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What Do You Do When the Cloud Shuts Down?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the more-to-think-about dept.

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.'"

15 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Backups, backups, backups! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Backups, backups, backups! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No kidding. Why do you think I said 'backups' three times in the subject line? ;) That's what I mean by a 'backup strategy' -- backup strategies, which are sometimes called 'disaster recovery plans', though that's really a bigger plan that includes a backup strategy, include making multiple redundant backups, offsite storage of backups, considerations for multiple different media, etc. There are several 'best practices', but the best strategy is going to be different for each company or department and often even for each application.

      The best thing to do is to examine what kind(s) of data there is in the set, how large that data set is, how often that data gets updated, how often it needs to be accessed, and what are the potential costs for losing a day's, week's, month's, year's etc. worth of that data. That will point you in the direction as to frequency of backups, types of backups, etc.

      Offsite backups are essential for any data requiring backup.

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Backups, backups, backups! by daeg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't forget to have a RESTORE strategy in place, too, and one that can be executed by others. Redundant backups don't do any good if you don't know how to restore from them, and know approximately how long it will take to restore.

      We set up a test system identical to a few of our servers and had non-IT people execute the restoration plan for the core applications/data our business needs. There were a few flaws in the plan but it was a GREAT learning tool.

    3. Re:Backups, backups, backups! by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Funny

      There, fixed that for you. Backups aren't worth a damn if the building is blown up.

      Yeah, I already thought of that. *smug* I have a script that backs up all my files from our servers in WTC1 to our servers in WTC2. What are the odds we could lose both sets of servers?

      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
    4. Re:Backups, backups, backups! by grassy_knoll · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "No matter how much we preach to the choir, it seems that most managers simply don't want to pay for it."

      Fixed that for you.

      --
      A Human Right
    5. Re:Backups, backups, backups! by bjk002 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "No kidding. Why do you think I said 'backups' three times in the subject line?"

      I think he was just backing up your statement!

      --
      Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
  2. Not a new problem! by EastCoastSurfer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Not a new problem! by jgtg32a · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Kinda funny when you think about it, the backups are stored locally and the working copies are stored far away.

  3. Backup, Storage by Cytlid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. What Do You Do When the Cloud Shuts Down? by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:What Do You Do When the Cloud Shuts Down? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Insurance means nothing. Once your data is lost, it is lost. Whether or not you get money out of them in compensation for the lost data is almost non-important. I would say that anything you lost would be completely non-producable, even if you had all the money in the world. A picture of your family on vacation, can't be reproduced. You can go on another vacation, but it won't be the same vacation. Any document you have typed out, could be typed out again, but it would be different each time. Unless you are talking about lost music files, in which case, you could download them again, but that's kind of the same as having a backup. Any data that's really important isn't going to reproducible.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  5. The critical flaw by Nephroth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Same happened to me. by anomnomnomymous · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?
  7. Re:Well DUH! by Chelloveck · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  8. Test restore, test restore, test restore! by gilgongo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?"