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AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

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221–230 of 456 posts

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always selfhost

... in the UAE, so only less risky if your office is remote enough it doesn't also make a nice target (like, say, located within/near Dubai's Internet City).

and you don't upset whichever prince decides to compete

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that lots of people seem to be under the impression that they are doing it right because they are using AWS. They don't realize that AWS is a toolbox, not a 'ready made solution for redundancy against all catastrophes you are possibly exposed to'. They use that to their advantage by pricing such solutions at a level that people will either pay through the nose or will be left without recourse when AWS…

If I were a bit more bloody-minded I would launch a service for vibe-coded apps that, under the hood, did everything "the right way" and just charged a flat fee + percent on the underlying. I feel like if this was done correctly it would eat a bunch of the market, but I question how many people are actually willing to pay for "the right way". The last time I had that experience it was with Heroku which was quite a le…

I think a lot of people have built those services. But doing it right is more expensive, and people end up choosing the $5-$10/mo option over your $30/mo+ that does it right. Multiply those numbers by whatever multiple you want for higher end stuff.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that quotation on the GP clearly states that AWS has enough redundancy within the same region that they will continue all services running on it if a datacenter is destroyed. It's very clearly not about you being able to set-up redundancy for yourself.

That's actually true. AWS is designed to survive one datacenter being offline (which happened more than once, btw). When the first DC in ME was hit, AWS continued working normally, with only a few services experiencing issues. But it's not designed to survive TWO datacenters going offline, and in a permanent fashion.

That's fair. The only reference was about one datacenter blowing up. You can't have unlimited redundancy.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#224
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Encryption handles confidentiality concerns.) Which is why data residency is such a stupid concept.

Yes and no. For example if you are doing Azure, technically Azure can see tenant traffic I believe and you need to use both a Platform Key and CMK for data rest. VMs need encryption at host turned on too. There is nothing to say that a determined adversary may still get at your data so it needs to stay in country.

Yeah same with AWS - they say they can't see my custom KMS key but... this stuff all lives on their servers, not on my servers. AWS definitely have the ability to see my KMS keys and decrypt my data but I assume that they won't unless a judge tells them to.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be callous but even the 3-2-1 rule is pretty basic, the issue is that people don't apply it. But that's a hiring and strategy thing.

[flagged]

What?! Publicly traded companies are not “legally bound to return growth in share price or dividends.”

There are plenty of companies who pay no dividends and have not returned growth in share price. They’re still operating and no one’s coming to throw the execs in jail.

On the off chance that there is such a law, please cite it.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#226
post #18

No disaster recovery plan? No offsite backups? Someone failed to applied the most basic principles that have existed for decades.

Not all data is allowed to leave all countries.

what a silly notion.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#227
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s simply not true. I use S3 (well GCS mostly) for data that I wouldn’t be upset if it’s lost. And I pay the zonal discount for it.

Google internally has lots of possible redundancy levels for data. They don't sell any of the lower and less reliable levels to the public, I suspect simply because the reputational damage from losing user data is so bad, and the news will take no notice of the fact the user got a discount for less reliable storage.

Most of Google's customers wouldn't know how to choose anyways, if these were exposed. My memory was quite hazy but I recall having a discussion with my colleague on choosing which Reed–Solomon code for our Colossus files, and apparently the choice was down to RS(8,3) or RS(9,3). I don't think even as Googlers we really had enough information to make an informed choice. Comparatively it was much easier to decide which cells to use for multi-location replication in Placer.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be callous but even the 3-2-1 rule is pretty basic, the issue is that people don't apply it. But that's a hiring and strategy thing.

[flagged]

>Quite often a senior leadership issue because backing stuff up results in $$$ spent, which makes shareholders unhappy.

This is true. The latter half of your comment is not. At best they have a duty to shareholders. But your assertion would mean every time a company posted a loss and the price went down the execs would be in legal trouble, which is nonsense.

Re: AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

#230
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The caveat is always "if you're using the service correctly " which is not necessarily free. Meaning taking advantage of multiple geo zones, building in redundancy to your stack, etc. Like everything he said is possible if your technology stack living in AWS was designed to survive it. Everyone who has ever had the "we lost your data" email from AWS knows at the end of the day the cloud is just someone else's data ce…

The problem is that lots of people seem to be under the impression that they are doing it right because they are using AWS. They don't realize that AWS is a toolbox, not a 'ready made solution for redundancy against all catastrophes you are possibly exposed to'. They use that to their advantage by pricing such solutions at a level that people will either pay through the nose or will be left without recourse when AWS…

Yep, a lot of non-technical leaders believe that 'cloud' is synonymous with 'DR strategy' or even 'backup'. "We won't have to worry about being offline if our server goes down if we move to the cloud!" Some of these people fundamentally don't understand what the cloud is, their assumption is cloud means easy button that solves all your infrastructure and uptime problems.
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