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Setting up a Backblaze B2 data store

FaaSr passes files between actions through an S3-compatible object store. The tutorial and many examples use the public MinIO Play sandbox, but Play is a shared demo service that is frequently unavailable. This guide walks you through setting up Backblaze B2 — a reliable, S3-compatible store with a free tier (10 GB) — as an alternative you fully control.

You only need to do this once; afterward any workflow can point at your Backblaze bucket as its data store.

1. Create a Backblaze account and a bucket

  1. Sign up for B2 Cloud Storage at backblaze.com using your email.
  2. In the left menu under B2 Cloud Storage, click Buckets → Create a Bucket.
  3. Give the bucket a globally unique name (e.g. myuniquebucket) — you'll need this name later.
  4. Set Files in Bucket to Private. Leave encryption and Object Lock disabled (the defaults).
  5. Click Create a Bucket.

2. Create an application key

  1. In the left menu, click Application Keys → Add a New Application Key.
  2. Give it a name (e.g. faasr-key).
  3. Under Allow access to Bucket(s), select the bucket you just created (or all buckets).
  4. Set Type of Access to Read and Write.
  5. Click Create New Key.

Copy the key now

Backblaze shows the keyID and the applicationKey only once, on this screen. Copy both before leaving the page — you cannot retrieve the applicationKey again (you'd have to create a new key).

3. Note your endpoint and region

On your bucket's detail page, Backblaze lists an Endpoint such as:

s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com
  • Your Region is the segment between s3. and .backblazeb2.com — here, us-east-005.
  • Your full endpoint URL (used below) is that value with https:// in front: https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com.

4. Store the credentials as GitHub Secrets

In your FaaSr-workflow repo, add two GitHub Secrets named after your data store. FaaSr derives the secret names from the data store's name in the workflow: <DataStoreName>_AccessKey and <DataStoreName>_SecretKey.

For a data store named S3 (as in the tutorial):

Secret Value
S3_AccessKey your Backblaze keyID
S3_SecretKey your Backblaze applicationKey

(If you name your data store differently, e.g. My_S3_Bucket, the secrets are My_S3_Bucket_AccessKey / My_S3_Bucket_SecretKey.)

5. Configure the data store in your workflow

In the workflow builder use Edit Data Store, or edit the DataStores block of your workflow JSON directly:

"DataStores": {
  "S3": {
    "Endpoint": "https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com",
    "Bucket": "myuniquebucket",
    "Region": "us-east-005",
    "Writable": "TRUE"
  }
},
"DefaultDataStore": "S3"
  • Endpoint — https:// + your Backblaze endpoint from step 3.
  • Bucket — your bucket name from step 1.
  • Region — the region from step 3 (e.g. us-east-005).
  • Writable — TRUE so actions can write results back.

6. Use it in the tutorial

To run the tutorial against Backblaze instead of MinIO Play, simply replace the tutorial's data store with the block above (matching the data store name S3 so the secret names line up), then register and invoke as usual. Your workflow's inputs and outputs will now live in your Backblaze bucket, which you can browse anytime from the Backblaze web console.

Free tier is plenty for the tutorial

Backblaze B2's free tier includes 10 GB of storage and a generous daily download allowance — far more than the tutorial or typical FaaSr examples need.