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Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

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Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#191

Post by shakna »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #157
miken123 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because these companies never lose data, like during some lightning strikes, oh wait: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33989384 As a government you should not be putting your stuff in an environment under control of some other nation, period. That is a completely different issue and does not really relate to making backups.

>As a government you should not be putting your stuff in an environment under control of some other nation, period. Why? If you encrypt it yourself before transfer, the only possible control some_other_nation will have over you or your data is availability.

You're forgetting that you're talking nation states, here. Breaking encryption is in fact the role of the people you are giving access.

Sovereign delivery makes sense for _nations_.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#192

Post by npteljes »

rvba wrote: post #119
yongjik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse. According to other articles [1], the total data of "G drive" was 858 TB. It's almost farcical to calculate, but AWS S3 has pricing of about $0.023/GB/month, which means the South Korean government could have reliable multi-storage backup of the whole data at about $20k/month. Or about $900/month if they opted for "Glacier deep archive" tier ($0.00099/GB/month). They did have backup of the data ... in…

How does this even make sense business wise for AWS? Is their cost per unit so low?

They charge little for storage and upload, but download, so getting your data back, is pricey.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#193

Post by alwa »

kristianc wrote: post #95

The government official who insisted that commercial AWS/GCP/Azure couldn't possibly be trusted with keeping the information will be keeping their head low for a few days then... "The Interior Ministry explained that while most systems at the Daejeon data center are backed up daily to separate equipment within the same center and to a physically remote backup facility, the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for extern…

Not sure “sane backup strategy” and “park your whole government in a private company under American jurisdiction” are mutually exclusive. I feel like I can think of a bunch of things that a nation would be sad to lose, but would be even sadder to have adversaries rifling through at will. Or, for that matter, extort favors under threat of cutting off your access.

At least in this case you can track down said officials in their foxholes and give them a good talking-to. Good luck holding AWS/GCP/Azure accountable…

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#194

Post by atoav »

kristianc wrote: post #95

The government official who insisted that commercial AWS/GCP/Azure couldn't possibly be trusted with keeping the information will be keeping their head low for a few days then... "The Interior Ministry explained that while most systems at the Daejeon data center are backed up daily to separate equipment within the same center and to a physically remote backup facility, the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for extern…

Well it is just malpractise. Even when I was an first semester art student I knew about the concept of off-site backups.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#195

Post by magicalhippo »

fredoralive wrote: post #28
mrbluecoat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. No automated fire suppression system for critical infrastructure with no backup?

That may not be a perfect answer. One issue with fire suppression systems and spinning rust drives is that the pressure change etc. from the system can also ‘suppress’ the glass platters in drives as well.

Reminds me of the classic video[1] showing how shouting at the harddrives make them go slower.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#196

Post by Johnny555 »

forinti wrote: post #168

What structure could possibly preclude backups? I've never seen anything that couldn't be copied elsewhere. Maybe it was just convenient to have the possibility of losing everything.

I think that alluded to that earlier in the article:

>However, due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained — meaning all data has been permanently lost.

I think they decided that their storage was too slow to allow backups?

Seems hard to believe that they couldn't manage any backups... other sources said they had around 900TB of storage. An LTO-9 tape drive holds ~20TB uncompressed, so they could have backed up the entire system with 45 tapes. At 300MB/sec with a single drive, it would take them a month to complete a full backup, so seems like even a slow storage system should be able to keep up with that rate. They'd have a backup that's always a month out of date, but that seems better than no backup at all.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#197

Post by [deleted] »

vladms wrote: post #170
CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet here is an example where keeping critical data off public cloud storage has been significantly worse for them in the short term. Not that they should just go all in on it, but an encrypted copy on S3 or GCS would seem really useful right about now.

You can do a bad job with public or private cloud. What if they would have had the backup and lost the encryption key? Cost wise probably having even a Korean different data center backup would not have been huge effort, but not doing it exposed them to a huge risk.

[deleted]

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#198

Post by OvbiousError »

crazygringo wrote: post #166
stogot wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? If the region is in country, encrypted, and with proven security attestations validated by third parties, a backup to a cloud storage would be incredibly wise. Otherwise we might end up reading an article about a fire burning down a single data center

Exactly. Like, don't store it in the cloud of an enemy country of course. But if it's encrypted and you're keeping a live backup in a second country with a second company, ideally with a different geopolitical alignment, I don't see the problem.

Enemy country in the current geopolitical climate is an interesting take. Doesn't sound like a great idea to me tbh.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#199

Post by AshamedCaptain »

userbinator wrote: post #81
MangoCoffee wrote: post #76

It's hard to believe this happened. South Korea has tech giants like Samsung, and yet this is how the government runs? Is the US government any better?

The US government still relies heavily on physical records.

Why is there a "still" in there?

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#200

Post by npteljes »

m3047 wrote: post #42

Mindblowing. Took a walk. All I can say is that if business continues "as usual" and the economy and public services continue largely unaffected then either there were local copies of critical documents, or you can fire a lot of those workers; either one of those ways the "stress test" was a success.

Long term damage, and risk are two things that don't show up with a test like this. Also, often why things go forward is just momentum, built from the past.
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