A knowledge base article about FAQs: Wasabi provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal
Wasabi is an inexpensive, fast and reliable, popular cloud object storage service. It's designed to be 100% compatible and interoperable with the Simple Storage Service (S3) available from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Consider Wasabi as a drop-in replacement for S3 when designing cloud-based storage solutions.
Lower and more predictable costs
Using cloud object storage from Amazon, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure results in charges for transactions with your data. Common and necessary operations, including transitioning between storage tiers, retrieving data, restoring files, and deleting data "early" resulting in penalties, make it challenging to predict your monthly costs. Cloud vendors' calculators are frustrating to use, and misjudgments can be expensive.Wasabi charges for only two activities: the month-to-month storage of data and early object deletion before 30 days. You are not charged:
data ingress or egress fees.
API operational or a transaction fee (e.g., for using GET, PUT, or transitions).
tiering (i.e., there is only one tier of storage - hot storage).
early object deletion after 30 days (reduced from 90 or even 365 days used by other cloud storage services).
As a result, Wasabi is substantially less expensive than comparable alternatives.
Security and compliance (PL1/PL2)
Like other Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers, Wasabi employs a shared-responsibility model for comprehensive data security and privacy. They maintain the infrastructure, provide automatic encryption of all storage at rest and require TLS when transmitting over a network. Wasabi maintains data centers that are highly secure, fully redundant, and certified for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance. They also meet the infrastructure requirements for various compliance regimes, including HIPAA, HITECH, and FERPA.
The shared-responsibility model imposes data protection measures on the users of these services. The University's Minimum Security Standards outline these actions and apply to everyone in the UC Berkeley community. Enabling encryption of data prior to leaving the source helps protect Moderate and High-Risk data from unauthorized access.
Reduced data retrieval delays
Wasabi offers only hot storage, without the lengthy retrieval times usually associated with cold or archive storage tiers.
Versioning and immutability
Options for versioning and immutability are available.
NOTE: The service does not include support for backups or data transfers, but the Berkeley IT Storage and Backup team does provide a free consultation to help campus customers get started with their Wasabi storage environment.
Nearly any service or tool that can interact with AWS S3 can also interact with Wasabi. This includes the free AWS-cli, gcloud, rclone command-line tools from Amazon and Google, respectively. Wasabi provides a free cloud storage browsing tool, Wasabi Explorer, with a graphical user interface (GUI) available free of charge . Open source projects like Cyberduck, Mountain Duck, S3 Browser provide a polished experience when browsing, synchronizing, and transferring data. Backup software like restic and MSP360 also are compatible with Wasabi.The vendor maintains a database of certified tools and software that's been evaluated to work without issue.
The Wasabi storage service is available to individuals and units with a full-service calnet id and UC Berkeley chartstring billing account. The service does not include support for backups or data transfers, but the Storage and Backup team will provide initial environment information and access, and the team will be responsible for communication and working with Wasabi in regard to major incidents.
The cost is what Wasabi charges the UC Berkeley IT Department Storage and Backup team with no markup.
Our rate for Wasabi is $5.99 per terabyte, per month (starting minimum 1TB).
The Berkeley IT Storage and Backup team receives billing data from Wasabi every 30 days and passes along each subscriber's cost for their individual use. Your UC Berkeley chartstring is billed monthly.
Wasabi calculates storage charges for each gigabyte, each day. They also calculate the same price per gigabyte for the whole month, if that gigabyte of data is deleted before the 30-day minimum retention has passed. Wasabi uses base-2 to define gigabytes and terabytes for storage calculation.
Wasabi's billing period is 30 days
To get started with SBG Wasabi service, send an email to the storageteam@lists.berkeley.edu alias requesting information about the service.