Cloud storage provider Backblaze opened its first European data center in Amsterdam. The new facility is their fourth data center location and the first outside of the western United States. Began in 2007, the company has two data centers in the Sacramento, California area and one in the Phoenix, Arizona area.
"We like to develop the features and functionality that our customers want. The decision to open up a data center in Europe is directly related to customer interest," commented Ahin Thomas, Vice President Marketing, Backblaze Cloud Storage & Backup in a blog published on the company website.
The company also announced the introduction of the concept of regions along with the launch of the data center. The California and Arizona facilities will fall under single region (US West). The Amsterdam data center will be the EU Central region. When creating an account, users can choose where their data will be stored. The default option will store data in US West.
However, Backblaze informed that moving existing data within Backblaze regions may not be possible now. "While it is something on our roadmap to support, we do not have an estimated release date for that functionality. However, any customer can create a new account and upload data to Europe. Customers with multiple accounts can administer those accounts via our Groups feature," the company explained in the blog. Thus, it is possible to have multiple regions under a group, but it is not possible to have multiple regions under one account.
Backblaze assures that any data uploaded by the customer would not leave the region it was uploaded to unless at the explicit direction of the customer. The company also informed that U.S. dollar is the only payment option available now for the clients. As its future plan, the cloud storage provider is actively working on region selection for individual B2 Buckets instead of Backblaze region selection on an account basis.
