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Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

digitalcameraworld.com

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Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#11

Post by londons_explore »

CalRobert wrote: post #5
klodolph wrote: post #2

Lesson for those designing cold-storage solutions--design your system, as much as reasonable, to not support deletion operations. The reason why files get lost is usually due to software bugs, bad configurations, and operator errors. Design your system to protect against these things.

If memory serves, a class of Glacier storage (AWS) isn't practical to use in the EU because the inability to delete makes it impossible to serve "Right to Erasure" GDPR requests.

Store data and keys seperately.

The set of keys for all your customers should be only a few megabytes, so is much much easier to back up more frequently and more copies of.

It's also easier to have a "we do daily backups and delete any backups after 21 days" policy.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#12

Post by ponker »

The camera companies are so bad at software that the software companies are building better cameras than them... in the few millimeters thickness of a phone! I salivate for the day that Google or Apple buys Nikon or Leica or whatever and shoves all of that computational photography goodness under a 24x36mm camera sensor.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#13

Post by londons_explore »

_Microft wrote: post #9
hxegon wrote: post #3

wow this is bad. I know you should keep local backups too but if you shoot RAW then that quickly becomes cumbersome, and only using cloud backup looks very convenient. If I were a professional photographer missing client material or someone who lost potentially irreplaceable memories I'd want a hell of a lot more then just "[Cannon's] deepest apologies".

The software and service might have been ... provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, including but not limited to...

I'd personally prefer services to warrant a certain number of $$$'s in case of service outage, a certain number for data loss, and another number for data leaks.

I'd then like then to have insurance to ensure they are able to pay out rather than go bankrupt.

They can then proudly write those $$$ numbers on the feature list, and I'll use it to decide which service to buy.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#15

Post by Dylan16807 »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #7

I take nightly images of my computer's primary drive and replicate them offsite, with alerting if it fails and automated scheduled backup restore testing. It blows my mind to think that some random schmuck like me has better backup procedures than these multibillion dollar global corporations. Companies that don't invest in their IT end up paying for it tenfold down the track.

But insufficient redundancy for that much data saves millions of dollars!

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#16

Post by Sharlin »

hxegon wrote: post #3

wow this is bad. I know you should keep local backups too but if you shoot RAW then that quickly becomes cumbersome, and only using cloud backup looks very convenient. If I were a professional photographer missing client material or someone who lost potentially irreplaceable memories I'd want a hell of a lot more then just "[Cannon's] deepest apologies".

Fortunately it was a new service and likely not yet very commonly used. Definitely not something any professional or even amateur in their right mind would use as a primary storage, never mind the only one.

The primary use case of the service is the short-term 30-day storage mode where you can auto-upload photos straight out of camera and auto-download them to your computer. The long-term storage is an afterthought, the available space is tiny at 10GB, and if the service is not used in a year, all images are automatically deleted.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#17

Post by cbg0 »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #6

This is all because someone thought it would be “easy” to add a stream of recurring revenue for cloud photo storage but didn’t take the time to design the service from a technical perspective to be resilient enough to not crash and burn.

More likely than not some manager decided all those extra nines weren't really necessary.

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#18

Post by kbr2000 »

hxegon wrote: post #3

wow this is bad. I know you should keep local backups too but if you shoot RAW then that quickly becomes cumbersome, and only using cloud backup looks very convenient. If I were a professional photographer missing client material or someone who lost potentially irreplaceable memories I'd want a hell of a lot more then just "[Cannon's] deepest apologies".

Best avoid putting all your eggs in the same basket (build in some degree of redundancy in storing information, dependant on how important that info is to you).

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#19

Post by lozenge »

londons_explore wrote: post #11
CalRobert wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If memory serves, a class of Glacier storage (AWS) isn't practical to use in the EU because the inability to delete makes it impossible to serve "Right to Erasure" GDPR requests.

Store data and keys seperately. The set of keys for all your customers should be only a few megabytes, so is much much easier to back up more frequently and more copies of. It's also easier to have a "we do daily backups and delete any backups after 21 days" policy.

Storing names separately can help but the subset of data you have a legitimate legal reason to "refuse to forget" can change faster than you would want to rewrite your backups(well, nobody wants to rewrite backups, but you get what I mean)

Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

#20

Post by dannyw »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #7

I take nightly images of my computer's primary drive and replicate them offsite, with alerting if it fails and automated scheduled backup restore testing. It blows my mind to think that some random schmuck like me has better backup procedures than these multibillion dollar global corporations. Companies that don't invest in their IT end up paying for it tenfold down the track.

On topic topic, can I get HN’s advice on my backup strategy?

All important files on Synology Ds218+ NAS, which has 2x12TB helium HDDs in mirror.

Daily HyperBackup to Google Drive. I test restoring files on a monthly basis.

Email alerts on failure.

Anything I can improve?

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