A lesson for those who think the cloud is great

[Sysman]

Your cloud provider could lose al their backups and go out of business

"Backing up data is one thing, but it is meaningless without a recovery plan, not only that [but also] a recovery plan—and one that is well-practiced and proven to work time and time again," the cache stated. "Code Spaces has a full recovery plan that has been proven to work and is, in fact, practiced."

Except it didn't work when it was really needed.

Lessons we can learn from this? Off the top of my noddle:

• have a backup supplier
• keep backups locally
• don't let your cloud service have privileged access to your local systems - consider pulling backups from your local systems rather than pushing them from the cloud
• make offline backups of your local backups

Other suggestions welcome.

[suityou01]

Your cloud provider lose al their backups and could go out of business



Except it didn't work when it was really needed.

Lessons we can learn from this? Off the top of my noddle:

• have a backup supplier
• keep backups locally
• don't let your cloud service have privileged access to your local systems - consider pulling backups from your local systems rather than pushing them from the cloud
• make offline backups of your local backups

Other suggestions welcome.

A backup isn't a backup until you've successfully restored from it.

[SpontaneousOrder]

You'd have to be a complete muppet to keep your data in 'the cloud' alone.

"A lesson for those who think the cloud is great" should read :

"A lesson for those who are stupid (which has no bearing on whether the cloud is great or not)"

[VectraMan]

It seems the issue here is that once somebody had unauthorised access to their Amazon control panel, they could not only delete all the active data but all the backups as well. I thought the whole point of these things is that the cloudy provider (i.e. Amazon) would be keeping everything forever irrespective of what the customer (or in this case, the customer's hacker) does. Obviously I'm wrong.

[NickFitz]

It seems the issue here is that once somebody had unauthorised access to their Amazon control panel, they could not only delete all the active data but all the backups as well. I thought the whole point of these things is that the cloudy provider (i.e. Amazon) would be keeping everything forever irrespective of what the customer (or in this case, the customer's hacker) does. Obviously I'm wrong.

Amazon Web Services' business is to charge for storing data (among other things). If they kept it when you deleted it and let you recover it later, people would just put their data on there, "delete" it, and then ask for it back when they wanted it again.

AWS guarantee not to lose it for as long as you pay them to keep it there, but if you go and delete it yourself, its gone.

[suityou01]

Amazon Web Services' business is to charge for storing data (among other things). If they kept it when you deleted it and let you recover it later, people would just put their data on there, "delete" it, and then ask for it back when they wanted it again.

AWS guarantee not to lose it for as long as you pay them to keep it there, but if you go and delete it yourself, its gone.

AWS blows goats. Azure ftw.

[CheeseSlice]

I thought the whole point of these things is that the cloudy provider (i.e. Amazon) would be keeping everything forever irrespective of what the customer (or in this case, the customer's hacker) does. Obviously I'm wrong.

Its worrying that anyone would think the cloud would work like this. Perhaps its being mis-sold as some kind of wonder product?

I've seen a number of cloud offerings now that are really dumbed down and you have to read the small print to notice they only offer nightly backups or snapshots. Knowing how customers normally can't care less about specifying backup requirements until something goes wrong, I wouldn't trust the cloud provider to explain it all to them to ensure time critical systems are backed up sufficiently.

[BillHicksRIP]

My future employment prospects continue to dwindle based on a factor of off-shoring and ICT removing the roles, and the "As A Service" products that replacing the need for me to maintain onsite applications at all. I'd be lying if I said a part of me didn't look forward to a rogue off-shore person taking out a high-profile client's cloud business. The march to bring the personnel and infrastructure back onshore would begin right there.

[VectraMan]

Its worrying that anyone would think the cloud would work like this. Perhaps its being mis-sold as some kind of wonder product?

That's exactly how it's sold. Could anyone work out from the Azure TV ads what "the cloud" actually is?

I have Carbonite for online backup. If I delete a file, I can go and get it back from the backup. That's kind of the point. DropBox will allow me to recover deleted files as well - for a while anyway I think. Are those not cloud services?

[speling bee]

It's not just Cloud, though.

E-Health Insider :: 2e2 customers to stump up £1m

2e2 customers must agree to pay nearly £1m by 5pm on 8 February to keep the stricken company’s data centres functioning.

The systems integrator has several NHS customers including Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which signed a contract worth £36.8m over seven years to outsource its ICT services to 2e2 last year.

2e2 placed tens of its UK companies into administration last week.

More than 600 of its 2,000 staff have since been made redundant.

A letter published on the 2e2 website, from the joint administrators at FTI Consulting, says they have provided substantial funding to 2e2 companies since they went into administration to ensure continuity of service, but the cash has run out.

They have received a number of requests from customers wanting immediate access to their data , but that the process could take up to 16 weeks.

To cover the cost of keeping 2e2's data centres running from 6 February to 15 February, the administrators have asked all customers to provide immediate funding of £940,000.

“During this period, the companies will not take any steps to close the data centres and we will work with data centre customers and the companies' technical operations team, to develop a strategy for the orderly transition of data centre services,” the letter to customers says.

2e2’s 20 biggest customers have been asked to pay £40,000 each while smaller customers are asked to provide £4,000.

Customers must sign a letter agreeing to this arrangement by 5pm today, or face their service being cut off.