Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 463 posts

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

#441

Post by paulddraper »

Game_Ender wrote: post #429
paulddraper wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers with separate and redundant power infrastructure, networking, and connectivity in an AWS Region. Availability Zones in a Region are meaningfully distant from each other, up to 60 miles (~100 km) to prevent correlated failures, but close enough to use synchronous replication with single-digit millisecond latency. > https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/late…

10s of miles is close enough that they are functionally in the same place in a military context though. The latest cheap massive wave attack drones fly hundreds of miles and hour which puts the DCs less than a minute apart by flight time. This means if you want protection against those risks you have to use multiple regions instead of, or in addition to multiple AZs.

A targeted, coordinated attack can compromise multiple AZs.

But AFAIK AWS has only reported data loss in mec1-az2.

Cross-AZ services like S3 should have no data loss, unless there is more damage than AWS has currently published.

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

#442

Post by locusofself »

sandeepkd wrote: post #241
krick wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually surprising to me. Claims like that are pretty common, they make sense and they should be true, so even though I don't really know AWS (/Backblaze/Azure/whatever) redundancy planning in enough detail, I used to trust them. It's really worrying when they outright say it will be ok, and then a week later it turns out to be not ok.

The devil is always in the details. Somehow I feel that when we offload the responsibility to some one else we get this feeling that the other person/entity would be doing full diligence and whatever else is required to carry out the job perfectly. However in reality most of the times they just do the bare minimum to pass your evaluation criteria to get the job.

This is so true. After 20 years in the tech business I have so rarely seen perfect execution. It's mostly scrambling and chaos and a miracle anything works in the first place.

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

#443

Post by MisterMunchkin »

eastbound wrote: post #335
lbreakjai wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they have Act of Special Operation exemptions?

I'm going to reword my Terms of Service this second to add "any military operation" next to "acts of war". But I'm sure we'll then have to demonstrate whether paramilitary are assimilated to the military.

I was just reading an insurance policy and it said "any war, including undeclared wars"

The insurers always know how to weasel out of it.

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

#444

Post by MisterTea »

instakill wrote: post #365
birdatlaw wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

turns out reading comprehension skills have still not gotten better in the future

off-topic but nice username. Fan of Charlie Kelly?

The 'at' in the middle tells me no. I also get Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law vibes but that could just be me.

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

#445

Post by shimman »

bojangleslover wrote: post #378

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.

Why not? Why shouldn't we hold it against Amazon when they are making business deals with deeply unequal societies that rely on slave labor? This is what happens when you make deals with authoritarians. Expecting the blowback to not effect you is a child's mindset.

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

#446

Post by TeMPOraL »

paulddraper wrote: post #424
TeMPOraL wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers with separate and redundant power infrastructure, networking, and connectivity in an AWS Region. Availability Zones in a Region are meaningfully distant from each other, up to 60 miles (~100 km) to prevent correlated failures, but close enough to use synchronous replication with single-digit millisecond latency. > https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/late…

Elsewhere in this threat comments mention AZ turning out in practice to be different areas of the same building, or just a matter of opinion and some config.

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

#448

Post by varispeed »

JulianWasTaken wrote: post #405
varispeed wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

The Iranians hit one specific data centre at a time, no?

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

#449

Post by _fat_santa »

shimman wrote: post #445
bojangleslover wrote: post #378

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.

Why not? Why shouldn't we hold it against Amazon when they are making business deals with deeply unequal societies that rely on slave labor? This is what happens when you make deals with authoritarians. Expecting the blowback to not effect you is a child's mindset.

I think that's past the point OP was making. Amazon makes some pretty impressive guarantees of data durability but those guarantees only hold up if you take their advice and replicate data to other regions.

It's like saying "Oh this car manufacturer claimed that their cars were the safest in the industry but couldn't prevent this driver from flying through the windshield" and omitting the fact the person wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

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

#450

Post by boredumb »

willturman wrote: post #415
jvm___ wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Huh, I was thinking US Congresspeople.

funny enough, there have been some huge problems involving congressman with both bathrooms and children in regards to moral diligence.
Post reply on HN