.
If all that is still no good you also have replication or rsync.
1 Like
Honestly I don’t exactly know what their reasons are for the restrictions, as I didn’t get the job. But what I do know is that they just will not trade with US hosting providers under any circumstances. Sadly I’m not allowed to discuss the job specifics, but from what they’ve discussed with me, I understand why this is a blocking issue for them. I did explain how Storj works underneath, including the restrictions for countries, but it’s a hard no from them. In their eyes, even with the data being encrypted and geo-restricted, it’s “US controlled” so it’s a no from them.
Sadly this is not the first time this has happened, which is why I’m unable to use TrueNAS in my solutions at this time (I do hope this changes, as it’s by far my preferred product).
They have no concerns about buying US equipment and software that they can host, it’s just where that data lives and who’s the broker for said data.
Sounds more like this is political more than technical.
Regardless as to whether this is political, the restriction is technical and that restriction means this cannot be used with certain clients or even certain industries entirely.
Ultimately, it’s all rather irrelevant for me, all I know is that a restriction of TrueCloud backup destinations has cost me work on multiple occasions. Truthfully, I’m also quite sympathetic to their concerns.
I feel it’s important to emphasize this is not an isolated occurrence for myself or indeed other peers of mine. Without being too specific, I know of peers who have been unable to deploy TrueNAS into industries like telcos because of these very restrictions.
Sadly, Cloud Sync Tasks and Replication Tasks aren’t comparable with TrueCloud Backups.
Cloud Sync does not support multiple versions on the destination, nor does it support encryption of filenames properly. The same is also true of rsync.
Replication tasks require ZFS to be the filesystem on the other end, which isn’t viable in many cases I deal with.
TrueCloud is a true, platform agnostic, encrypted offsite backup, rather than an offsite replication.
I think we can say a lot of things about TrueNAS but ‘restricted’ would not be one of them. It’s the swiss army knife of storage.
You have an array of options to backup your data but yes TrueNAS decided to invest a bit more time and effort into one particular product to make the backup process more seamless and integrated hence the additional benefits you mention around versioning. That would have required a lot of effort on their part and would take a huge amount more effort I would guess to have the same level of integration and continued support for all other vendors.
If you havent already then raise a feature request and let’s see if it gains any traction but from my standpoint I think TrueNAS users are spoilt for choice in this area.
I agree TrueNAS as a whole is indeed very open, however TrueCloud Backup isn’t, which is what we’re discussing here.
Frustratingly this is also something that is a key selling point for me on TrueNAS, otherwise I would just be spinning things up by hand on a standard Debian Linux server and using restic manually, like I used to.
As I listed previously, while there are plenty of options for replication, there is only one built in option for non-ZFS backup. Certainly I could use Apps to backup the data, but with Connect losing the single pane of glass for potentially all my clients would be a real drawback.
TrueCloud Backup is the correct solution for my clients and their needs; all I wish to do is raise a hand and say I’m unable to use it because of a specific restriction (which as I said earlier in this thread, I completely understand, development isn’t free and I’m happy to pay a license to use it with other services).
Honestly I thought I was chiming in here on an existing feature request topic, as this thread is tagged as one and has a good amount of discourse. Should I be raising a feature request somewhere else?
Ultimately, I have first hand experience on this being a problem. I know that businesses are deciding against TrueNAS based systems in favour of all in one storage NAS systems because this is not a problem they suffer with. TrueNAS is my preferred product of choice and I wish it could fit more needs.
2 Likes
This discussion is in the General Chat. You would need to create a feature request in the ‘Feature Request’ category so people can vote on it.
Perhaps in the feature request if you can give examples of other products that are free and also support all or at least some more cloud providers in ways TrueNAS currently does not. I’d focus on the functionality differences.
No, I cannot. There is a reason why both rclone and restic exist; the former is a file synchronization tool (and is good at it), the latter a backup one (and is good at it). I can do with restic what I cannot with rclone, thanks to the metadata it manages. In fact I already do, I just needed to script it instead of using the tools my TrueNAS instance already has.
Regardless of how the iX managers want to spin it, the limit of the true (pun intended) cloud backup to their partner only is a business decision, not a technical one. Even the cloud_backup.create API documents several attributes for example stating “Valid only for S3/Google/Dropbox provider.”, it just returns a “not implemented” if one actually tries. The developers themselves quite obviously coded for restic in general, not a single provider.
No one likes to have his/her choices artificially limited, especially not to a single option. For me it would be more logical to license the TrueCloud Backup as such and give multiple options, than giving it out for free, but limited to a single provider.
4 Likes
Exactly this. This is an artificial limit. And to make it clear. In the current political situation most of the European companies are done with the US government. This government is a no go and TrueNas requires support for multiple providers in this area.
To compare the cloud sync tasks with the True cloud backup is a joke.
