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charlesroper/gist:f2da6152d6789fa6f25e9d194a42b889

Last active Jan 15, 2022

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How to setup a practically free CDN
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gistfile1.md

 How to setup a practically free CDN

I've been using Backblaze for a while now as my online backup
service. I have used a few others in the past. None were particularly
satisfactory until Backblaze came along.

It was - still is - keenly priced at a flat $5 (PS4) per month for
unlimited backup (I've currently got just under half a terabyte
backed-up). It has a fast, reliable client. The company itself is
transparent about their operations and generous with their knowledge
sharing. To me, this says they understand their customers well. I've
never had reliability problems and everything about the outfit exudes
a sense of simple, quick, solid quality. The service has even saved
the day on a couple of occasions where I've lost files.

Safe to say, I'm a happy customer. If you're not already using
Backblaze, I highly recommend you do.

 Taking on the big boys with B2

So when Backblaze announced they were getting into the cloud storage
business, taking on the likes of Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, and
Google Cloud, I paid attention. Even if the cost were the same, or a
little bit more, I'd be interested because I like the company. I like
their product, and I like their style.

What I wasn't expecting was for them to be cheaper. Much cheaper. How
about 440% cheaper than S3 per GB? Don't believe me? Take a look.
Remarkable.

What's more, they offer a generous free tier of 10 GB free storage
and 1 GB free download per day.

If it were any other company, I might think they're a bunch of clowns
trying it on. But I know from my own experience and following their
journey, they're genuine innovators and good people.

 Using B2

B2 is pretty simple. You can use their web UI, which is decent. Or
you can use Cyberduck, which is what I use, is free, and of high
quality. There is also a command-line tool and a number of other
integrated tools. There is also a web API, of course.

 Setting up a vanity URL

You can set up a "vanity" URL for your public B2 files. Do it for
free using CloudFlare. There's a PDF [1.3 MB] documenting how.

 Using CloudFlare CDN to cache B2 hosted files

You can also configure CloudFlare to aggressively cache assets served
by your B2 service. It is not immediately obvious how to do this, and
took a bit of poking around to set up correctly.

By default, B2 serves with cache-invalidating headers:
cache-control:max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, which causes CloudFlare
to skip caching of assets. You can see this happening by looking for
the cf-cache-status:MISS header.

To work around this problem, you can use CloudFlare's PageRules
specifying an "Edge cache expire TTL". I won't explain what that
means here as it is covered in-depth on the CloudFlare blog.

So, to cache your B2 assets, you need to create a PageRule that
includes all files on your B2 domain. For example:

files.silversuit.net/*

You then need to add your cache settings. I have Cache Level set to
Cache Everything; Browser Cache TTL set to a year; Edge Cache TTL set
to 7 days. I'm caching aggressively here, but you can tweak these
settings to suit. Here's a screenshot:

[6874747073]

Screenshot showing PageRules settings

To check that it's working correctly, use DevTools to look for the
cf-cache-status:HIT header:

[6874747073]

Screenshot showing a CloudFlare cache hit

 Wrapping up

So, with that, you're making use of already very inexpensive B2
storage coupled with CloudFlare's free CDN to serve your assets
almost entirely for free. And it's not like these are rinky-dink
services that are going to fall over regularly; these are both
high-quality, reputable companies.

What a time to be alive, eh?

@J-Rojas
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J-Rojas commented May 13, 2021

How does this not have any stars?!? Thanks for publishing this. Does
this work across all buckets for a B2 account? And can it be
provisioned via Cloudflare's API?

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@charlesroper
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charlesroper commented May 14, 2021

Glad you like it. The way it works is by adding your own domain in
front of buckets using Cloudflare (as documented in the linked PDF).
I'm not sure if it's possible to do the full setup via API (you'd
need to use Cloudflare's API as well as B2's).

Sorry, something went wrong.

@jmonster
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jmonster commented Aug 7, 2021 *
edited

[S:I'm running into a gotcha with this after 60 seconds where CF is
revalidating even though the object isn't stale. I've posted at
https://community.cloudflare.com/t/
im-seeing-revalidate-after-60-seconds-when-using-backblaze-regardless-of-headers
/292652/7:S]

[S: :S]

[S:Anyone else notice this?:S]

It turns out I had a Worker configured for the same domain and it was
causing all sorts of weirdness :| All good now!

Sorry, something went wrong.

@tstevens
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tstevens commented Jan 15, 2022

Did basically the same thing recently but came across a few tips that
might be helpful to others.

First, you can configure the cache-control headers originating at the
B2 on a per bucket basis (along with at the per file basis at
upload). After doing this Cloudflare should respect the headers by
default and use that to cache your content in the CDN without needing
to use up a Page rule. Instructions do this can be found here. Also,
it looks like Backblaze tweaked their cache header policy recently.
Specifically buckets created after Sept 8, 2021 no longer include any
cache control headers by default, those created before that date
still do.

Next, the Backblaze instructions warn that you will want to configure
Cloudflare to only allow your buckets to be fetched from your domain.
They recommend using a page rule to accomplish this, which does work
but I found another option which saves you a page rule. Instead I
used a Transform rule, specifically a URL Rewrite configured to
prefix the bucket path to all requests for the Backblaze B2 backed
domain. The URLs change to only include the asset you want to
retrieve from the B2 bucket, excluding the bucket path. For example,
files.silversuit.net/file/silversuit/charles-roper.jpg becomes
files.silversuit.net/charles-roper.jpg.

On the Cloudflare domain page under Rules > Transform Rules > URL
Rewrite > Create transform rule > URL Rewrite

Name:
B2 Rewrite rule

When incoming requests match...
Enter the following:
Field:Hostname Operator:equals Value:[your domain name ex files.silversuit.net]

Path:
Select: Rewrite to...
Select: Dynamic
Enter: concat("/file/[your bucket name here ex silversuit]", http.request.uri.path)

Query
Preserve


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@DotDotJames
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DotDotJames commented Jan 15, 2022

super solid use case / write up as big fan / user of both Backblaze &
Cloudflare for multiple projects / companies - thanks for this!

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@NWoodsman
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NWoodsman commented Jan 15, 2022

Pricing is $7 monthly, so you have to purchase 24 months to get the
rate of $5.80/mo. Either way, you listed out of date pricing.

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@Dom4n
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Dom4n commented Jan 15, 2022

Last revision of this gist is from Aug 19, 2019. I strongly believe
that pricing was lower back then.

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