My parents had a cylinder vac when I was a toddler and passed it on to me when I bought a house. It must have been over 30 years old when it gave up (it had been running for years with two blades missing from one of its impellers - one I removed to balance it up when it lost one).
That vac had the same hose fitting on each end, so switching it to blow just meant pulling the hose from one end (pull back the release ring and it just came out) and putting it in the other end, so it took just a couple of seconds.
No filters to remove - it just had a cloth bag.
Blow was mainly used by us to try and shift something that was stuck in the hose, but it was actually intended for air powered tools - such as the spray gun that could be attached to the hose.