In the end proxmox backup system shows how it is done. No artificial limits. You pay a license for the feature/software itself and there is no vendor lock in.
1 Like
I understand the cost-control challenges internet infrastructure operators face, especially with the significant increase in hard drive and memory prices.
In recent months, I’ve received notices of price increases from Bitwarden, Hetzner, AWS, GCP, and many budget VPS providers, and even domain names are seeing price hikes.
This means that for many, the Storj price increase is part of a broader wave of price hikes across the services they rely on, rather than an isolated event. Storj increases by $4 per month, but a single user might incur hundreds of dollars in extra costs annually due to using multiple services simultaneously, leading to widespread user discontent across various communities.
The core issue isn’t the timeliness or transparency of notifications, but the act of raising prices itself. Company finance staff find their costs too high, and competitors are raising prices, so they do the same. However, they often overlook the ripple effects of simultaneous price increases across multiple providers and services—a large amount of unnecessary demand disappears from the market, causing overall market contraction.
A 500% price change is too much of a shock for many users, especially Storj users who typically possess technical skills and can migrate to other providers or even reduce long-term costs by purchasing used hard drives and tape drives. This effectively eliminates the corresponding market space for cloud storage.
Storj might argue that this action eliminates many low-paying, low-value users, thereby increasing the average spending per user. However, the most difficult thing is always getting a free user to pay $1, not getting an existing paying user to pay more. Like most vendors, Storj chose the simplest yet most difficult approach.
StorJ does offer 3 specific regions and 4 regions if you select the default Global option.
Storj operates three primary satellites in different regions to support global distribution and compliance:
US1 (United States)
EU1 (Europe)
AP1 (Asia-Pacific)
This is to comply with regional regulations and to provide optimized data access speeds,
EU IP-based Public Nodes
The EU1 satellite caters specifically to users within the European Union,offering localized data handling to adhere to GDPR and other regional data protection standards. Select the appropriate satellite (US1, EU1, AP1) based on the user’s region.
Default Regions can be requested on the following:
Account (All future created projects/buckets)
Projects (All future created buckets)
Bucket (Must contain no objects)
I do understand the hesitation of a business outside of the US to give strong pause to placing data with a US based Company, encrypted or not. At the same time though, the bid put out should have had those concerns addressed and included that any cloud storage provider was to be through a provider from within accepted regions, or through an accepted provider.
They also operate a more private section but I don’t know much about that or how it is structured.
As far as StorJ cost? for what I have and how I use it the cost to me is about 14$ for 3.4TB of storage and yes I have to absorb that cost increase as a cost for what I want. That cost though is just a little less than half of what the same amount stored would cost me at another cloud provider I used to use for the same storage amount and that also claim they are cheaper than several other providers. Yes the StorJ price for storage did increase a good bit and I’m not arguing the point, but I think for many purposes it may still be cheaper than other options, but only you the end user knows if StorJ’s pricing model for storage is a good fit. All storage clouds target specific commercial users and have different ways of structuring their cost models. I have a client that uses a very popular cloud storage that is not StorJ and for them and the way the cloud storage is used it is the best and cheapest option that will also work with their application. Their cost? About 3$/month including some addons. StorJ could have gone with a more reasonable model as it is very hard to get someone who was paying 3$ to pay a 5$ minimum, It is less hard to get someone who was paying 32$ somewhere else to go from paying 6$ to paying 14$. Unfortunately they did not.
The problem is that you are currently locked in to Storj and that is absolutely bad practice. They should sell the feature itself and not force it to one provider only.
1 Like
well as of july 1, your min cost is now 50 bucks a month. i was hoping to migrate to storj from backblaze, but i dont store enough data to warrant a 50 dollar minimum charge.
I don’t store enough either so I will be looking again at storage. I made a post about the price increase which supersedes the November Price increase. I was afraid when they were bought out things would go down the tubes. They always do. “Take the Money and Run”
1 Like
Let’s talk/push about this in the newer thread Allow TrueCloud Backups to providers other than storj
I have used Storj for awhile and helped debug and ultimately solve the small file issue with speed. I really only signed up in an attempt to help support Ix, as I think (and hope) they get some sort of kick back. I back up ~2.5TB compressed and pay backblaze ~$8 a month and WAS paying Storj about $7 a month. This new pricing structure is a way to say “We don’t want your crappy little business”. I can use ANY other cloud provider and pay way much less to store 2TB of data out there. I hope (and pray) Ix allows us to us “truecloud” *(now even more expensive) aka restic to other providers work Storj effectively dropping home gamers on their head. My price went from $84 to $600 a year, that is nuts, that is the sort of thing Broadcom did when they bought VMWare. Clear their business model was quite broken and we are now going to have to pay for it one way ($600 a year) or another (no ability to backup using restic to other providers).
It is their business and their decision, but I think they will not survive this.