Entelligence: Cloud's illusions I recall
By Michael Gartenberg 
posted October 15th 2009 5:15PM
posted October 15th 2009 5:15PM
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
The Sidekick story is complicated, and there's much rumor and speculation as to what went wrong and how. To be clear, Sidekick is a T-Mobile branded-and-sold device and service, but the Sidekick technology comes from Danger, a former startup now owned by Microsoft, which T-Mobile pays to keep Sidekick going. Trust me, there's going to be lots of finger pointing and perhaps a few class-action lawsuits before this all comes to an end. While finger pointing is fun, it's not the issue. (And, as grandpa used to say, when you point your finger at someone else, three fingers point back at you.) Some argued with me last night that cloud computing is perfectly safe, it's the company deploying that you need to look to. OK. I accept that. Only thing is that Danger's been doing this pretty well since 2002 and at no point did I ever see a single warning from anyone that dealing with T-Mobile, Danger or Microsoft might be a bad idea when it comes to personal data solely living in the cloud.
My real question is how much is your data worth? Not the cost of the data streams you pay each month, but how much value does your data have to you personally? Recently, when I visited a client, I was asked to check my laptop at the door and I was asked how much my computer was worth. The guard was somewhat surprised at my stated value of my system. "Is this computer really worth a two million dollars?" he asked. "No," I replied. However, the information on it is worth that and perhaps more to me. Could you re-create every document or email you've ever written? Re-acquire every song in your collection or re-take every photograph in your catalog. Perhaps you could, but even if so, at what cost and what effort?
The problem is that cloud computing hype and the idea of storing everything in the cloud has gained such buzz that it's reached down to the consumer level. Sure, there are companies who can deliver great cloud services -- and until last week we might have counted Microsoft and T-Mobile among them -- but the real issue is that businesses have professionals to deal with these issues. They're called IT folk and they make a lot of money keeping things running. What's happening now is the
It's a world where the head of house is CIO, the spouse runs the help desk and the kids do tech support. |
Consumers need to understand that prevention hurts less than cure. Forget things like anti-virus software as the sole means of preventive measures -- it's time for consumers to learn to focus on data backups, especially for content that doesn't live locally. (I'd actually argue that much anti-virus software is a waste of time and the fact that their vendors depend on new viruses for their livelihood is disturbing -- some vendors even pay "bounties" to the first users who "discover" new viruses or strains.). Instead of hassling users who need to sit through boot and virus scans, vendors should work with them to help implement cohesive data backups, like a master file for PC users or DVDs for laptops. That way, if disaster strikes and the cloud vanishes in a puff of vapor, users can be back up and running quickly. You can't argue with the savings in time and money.
Most readers here know this but it's worth repeating because knowledge doesn't replace action. It's important to know your risks, wherever your data lives. As Joni Mitchell sang. "It's cloud's illusions I recall, I really don't know clouds at all" And perhaps neither do we -- at least not as well as we think.
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
Through all my 28 years of playing with computers, I've only experienced 2 bad failures (1 infection and 1 corrupt drive)...three if you include a motherboard's leaking capacitors.
So, am I lucky, or is this more or less what most people experience?
Seems to me that maintenance is far more critical if you don't want to go through the steps of recovering your hard drives, data and computer set up.
Screenshot is wrong- the song is by Judy Collins, not Joni Mitchell.
Stop using cloud as a cool word for every app that interact with a server... This isn't cloud computing at all... It would have been related to "the cloud" if it would have been running on Azure or EC2 or app engine etc. BUT THIS ISN'T CLOUD COMPUTING...
"They're called IT folk and they make a lot of money keeping things running."
We don't get paid that much, that's why f-ups like the sidekick issue happen. Alot of companies don't pay their IT departments enough to care about equipment. Only the threat of needing to find a new job in the current climate keeps people on their toes. If another company is hiring your data is at risk of negligence.
