Posted on 04/28/2011 7:21:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In addition to taking down the sites of dozens of high-profile companies for hours (and, in some cases, days), Amazon's huge EC2 cloud services crash permanently destroyed some data.
The data loss was apparently small relative to the total data stored, but anyone who runs a web site can immediately understand how terrifying a prospect any data loss is.
(And a small loss on a percentage basis for Amazon, obviously, could be catastrophic for some companies).
Amazon has yet to fully explain what happened when its mission-critical and supposedly bomb-proof systems crashed, but the explanation will be important. As will the explanation for how the company could have permanently destroyed some of its customers data.
In our experience, the "back-up" systems of most web-services providers leave a lot to be desired. The back-ups sound reassuring in theory--you are assured that your data is always "backed-up" on a system that is completely separate from the main one and that you'll be able to access it whenever you need it. But then, when you dig, you often discover that that means the data is simply copied to another file on the same box or another box in the same data room.
A stronger "backup," obviously, would be housed in a separate location, so that a power-failure or flood or earthquake or other disruption at the main site would not disrupt the backup. Or, better yet, the back-up would be automatically replicated at multiple sites, all independent of one another, in near real-time.
And, of course, this is the sort of reliability that Amazon has been selling with its cloud services--including 99.9% uptime. Both promises seem to have been broken here.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Whatever happened to the idea of backups in safe sites?
If I were a corporation doing cloud, I would demand a serious service level agreement, including payback for downtime and reparations for lost data. If the data is critical, I’d demand no less than one geographically separate warm site, and if the data is critical enough a hot site plus a warm site. The company had better have one hell of an insurance policy.
Yep, they are referred to as Contingency Plans for a reason. ;-)
Even years ago when I looked into banks' data security, they often had backups offsite. Not only offsite, but in bomb proof bunkers underground.
Well yes. I agree. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to support applications built on a Cloud Computing architecture, but to those who don’t quite understand what is under the covers, which is most of the general public - including most management, it sounds “magical”.
In our tiny four IT person location, one of us always has the latest backup tapes at our home. Not mission critical data, but it is a simple thing to do. The corporate headquarters has an off site vault where data is transported daily. It is just common sense.
I'm surprised the 'cloud' industry would attempt existence without some kind of safety assurance. Who would trust their data to these guys?
Well, if you're trying to do an "executive summary" to inform those without much computer savvy, just tell them "the cloud" is fart gas. That should give them the idea.
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