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A service's customer data must persist somewhere. "On the cloud" is a marketing abstraction to fool customers into a false sense of integrity. Just remember t

by vgabios 11y ago

A service's customer data must persist somewhere. "On the cloud" is a marketing abstraction to fool customers into a false sense of integrity. Just remember that most cloud services do not do backups, do not have a disaster recovery / BIA plan, do not use ECC memory in network, compute and storage systems. Users must take personal responsibility for ensuring their private data is safe, because wishing is not a winning strategy.

yasth 11y ago
Amazon uses ECC [1] (search ecc) MS Azure uses ECC [2] Rackspace uses ECC [3] While compute servers aren't backed up this is by design (use storage). Storage is indeed backed up and replicated. Also most assuredly there are extensive disaster recovery plans. The cloud isn't for everyone, but FUD doesn't help. [1] http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/ [2] http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/03/16/microsoft-azure-uses-error-correcting-code-memory-for-enhanced-reliability-and-security/ http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/03/16/microsoft-azure-u... [3] http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/features http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/features
- danieldk 11y ago
  While compute servers aren't backed up this is by design (use storage). Storage is indeed backed up and replicated. And yet, you are referring to pages about redundancy, not backup. Redundancy helps when a disk, server, or perhaps even data center fails. Backups help when your cloud storage provider makes an error and removes your data from redundant storage. There have been enough incidents to show that cloud computing alone cannot be trusted [1]. Unfortunately, most cloud services are data silos, so you couldn't even backup data if you wanted to. And then we haven't talked yet about data leaks. Some larger incident than last year's iCloud leak will probably happen sometime. Hopefully then people will realize that client-side encryption is important. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440985
  - yasth 11y ago
    For one the iCloud leaks had not one thing to do with cloud computing. Nor did the dropbox one you linked. Those were application level problems, and could well have occurred with on premises based storage (obviously with a public interface for an icloud issue). Let me assure you that bad synch algorithms have caused data loss before the cloud. Applications can fail to backup or record things. Also I provided only links to ECC proof.
    - danieldk 11y ago
      For one the iCloud leaks had not one thing to do with cloud computing. Nor did the dropbox one you linked. Those were application level problems, and could well have occurred with on premises based storage (obviously with a public interface for an icloud issue). Sure. But the difference is that if you manager your own storage, you know what backups are made, etc. Dropbox claims that backups are made, but these users lost data regardless.
rsync 11y ago
rsync.net uses ECC memory and always has (since 2001). We do not do backups, however, unless you are paying for geo-redundant storage. If you use single site storage, the idea is that we are the backup. Since the conversation has drifted this way, let me also point out that we have s3cmd and gsutil in our platform, so if you're paranoid about trusting data to google or amazon (and to some degree, you should be) you can easily import/export to an independent cloud platform (rsync.net).

by vgabios 11y ago

yasth 11y ago

Amazon uses ECC [1] (search ecc) MS Azure uses ECC [2] Rackspace uses ECC [3] While compute servers aren't backed up this is by design (use storage). Storage is indeed backed up and replicated. Also most assuredly there are extensive disaster recovery plans. The cloud isn't for everyone, but FUD doesn't help. [1] http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/ [2] http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/03/16/microsoft-azure-uses-error-correcting-code-memory-for-enhanced-reliability-and-security/ http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/03/16/microsoft-azure-u... [3] http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/features http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/features

danieldk 11y ago
While compute servers aren't backed up this is by design (use storage). Storage is indeed backed up and replicated. And yet, you are referring to pages about redundancy, not backup. Redundancy helps when a disk, server, or perhaps even data center fails. Backups help when your cloud storage provider makes an error and removes your data from redundant storage. There have been enough incidents to show that cloud computing alone cannot be trusted [1]. Unfortunately, most cloud services are data silos, so you couldn't even backup data if you wanted to. And then we haven't talked yet about data leaks. Some larger incident than last year's iCloud leak will probably happen sometime. Hopefully then people will realize that client-side encryption is important. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440985
- yasth 11y ago
  For one the iCloud leaks had not one thing to do with cloud computing. Nor did the dropbox one you linked. Those were application level problems, and could well have occurred with on premises based storage (obviously with a public interface for an icloud issue). Let me assure you that bad synch algorithms have caused data loss before the cloud. Applications can fail to backup or record things. Also I provided only links to ECC proof.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    For one the iCloud leaks had not one thing to do with cloud computing. Nor did the dropbox one you linked. Those were application level problems, and could well have occurred with on premises based storage (obviously with a public interface for an icloud issue). Sure. But the difference is that if you manager your own storage, you know what backups are made, etc. Dropbox claims that backups are made, but these users lost data regardless.

rsync 11y ago

rsync.net uses ECC memory and always has (since 2001). We do not do backups, however, unless you are paying for geo-redundant storage. If you use single site storage, the idea is that we are the backup. Since the conversation has drifted this way, let me also point out that we have s3cmd and gsutil in our platform, so if you're paranoid about trusting data to google or amazon (and to some degree, you should be) you can easily import/export to an independent cloud platform (rsync.net).