Wow, it is really bad that those servers crashed. fortunatly, i had backed up all of my sidekick data on my computer, so i was fine. It would have been the worst thing in the world to have lost all of my sidekick data. I have people numbers that have moved away, and it would be impossible to rebuild my contact book. I know from experience that my computer is definatly worth two or three million dollars. Thats why i spent the extra 500 dollars and got a western digital nas running in raid 1 so that i don't have to deal with any of these cloud storage problems. Although, i do think that cloud storage is a great idea. Think about the amount of people that use gmail. What would those people do without gmail. Are they afraid that googles servers are going to crash and that they are going to loose all of their stuff, no, but are they cautious, yes. You don't have to be afraid that your stuff in the cloud is going to dissapear, but you should definatly make local backups on a nas or dvd to prevent anything bad from happening to your stuff. I don't know what would happen if i lost my gmail inbox, i would probably die. 8-). btw, how come all of the comments are about which hdd to get?
RIght on!
The old ways are always the best with more lee-way and TRICKS to get in and around.
The Keeping Up With The Jones's , future-ist "You Have To Do It This Way or Else" CRAP, will only limit you to what the manufactures want you to believe about security and New "HOW TO" Back ups.
Do you honestly believe the 4G revolution is NEW? "N" Dual core, Dual Band , etc?
Hell No, the government had this Tech Last Year!!!! Everything the General Public Gets Is Not New Tech!!! It's a Year Old compared to when it was released! You all are chasing your tail!
OK - the point is think Simple, think Back to the basics: Rolodex - DOS - Tape/HD Back Ups - Cassette and Vinyl Records. Pen and Damn Paper! Print out what you NEED, Not What You Want! Plenty of services for that -AFFORDABLE too. Don't Ink Jet them!
The odds are 1 in a million something will go wrong with the Old School Way. But those are better odds than buying a trouble free US Car? - Isn't?
Wake up - Stick to the basics! Enough with the Complaining!
Quite a few people posting here need to realize that fault tolerance is not in any way a backup.
Having two (or more) drives mirrored (or striped with parity) protects you from one (or more) drive dying. This is fault tolerance. However, it does absolutely nothing to prevent data corruption or destruction through ignorance, mistake, or malicious intent.
If you absolutely can't afford to lose the data, you need a true backup: an archival point in time snapshot of the files, stored in a separate location from the main copies. That way, if something goes wrong with a file and you don't realize it until much later, you can still revert to old copies.
You should have both. But if you can't, pick the archival backup. Fault tolerance is nice, but a system can be rebuilt if the archival backups are there. You can't restore old data from a fault tolerant system. That data is just gone.
VSS can give you some of this archival functionality on a single drive system, but if the whole filesystem goes, or VSS doesn't for some reason or another do its job properly, then you are in trouble.
Why is nobody posting that Microsoft has recovered the data?
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/oct09/10-15sidekick.mspx
Shhhh. No sizzle there man.
Awesome title.
We really don't know clouds...at all. :)
"My real question is how much is your data worth?"
So, can it be worth a lot? Yes. for the average sidekick owner, no offense, was it?
The only sidekick owners who should be part of any law suits, which, lets face it, hardly deserve to be heard, should be the 4 random ones who used the exchange support. THAT'S valuable information.
Why is there a Motorola logo on a Sidekick???
I have started doing my list of ongoing jobs on Google spreadsheets a while ago. Whilst trying to install a gadget to display a part of it in IGon my homepage, I managed to wipe the entire spreadsheet! In a brief second I realised that it the information in a cloud is not being backed up as part of my regular computer backups!
I was fortunate enough to be able to undo the changes, and a copy-paste into excel resolved the issue, but it is now one additional step when I want to back up everything!
I trust the cloud, maybe more than I should, because when you are working with these large companies like Microsoft and Google they have the money to go in and recreate data on lost drives. They can spend more than I make in a year many times over recovering data. So why not entrust them with it. Anything really important I also have stored on a RAID 5 array, but I would sooner expect that to fail than my cloud backup solution.
1. where's Apple advertising how safe your data is with iTunes sync?
2. the t-mobile problem was OLD TECHNOLOGY. It's using a hacked CE, which makes the device a peer, not a client. With push technology and SD cards nowdays, you can backup on the network in microincrements or backup to the SD Card. Again, the T-mobile problem is because they are using old Danger technology--the Android/Google setup would have not ended in the same manner if a Google DC went down or your device was blown (you can still backup to SD, which IMO is superior to iTunes sync).
(Also, could be why a good portion of the Danger guys went to Google for Android....)