Beware of FOLDER path

[AlanJS]

Been using Google Nearline for the last week... Here's something to be VERY careful with... as it's now wasted us even more money (having shifted from AWS) trying out these beta apps from QNAP.

Where the QNAP Google Cloud Storage app asks you to specify a FOLDER, make sure you definitely create a folder.

Google ChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg

If you don't set a folder, the QNAP app will not warn you, and creates a root folder in Google Cloud Storage with an empty name!
Creating folders without a name is not even possible on most operating systems, as it's illogical, yet Google Cloud Storage for some reason doesn't stop you doing this.
This completely screws up Google Cloud Storage and is something I have been speaking with Google engineers about the last week.
If you do this by mistake, you will not be able to browse your files properly in the Google Cloud Storage Browser, and you will not be able to download/restore them properly either.

This is partly QNAP's fault, and Google's fault.

QNAP should have tested what happens when you don't enter data in to various inputs. And should be warning/stopping you from making these kind of errors.
Google should also be stopping their APIs from letting users create folders without a name in the first place.

We're now having to restart our entire backup, and I've asked Google to reimburse us for any wasted costs spent backing up so far.

[ksteele]

I concur. I had the same bug. Your files are stored, but you cannot get them back.

The other two I noticed, :

is the bucket created on qnap appears to be a bit random to if you get standard or nearline storage class (with different costs). You should check with the developer console which storage class you get. You can pre-create them with cloudberry until/if fixed.

If you try to upload a directory with an _ at the start of it, it then wants to label the job as such even if you remove the underscore on the previous screen and the upload fails. I was using a mp3 directory (which are auto tagged _complication _various etc) as a test. Not sure if top level dir only for the job, or would affect a subfolder buried in a job. You get mysterious errors trying to get them uploaded. Sometime not until 10-15min into the job.

Did you have these two as well?

All in all, I am feeling more comfortable with google cloud, I can restore my data faster and elsewhere, and if you have a few tb up there, you get a decent pro-rata restore speed at no extra cost.

[AlanJS]

Did you have these two as well?

All in all, I am feeling more comfortable with google cloud, I can restore my data faster and elsewhere, and if you have a few tb up there, you get a decent pro-rata restore speed at no extra cost.

I haven't experienced any other issues so far with Google Cloud Storage.

I was careful ensuring it was set as Nearline.

I don't think we have any top level folders so far with underscores at the start of file names. I'm more than sure we'll have sub-folders in places that use that name format. If it comes up, I'll be sure to post on here.

Overall we're also more comfortable with GCS compared to AWS for the following reasons...
- Near immediate access to stored data
- Far lower penalties for early delete (1/3 cost of AWS)
- Ability to natively browse files from Google Developers Console (with actual file/folder naming) compared to non-intuitive named data in AWS.
- $300/60 day free trial
- Seems to be less bugs/failures with uploading to GCS

[TrashMans]

I've been able to browse files from the google console and cloud berry, but neither give the option to actually pull the data down. Is there a tool or an option I'm missing that lets you restore outside of the QNAP?

[AlanJS]

The Google Console - Storage Browser only allows you to download individual files.

If you want to download the entire data, you'd want to either 'Restore' to another QNAP device.
Or you could use a software client such as Cyberduck to connect to the bucket and then download the full data or specific folders.

https://cyberduck.io/?l=en
https://trac.cyberduck.io/wiki/help/en/howto/googlestorage