Microsoft and Amazon Cloud Services Struck by Lightning

[Guest]

One lightning strike was enough to take out a significant portion of Amazon's EC2 and an unknown part of Microsoft's cloud services in Europe.

Microsoft and Amazon Cloud Services Struck by Lightning : Read more

 

[jhansonxi]

Isn't lightning part of clouds?

So much for fault-tolerance.

 

[randomhero1]

" data on their servers may not be in perfect condition. "
This and trusting your personal files on someone else's server far away is another reason why cloud services should die.

 

[dioxholster]

oh zeus

 

[Pyree]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Isn't lightning part of clouds?So much for fault-tolerance.[/citation]
The situation will only get worse if they use Thunderbolt as the interface for disk connection.

 

[distanted]

oh, irony...

 

[dimar]

I was hoping they'd use redundancy, like RAID1 or something similar, to have the data mirrored in multiple locations.

 

[rantoc]

But the cloud was supposed to be online 24/7 and ready to hand out your private data to the hackers!

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Trololol, that's ANOTHER reason to avoid the cloud I didn't even think of. In addition to the stupidity of the idea itself, unless used for businesses... private users don't need it. Death to the cloud!

 

[molo9000]

[citation][nom]dimar[/nom]I was hoping they'd use redundancy, like RAID1 or something similar, to have the data mirrored in multiple locations.[/citation]
They certainly used RAID5, but RAID is only supposed to keep data available in case a disk fails, it doesn't protect you against a power outage.

If you want protection against a power outage, you need backups.

 

[jvt6]

Amazon said that some EC2 instances or EBS servers lost power before writes to their volumes were consistent

Heard of UPS? FAIL.

 

[mortsmi7]

[citation][nom]jvt6[/nom]Heard of UPS? FAIL.[/citation]
If lightning hit a transformer, I doubt a UPS would be able to hold out till the transformer could be replaced/repaired.

Sounds like they should spring for a backup generator.

 

[NuclearShadow]

This is how god takes down servers. Beat that human hackers!

 

[jvt6]

[citation][nom]mortsmi7[/nom]If lightning hit a transformer, I doubt a UPS would be able to hold out till the transformer could be replaced/repaired.Sounds like they should spring for a backup generator.[/citation]

The UPS does not need to hold out until power is restored. It only needs to hold old out long enough for data to be committed to disk and servers shut down gracefully.

 

[RabidFace]

And this is why I will NEVER use cloud services.

Only way I would use cloud services is if I had it backed up on my own hard drives, but then why use a cloud service? Why not just set your home computer up as an FTP server and access your data from your home computer from where ever you are? But yes, cloud services are more targeted at people who love the convenience of having their data in an easy to reach place that is secure (as secure as the servers themselves) and are probably not extremely tech savvy (but not necessarily).

I do see some value in cloud computing/storage, but not much. There are people out there that probably use these services as their only storage, and I feel extremely sorry for those people.

 

[jvt6]

[citation][nom]rabidface[/nom]And this is why I will NEVER use cloud services. Only way I would use cloud services is if I had it backed up on my own hard drives, but then why use a cloud service? Why not just set your home computer up as an FTP server and access your data from your home computer from where ever you are?[/citation]

The problem with that is it does not cover you against your house burning down, someone stealing your computer and all backup devices and so on. For those scenarios, you need an offsite backup, and the cloud is useful for that.

My own PC gets backed up nightly to an external RAID1 enclosure. At the same time, my most important files are also backed up to a cloud backup service.

 

[razzb3d]

AHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHHAHA store your shit on the cloud - yeah right!

You'll never get me cloud-people! Wahahahaa! /disappears in a puff of smoke

 

[Parrdacc]

Just goes to show no matter what we do or come up with good ol' Mother Nature will always have the upper hand. For all those who seem to be using this as a reason for not using a cloud, and believe me I do not like the idea either, but you do realize this same thing can happen to you. I mean it is lightning and despite what you may have read there is no way to completely protect against it or the damage it can cause.

 

[STravis]

Sounds to me like they need to stiffen up their data center backup solutions...

 

[drwho1]

I didn't even need this to know that I will never use ANY cloud service.

Come to think of it I do use a form of "cloud service" ... over the air broadcast TV
/sarcasm