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

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

#401
post #73

This interview with an AWS leader isn’t aging well, from CBS Sunday morning: Pogue asked, "I don't mean to give anyone ideas, but let's say I figured out that one of these unmarked buildings was an AWS data center, and I blew it up. Are you saying that it's so backed up and redundant that you probably wouldn't notice?" Wood replied, "Yeah, you wouldn't notice. I mean, we might be a bit upset, but you wouldn't notice!…

The whole "flawless victory" thing isn't aging well either.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have a synchronous like setup where you don’t acknowledge data writes unless the remote has aconowledged them first, you will lose data in case your datacenter is hit by a warhead. Now, there are a few things to consider: - AWS best practices recommend multiple AZs for workloads and cross-region backups for things like databases and other “stateful” data - You have to read the fine-print on what AWS offers…

All the AZs flooded simultaneously?! How big was this flood?

Well, this is how the world found out that Google AZs are just different rooms in the same building on the same floor.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This wasn’t a strike on a single data center, it was strikes on many data centers. 2. Since that interview, AWS has started selling versions of their storage that isn’t redundant. It is not surprising that when AWS sells non-redundant storage that some data is not recoverable.

> This wasn’t a strike on a single data center, it was strikes on many data centers. He didn't say "but if you hit many data centres then there is a problem". The premise was if you hit data centre, user won't notice, without caveat that there is a limit.

That's an absurd interpretation.

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

#404
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny because this applies to children cleaning home bathrooms as a Saturday chore as well.

I think it applies to all humans of all ages in one way or another, these varying imperfections is what makes us what we are

How are the behavior described imperfections ?

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This wasn’t a strike on a single data center, it was strikes on many data centers. 2. Since that interview, AWS has started selling versions of their storage that isn’t redundant. It is not surprising that when AWS sells non-redundant storage that some data is not recoverable.

> This wasn’t a strike on a single data center, it was strikes on many data centers. He didn't say "but if you hit many data centres then there is a problem". The premise was if you hit data centre, user won't notice, without caveat that there is a limit.

> Amazon's Matt Wood isn't worried: "If something does happen or we have a power event or there's a flood in one specific location, that data is held redundantly in other locations as well."

> Pogue asked, "I don't mean to give anyone ideas, but let's say I figured out that one of these unmarked buildings was an AWS data center, and I blew it up. Are you saying that it's so backed up and redundant that you probably wouldn't notice?"

Seems pretty silly to argue, but he certainly did say "one specific data center", and I don't think anyone even non-technical will conclude "it's safe if they all go down at once" from this statement.

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

#406

It was always a bad bet for billionaires like Bezos to become Trump enablers. You weren't buying a seat at the table, or the privilege of being left alone, you were just signing yourself up to be force-fed shit sandwiches over and over (And the shit-to-bread ratio gets worse as time goes on) You should have used your considerable resources to fight. If only billionaires would oppose aspiring tyrants with the same zea…

Bezos hasn't lost anything from this. He's only gotten richer.

Well, he did lose some data centers. Those aren't cheap.

The sort of global instability that is being created by all this is bad for everyone. It generally isn't good for business either.

We're so unstable and capricious now, countries are actually trying to decouple from American tech services like AWS and Amazon. That ain't great for Bezos.

Maybe inertia kicks in after Trump and things revert to the mean, but restoring confidence in the US again as a friendly, stable nation is going to be tough if we're always 4 years away from another Trump-type figure running the show.

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

#407
post #73

This interview with an AWS leader isn’t aging well, from CBS Sunday morning: Pogue asked, "I don't mean to give anyone ideas, but let's say I figured out that one of these unmarked buildings was an AWS data center, and I blew it up. Are you saying that it's so backed up and redundant that you probably wouldn't notice?" Wood replied, "Yeah, you wouldn't notice. I mean, we might be a bit upset, but you wouldn't notice!…

Clearly since the MBAs took over AWS standards are not anymore what they used to be. That marketing guy should not be talking to the press, as he does not have the skills, and if somebody happens to say...our data center we wont lose any data if we have an issue, without qualifying it will depend on what quality of service, and usage of our services you setup ...is the type of technical answer that should make a hiri…

> That marketing guy should not be talking to the press, as he does not have the skills

They have way more skills than the technical folk in doing that

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

#408
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

black swan events. this is one of one of those things - were in the current era either a cloud provider should provide automatic backups in another geographic zone. if you're in us-east, then your back-ups should ideally be in eu-west + africa for redundancy.

"Black Swan" would be a good name for an attack drone

Along with "Outside Context", "Tail Risk", "Impossible to Predict", "Force Majeure" and "Spanish Inquisition".

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm from the future. You might want to consider storing the data somewhere besides an Azure datacenter in the UAE.

I'm from the past and I concur.

I'm waiting for a messenger from the future coming back to tell people that passkeys are stupid, and having passwords on post-it notes attached to the monitor was never a real problem, it's just the security industry that got threat modeling backwards for couple decades...

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

#410

I think people are overthinking this. I'm the first one to criticize AWS (I run a competitor, carolinacloud.io) but I don't think we should hold it against them when they lost data due to their hard drives being physically bombed.

Of course not. The surprising thing is that multiple availability zones were bombed simultaneously. And to my knowledge, they haven’t even yet said 2+ AZs were compromised.

Turns out that "availability zones" in cloud parlance seem to have nothing to do with geographical availability. Apparently they're logical splits and are more about billing than anything.
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