See yourself as Martians see you
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/22/earth_jupiter_100.jpg . . . ronn! :) ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: "Cloud Computing" Smears (Was: Google Wave)
On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Bruce Bostwick wrote: > > On Oct 18, 2009, at 12:25 AM, Max Battcher wrote: > >> On 10/18/2009 0:38, John Williams wrote: >>> >>> On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: Er. In that sort of a situation, I myself would set up a RAID for storing the data, *much* less chance for losing it. >>> >>> RAID does not protect from rm -rf / , which (some variant of) is my >>> guess at what happened. Although now they are saying most of the data >>> is recovered, so maybe it got munged in a reversible way. >> >> Any "cloud" service at this point is going to be tens, if not hundreds, of >> servers. (Major services easily run in the thousands of servers, and if you >> count "virtual" servers the biggest services are using millions of servers >> already.) At this point any outage that is going to affect a service as >> whole is generally going to be a lot subtler (and possibly a lot "nastier", >> such an accidental viral infection due to an underlying bug/exploit in the >> service) than a rm -rf /. >> >> At least, assuming the system admins are doing their jobs correctly rm -rf >> / to a single server is extremely unlikely to cause massive outage or >> damage... (As a service gets large enough hard drives are expected to fail >> randomly, and surprisingly frequently, and services should be designed >> around that problem...) > > And, as with a RAID except on a much larger scale, there's built in > redundancy and error correction, so the system tends to self-heal. About > the only threat is viral mechanisms that propagate through the system. Never underestimate the power of human error. As this debacle demonstrates. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: "Cloud Computing" Smears (Was: Google Wave)
On Oct 18, 2009, at 12:25 AM, Max Battcher wrote: On 10/18/2009 0:38, John Williams wrote: On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: Er. In that sort of a situation, I myself would set up a RAID for storing the data, *much* less chance for losing it. RAID does not protect from rm -rf / , which (some variant of) is my guess at what happened. Although now they are saying most of the data is recovered, so maybe it got munged in a reversible way. Any "cloud" service at this point is going to be tens, if not hundreds, of servers. (Major services easily run in the thousands of servers, and if you count "virtual" servers the biggest services are using millions of servers already.) At this point any outage that is going to affect a service as whole is generally going to be a lot subtler (and possibly a lot "nastier", such an accidental viral infection due to an underlying bug/exploit in the service) than a rm -rf /. At least, assuming the system admins are doing their jobs correctly rm -rf / to a single server is extremely unlikely to cause massive outage or damage... (As a service gets large enough hard drives are expected to fail randomly, and surprisingly frequently, and services should be designed around that problem...) And, as with a RAID except on a much larger scale, there's built in redundancy and error correction, so the system tends to self-heal. About the only threat is viral mechanisms that propagate through the system. I'm just territorial about my data, is all. I tend to like knowing where it's stored and who has access to it, and have some control over its persistence in some cases. There are some applications for which I think cloud storage might serve my needs, and others for which I consider it unsuitable. "Oh yeah? Well, I speak LOOOUD, and I carry a BEEEger stick -- and I use it too!" **whop!** -- Yosemite Sam ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
