3 ms·

What a nightmare scenario to tabletop. How do you even begin to recover from something like this?

by michael-bey 12d ago

NegativeLatency 12d ago
Backups in a different region?
- noir_lord 12d ago
  Works unless local laws specifically block you doing that which they do for some classes of data in some countries. Multi-cloud in the same country (if that exists in the country and is far enough apart) maybe.
  - criemen 12d ago
    Do cloud providers even share data center locations so you can assess the "far enough" bit yourself?
    - flumpcakes 12d ago
      No - and usually the reason is so they cannot be targeted.
    - toast0 12d ago
      You usually get city level location information. Depends on your definition for 'far enough' if that works for you. me-south-1 is about 250 miles away from me-central-1, but that's not far enough in this instance. Given that, I think city level location information should be good enough. 250 miles is pretty good for weather or not specifically targeted destruction (wildfire / industrial explosions / arson), but it's clearly not enough if your data is in a building targeted in a regional war. Assuming datacenters remain targets in wartime, I think it's fair to assume if one datacenter in any particular country is attacked, all the rest of the datacenters in that country are likely to be attacked, too. In that case, offline storage (tapes and things) in inconspicuous locations might be the way.
    - niltecedu 11d ago
      Kinda they do? Atleast our company knows the exact location of ours
  - krick 12d ago
    I wonder what exactly these laws prohibit. Like, does it apply to a fully encrypted cold-copy on Amazon Glacier? If you don't store the encryption key outside of UAE, I'd say this isn't even the same data that gets transferred to the third party, it's just some random blob. But I have no idea if the authorities of that country would agree and if it's even actually enforced for that matter, or if it's one of those laws that actually cause problems only if you follow them.
  - ares623 12d ago
    In this case, a local on-prem backup in your office-that-is-not-an-aws-datacenter would've worked and satisfy the law right? (or an AWS Outpost thingy, assuming those things work even if the mothership is down)
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
tgsovlerkhgsel 12d ago
For providers that just act as middlemen, I assume data that doesn't have a residency requirement is stored outside, so probably a) letting customers in other areas know that their data is backed up to another continent b) asking the AI model of your choice to translate the following into PR-speak: "Because of the boneheaded data residency requirements in this country, all your data is gone, and we weren't able to do anything about it - here's an empty copy of a re-setup version of whatever infrastructure we provide, glhf setting up everything from scratch, hope you had backups" For customers who use such a provider or operate primarily in that area: Restore from local backups, or tell whoever depended on you that everything is gone and if you really didn't have backups, probably close up shop.

What a nightmare scenario to tabletop. How do you even begin to recover from something like this?

NegativeLatency 12d ago

Backups in a different region?

noir_lord 12d ago
Works unless local laws specifically block you doing that which they do for some classes of data in some countries. Multi-cloud in the same country (if that exists in the country and is far enough apart) maybe.
- criemen 12d ago
  Do cloud providers even share data center locations so you can assess the "far enough" bit yourself?
  - flumpcakes 12d ago
    No - and usually the reason is so they cannot be targeted.
  - toast0 12d ago
    You usually get city level location information. Depends on your definition for 'far enough' if that works for you. me-south-1 is about 250 miles away from me-central-1, but that's not far enough in this instance. Given that, I think city level location information should be good enough. 250 miles is pretty good for weather or not specifically targeted destruction (wildfire / industrial explosions / arson), but it's clearly not enough if your data is in a building targeted in a regional war. Assuming datacenters remain targets in wartime, I think it's fair to assume if one datacenter in any particular country is attacked, all the rest of the datacenters in that country are likely to be attacked, too. In that case, offline storage (tapes and things) in inconspicuous locations might be the way.
  - niltecedu 11d ago
    Kinda they do? Atleast our company knows the exact location of ours
- krick 12d ago
  I wonder what exactly these laws prohibit. Like, does it apply to a fully encrypted cold-copy on Amazon Glacier? If you don't store the encryption key outside of UAE, I'd say this isn't even the same data that gets transferred to the third party, it's just some random blob. But I have no idea if the authorities of that country would agree and if it's even actually enforced for that matter, or if it's one of those laws that actually cause problems only if you follow them.
- ares623 12d ago
  In this case, a local on-prem backup in your office-that-is-not-an-aws-datacenter would've worked and satisfy the law right? (or an AWS Outpost thingy, assuming those things work even if the mothership is down)
deleted 12d ago
[deleted]

tgsovlerkhgsel 12d ago

For providers that just act as middlemen, I assume data that doesn't have a residency requirement is stored outside, so probably a) letting customers in other areas know that their data is backed up to another continent b) asking the AI model of your choice to translate the following into PR-speak: "Because of the boneheaded data residency requirements in this country, all your data is gone, and we weren't able to do anything about it - here's an empty copy of a re-setup version of whatever infrastructure we provide, glhf setting up everything from scratch, hope you had backups" For customers who use such a provider or operate primarily in that area: Restore from local backups, or tell whoever depended on you that everything is gone and if you really didn't have backups, probably close up shop.