Quickstart Guide for QNAP HybridMount and Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Configuring QNAP HybridMount with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Introduction

Welcome to the Backblaze guide for QNAP HybridMount.  HybridMount is a way to access your cloud storage as if it was local, and with caching mode, do so at LAN speeds. With Backblaze B2 and HybridMount, using Cloud Gateway (caching) mode, all your QNAP apps can all access your cloud storage as if it was local.  With Network Drive Mount mode, you can access your cloud storage via File Station as if the files were local.   Cloud Gateway mode gives you the best performance and features, at the cost of local storage space, as it requires a minimum of 20 GB of storage to be allocated for caching.

The following guide explains how to configure HybridMount on your QNAP device.

Setup the Backblaze B2 bucket within HybridMount

Note: If you don’t have HybridMount installed already, it’s available for free in the QNAP App Center.

1. Launch HybridMount. If it’s the first time running it, there will be a quick start guide.  You should review it one time.

2. In the top right under Cache Space, click the button to “Create File Cloud Gateway”

3. For the type of Cloud Service, select Backblaze.

4. Next, enter your credentials.  Enter your keyID into the Account field, and your applicationKey into the API key field.
5. Click Validate SSL certificate
6. Next to Bucket Name, click Search. This will download the list of buckets you have, and then you can select them from the drop down list.  This may take 15-60 seconds to populate, so wait for it to finish.
7. Enter a Connection name.
8. Select the policy when uploading files.  If multiple users are using the QNAP, then “Check for conflicts and rename local files” is the recommended option.  However, if there is only a single user, then changing the policy to be “Upload files without checking” will give you faster performance.
9. Select the frequency for checking for changed files, which will happen by default 24 hours a day at the frequency you choose, 6 minutes being the default.
10. Click Next.

Pick the Pool to create the cache on and increase the size of the cache above the minimum (if desired), review the Auto-download setting, adjust to fit your needs, then click Create.

Now that the File Cloud Gateway is configured, the mounted bucket can be viewed in File Station.

If you open File Station, you will see the Backblaze mount point (with the account ID next to it), and a list of all the files in the bucket.

In the right-hand column, you will see Cloud Status.  At first, every file will have a cloud icon. This means the file has not been cached yet.

Then as people access the file files on the QNAP, they will be downloaded and cached, and the icon will change.

QNAP’s HybridMount is a very useful feature for keeping your files safe in the cloud and also making frequently accessed files available at LAN speeds.  Review your usage and adjust the cache size as needed based on your usage and available disk space.