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Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

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Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#161
post #136

A bit fascinated how 8M terabyte looks like in a data centre How much physical space is needed for that?

1 million 8TB hard drives. you can probably put at least 100 of them in the single rack, which means 10.000 racks, put in 100x100 grid that means a single 300mx300m factory hall. Treat that as an upper bound, probably it is possible to package the drives more tightly.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#162
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is no guarantee: AES256 could be broken tomorrow, or maybe it has already been. What we know is that, extrapolating compute speed from the past decades and even assuming quantum computers become useable in practice, the best algorithms we currently have cannot be brute-forced within the next 50 years.

> AES256 could be broken tomorrow, or maybe it has already been. This is extremely unlikely. > What we know is that, extrapolating compute speed from the past decades and even assuming quantum computers become useable in practice, the best algorithms we currently have cannot be brute-forced within the next 50 years. Quantum computers only offer a quadratic speedup against symmetric ciphers. AES 256 will survive much…

>>AES 256 will survive much longer than the next 50 years against brute force attacks.

From what I understand it simply can't be broken by brute force because simply iterating through every possible value of a 256 bit key would require more energy than there is in the universe, and that's without actually trying any of the combinations, just simply having a computer do a i++ through all possible values.

I'm not sure if quantum computing helps here in any way , someone else would need to chime in here with details.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#163
post #8

All the data is encrypted so it doesn’t matter where they are storing it. Using multiple service providers (Google, Amazon, their own servers, etc) might actually be beneficial because it eliminates one point of failure, especially if they replicate data in a smart way to take advantage of it. It might also speed up access to data.

>All the data is encrypted

Where are the keys though? If they ever end up on the same platform it doesn't matter.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#164
post #61
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m only here because I don’t understand why you would say 8 million terabytes instead of 8 exabytes.

Same reason for we say 1000 km instead of 1 Mm, or Sun to Earth 150 M km instead of 150 Gm. Some units are usual in some contexts, some are not. In one word, habits.

Not to mention the most unloved metric prefixes, deci and Deca. When have you ever heard someone use those?

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#165
post #8

All the data is encrypted so it doesn’t matter where they are storing it. Using multiple service providers (Google, Amazon, their own servers, etc) might actually be beneficial because it eliminates one point of failure, especially if they replicate data in a smart way to take advantage of it. It might also speed up access to data.

Unless you have encryption that is guaranteed to never be obsolete it ALWAYS matters where you store the data.

If your model is "even encryption isn't good enough" then you might as well not care because there is nothing you can do to protect it.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#166
Own your data or quit gripping when this happens.

On my phone I keep all my personal stuff in git with the remote set to my desktop (it has a public IP) over ssh. My photo stream is just rsynced occasionally over ssh.

Not having to deal with this is arguably even more convenient provided your OS vendor doesn't intentionally get in the way.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple finally realized they weren’t very good at hosting stuff. They never were. Plus, it’s a no brainer leveraging Google and AWS. Their global footprint and expertise alone is worth it. Also, $300 million a year is a drop in the bucket to Apple’s bottom line. They probably make that alone from the millions of adapters they sell each year.

It's not just $300m. It's $300 for storage. I'm sure they spend more on the GCP platform. They also use AWS, which is over $350m a year. That contract ends in a year or two. Afaik, they don't run on azure anymore. It's not hard to believe they're spending $1B+ on external cloud partners. At $57B net revenue ($274B), a high margin space such as the cloud services could make sense. Although if they're not selling it to…

>Afaik, they don't run on azure anymore.

why?

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#168
post #22

I guess 8 exabytes doesn't get the same number of clicks Edit: Not really trying to be facetious, but come on. Apple using a lot of storage at a lot of places isn't too surprising

I’m only here because I don’t understand why you would say 8 million terabytes instead of 8 exabytes.

Because terabytes is a good frame of reference for most computer users. I get paid well to work in the computer space and if I saw 8 exabytes, I'd have to consult a chart/list to just determine how much that is.

Most people don't know what an exabyte is. That's why you frame the amount of data in an amount of data (terabyte) that people know.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#169
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying there is no encryption guaranteed to be good for the next 50 years ?

Against a state-actor, perhaps not. Check out quantum cryptography. It is a serious business.

Quantum cryptography is much less convenient than conventional asymmetric cryptography and offers few benefits. Doesn't stop people from trying to sell it though...

And for the "encrypted data at rest" scenario we're talking about here, where symmetric encryption suffices, quantum crypto makes no sense what-so-ever.

Re: Apple Reportedly Storing over 8M Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

#170
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason for we say 1000 km instead of 1 Mm, or Sun to Earth 150 M km instead of 150 Gm. Some units are usual in some contexts, some are not. In one word, habits.

Not to mention the most unloved metric prefixes, deci and Deca. When have you ever heard someone use those?

Decathlon?
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