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What Do You Do When the Cloud Shuts Down?
jbrodkin writes "Can you trust your data to the cloud? For users of an online storage service called The Linkup, formerly known as MediaMax, the answer turned out to be a resounding 'no.' The Linkup shut down on Aug. 8 after losing access to as much as 45% of its customers' data.
'When we looked at some individual accounts, some people didn't have any files, and some people had all their files,' The Linkup CeO Steve Iverson admits.
None of the affected users will get their lost data back. Iverson called it a 'worst-case scenario.'"
Like anything else, including local technology, the key is to create a backup strategy. The cloud creates special problems for performing and managing backukps, so you need to understand your chosen compute or storage cluster provider's options, as well as other options specific for your application in regards to backups.
My blog
What do you do when your local computer shuts down? How about a server on your company intranet? The cloud is no different. Backups are your friend!
I can't believe this article. The number of places you store your data is directly related to the level of which it's important to you. People put all their data in once place then cry when it's gone? How is this new?
Isn't this akin to dumping all you money into one stock then whining when it tanks?
FLR
Open the curtains and let the sunshine in, and water the garden.
Oh, you mean the network... what kind of fool trusts his data with someone else?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The critical flaw of cloud computing is that you entrust your data to a third party. If you are at all concerned with privacy you will think cloud computing is a terrible idea.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
No, no, no, you have it all wrong.
The first rule of backups is: "You do not talk about backups."
...they can have my local computing and storage capabilities when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. Google is great for looking things up -- and webmail accounts are great for portability -- but the old saying applies: If you want something done (backed up, available), do it yourself. Much more secure that way, too.
Besides, with Remote Desktop, FOUSs*, and continuous 'Net connections, it's pretty easy to take it with you.
* (8GB on a microSDHC the size of my fingernail is a Flashdrive Of Unusual Size in my book!)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Those who would knowingly trust their data to an outside (and relatively untested) organization without having a backup in place are just asking for something like this to happen.
Oh, ya, backups are hard.
tinfoilmedia
Every year, I read the terms of service of a bunch of online backup services, but I have not found one that gives the provider any incentive to be careful. They say they have *no liability of any kind*. Why should I trust them?
I will cheerfully pay to insure access to my data, but nobody offers me insurance.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
I had this overly insightful comment... but it all got lost when I submitted it.
And now look what I'm left with!
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
A few years ago, I had my websites hosted at this one company, Digi-Wave. They were great for a few years, but suddenly their servers were down. For a week. Yes, I said a week. The servers came up again briefly before going down again, but in that brief span, I managed to backup my database and files. When I called their support line, I was told that their servers were infected with Code Red (IIRC, I know it was one of those IIS worms). I knew this was a bogus answer because the fix to Code Red infection was: 1) disconnect the machine from the 'Net, 2) reboot it, 3) apply the patch (possibly rebooting again), 4) reconnect to the 'Net. It shouldn't have taken them over a week to fix this.
Then they stopped answering support calls and their phone's inbox filled up until it stopped accepting recordings. By this time, I contacted my credit card company to get my money back and had made arrangements with another hosting provider. I was lucky to have retained my data. Many were not so lucky. And to add insult to injury, after Digi-Wave folded, another hosting company arose with a different name but the same contact information.
The moral of this story is to always backup. Because you never know when the cloud, your webhost, or even your personally owned and run server will go south and take your data with it.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This version may be easier to read.
Bottom line: The Linkup is blaming Nirvanix (a third-party service provider) which is, of course, blaming The Linkup. FTA:
Summary: "He did it." "No, he did it." "No, it was him!" "You did it FIRST!" "Idiot!" "Moron!" "Jackass!" ** customers shoot them both **
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I back up everything to /dev/null. Restoration is somebody else's job.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Does anybody remember Visto.com, formerly Briefcase.com? They had an incredible cloud storage and synchronization engine that I still have not found a suitable replacement for, and this was back in like 1998, way before Gmail and all the other glorious Google tools. They were so far ahead of their time it's ridiculous! Only 25mb of free storage, but still, back then, that was unheard of! Back in the day, their *free* service offered a tool you could download to your local machine, This tool would establish a local repository folder for files, which the tool would then handle the synchronization to the cloud. Not to mention integrating with outlook to synchronize address book, private calendars, public calendars, group calendars, tasks, bookmarks, and just about everything. Running this on two or more machines ensured that you were always in sync. Then, to top it off, they offered webmail, and website access to all of your files and bookmarks and everything else. Did I mention that it was *free*? But then the fateful day arrived when I was notified they were changing their business model to sell mobile phone synchronization software. I guess free services don't pay the bills. This was a company who was able to actually sue Microsoft for patent infringement and win... By the way, did anybody else out there in /. world use and like Visto? Has anybody ever found a suitable replacement? Google has a ton of different tools to help fill different areas of the void Visto.com left behind, but I don't think I will ever see another product like Visto come around again.
God look at me, I'm just a man, but you tell me I'm not just a man, so hard to understand, after all, I'm just a man.
I used to work at a Storage Service Provider back in the dotcom era (StorageNetworks baby!), and before you sign up for any type of service provider that would be providing access to your data you need to go over that contract with a fine toothed comb. Two areas that need to be covered are:
What happens if the SSP goes out of business, how do you get your data back? In our contracts we would give you your data back either via access to the old arrays for X days to copy it somewhere else. Worst case: We drop a truckload of tapes off on your doorstep.
Financial impact of loss of service. We had many financial customers that wanted to make sure we had "enough cash in the bank" to cover their financial losses if they suffered any downtime due to an issue on our end.
Just like picking a hosting provider, you need to make sure you have contingency plans for data loss or corruption. If the SSP can't provide you with the services you need (backups, snapshots etc..), find another provider.
I don't have any way of verifying this story, but I worked with an old guy once who told me that he had been at a startup in the UK that was, by the sound of it, creating a kind of IMDB in about 1994. They had a team of researchers and a bunch of seed capital to create a large film database. Everything was ticking along for about 18 months and they had researched thousands of films.
Then one day, the database shut down and they traced it to some bad hardware. They replaced the hardware and restored the database from the previous night's backup. Nothing doing - the backup tape (he said it was DAT) was corrupt. So they tried the other one. Nada. Same corruption. So they tried the off-site one. Same thing. Turned out all the backups they had made seem to have transferred the same corruption resulting in nothing significant recoverable.
Had they tried a test restore at some point, they might have found out. As it was, a week after the crash, they shut the business down.
Which reminds me of another (maybe apocryphal) story: the head of IT as a large company was fond of organising disaster recovery practices by walking into the data centre, physically removing a (pre-ordained) server and leaving a note in its place with the words "The server crashed" written on it. The support staff (and presumably management) knew that this would happen, but not when, or which machine (or dependent services) would be affected. Interesting test I would say.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"