Comments on: Cloud Storage Data Availability

By: Cloud Storage to the Rescue « Enterprise Strategy Group

Cloud Storage to the Rescue « Enterprise Strategy Group — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:16:34 +0000

[...] blogged in the past about cloud storage data availability, or more accurately lack of data availability SLAs. Dropbox [...]

By: Cloud Storage to the Rescue | IT Depends

Cloud Storage to the Rescue | IT Depends — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:01:32 +0000

[...] blogged in the past about cloud storage data availability, or more accurately lack of data availability SLAs. Dropbox [...]

By: Tony Cerqueira

Tony Cerqueira — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:55:46 +0000

Very astute points and comments. All the more reason for cloud-hybrid data protection solution that includes deduped disk repository on-site for must have local copies (backups, CDP, replication, DR, etc.) and managed/tracked version copies going to the cloud, which is ideal to trickle copies real time as needed, and not interfere with backup windows.
Fast restore for most likely scenarios comes from the on-site repository. But a complete “friggin-thermo-nuclear-take-me-out-to-the-ballgame” type restore would require either a big pipe to the cloud (the kind Morpheus uses in The Matrix) or a long lunch (about 3,000 martini’s). And like any repository anywhere, if that long term stuff in the back-end cloud ain’t there, you may need a few more martini’s . . . .
TC
http://www.cofio.com
——Pour one for me Tony – when all is said and done hybrid looks more and more like the vable solution for a lot of the issues we’re facing! Thanks for commenting!

By: Ray Lucchesi

Ray Lucchesi — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:33:26 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly. What some Cloud providers have told me is that Cloud storage is more for static or reference data not Tier 1 primary storage.
But then what is cloud computing going to use for storage if not cloud storage. In this case it is imperative to have some sort of data protection strategy in place for your cloud storage. The sooner everybody realizes this the better.
Ray
—Thanks for the comment Ray – based on protection levels it is for maybe a secondary copy of static data. If the primary is out there, without some type of WORM capability, it is still exposed to data corruption or accidental delete, and the corruption or deletion hapens for all copies in a mirrored environment no matter how many mirrors you have! Lots of cloud storage has been developed as consumer-grade, enterprise-grade will require some work.

By: Rich Bruklis

Rich Bruklis — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:56:35 +0000

Even worse, you can send data to a cloud little by little in some type metered fashion (isn’t this great and its only $0.15/GB!?) but by golly if you totally lose your on-site data, how do you get 1TB, 5TB, 10TB+ of data sent back (and sent back ASAP)?
———-Thanks Rich – good point, we’re actually seeing a the return of sneakernet, shipping loaded drives instead of tapes. Seeing it both ways, to return data in the case of a local event and for cloud ingest! Ingest is another point we don’t hear enough about. Shifting a bunch of long tail static data from internal to cloud can be a big effort, so we’ll need something to help with ingest.