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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

#841

Post by elevation »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #806
hnlmorg wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copper doesn't work over these kinds of distances without powered switches, which adds latency. And laying fibre over several miles would be massively expensive. Well outside the realm of all but the largest of corporations. There's a reason buildings with high bandwidth constraints huddle near internet backbones. What used to happen (and still does as far as I know, but I've been out of the networking game for a whi…

To be fair, tape backups are very much ok as a disaster recovery solution. It's cheap once you have the tape drive. Bandwith is mostly fine if you want to read them sequentially. It's easy to store and handle and fairly resistant. It's "only" poor if you need to restore some files in the middle or want your backup to act as a failover solution to minimise unavailability. But as a last resort solution in case of total…

The suits are stingy when it's not an active emergency. A former employer declined my request for $2K for a second NAS to replicate our company's main data store. This was just days after a harrowing data recovery of critical from a failing WD Green that was never backed up. Once the data was on a RAID mirror and accessible to employees again, there was no active emergency, and the budget dried up.

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

#842

Post by Romario77 »

stego-tech wrote: post #773
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is not refusing to use a foreign third party. That makes sense. The issue is mandating the use of remote storage and not backing it up. That’s insane. It’s like the most basic amount of preparation you do. It’s recommended to even the smallest of companies specifically because a fire is a risk. That’s gross mismanagement.

This. Speaking specifically from the IT side of things, an employer or customer refusing to do backups is the biggest red flag I can get, an immediate warning to run the fuck away before you get blamed for their failure, stego-tech kind of situation. That being said, I can likely guess where this ends up going: * Current IT staff and management are almost certainly scapegoated for “allowing this to happen”, despite t…

I mean - it should be part of due diligence of any competent department trying to use this G-drive. If it says there are no backups it means it could only be used as a temporary storage, maybe as a backup destination.

It's negligence all the way, not just with this G-Drive designers, but with customers as well.

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

#843

Post by rini17 »

sleepybrett wrote: post #381
rawgabbit wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How large is this UPS that a fire can bring down all 96 servers? This story is really unbelievable.

depends on how many batteries were in the facility, if one goes up chances are the rest go too. Can halon systems not put out lithium fires?

They were not tested enough for that. From chemical POV the fluorine in halon can even exothermically react with lithium, like teflon can with aluminium. But all depends on circumstances, it needs high temperatures and the lithium concentration in batteries is low.

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

#844

Post by kwhitefoot »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #292

Article comments aside, it is entirely unclear to me whether or not there was no backups. Certainly no "external" backups, but potentially "internal" backups. My thinking is that not actually allowing backups and forcing all data there creates a prime target for the PRK folks right? I've been in low level national defense meetings about security where things like "you cannot backup off site" are discussed but there a…

> there are often fire vaults[

Many years ago I was Unix sysadmin responsible for backups and that is exactly what we did. Once a week we rotated the backup tapes taking the oldest out of the fire safe and putting the newest in. The fire safe was in a different building.

I thought that this was quite a normal practice.

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

#845

Post by eranation »

abtinf wrote: post #821

Jim Hacker: How am I going to explain the missing documents to The Mail? Sir Humphrey: Well, this is what we normally do in circumstances like these. Jim Hacker: (reading) This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967… Was 1967 a particularly bad winter? Sir Humphrey: No, a marve…

To those wondering where it's from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751825/quotes/?item=qt0238072

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

#846

Post by [deleted] »

eranation wrote: post #845
abtinf wrote: post #821

Jim Hacker: How am I going to explain the missing documents to The Mail? Sir Humphrey: Well, this is what we normally do in circumstances like these. Jim Hacker: (reading) This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967… Was 1967 a particularly bad winter? Sir Humphrey: No, a marve…

To those wondering where it's from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751825/quotes/?item=qt0238072

[deleted]

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

#847

Post by jstummbillig »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #240
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…

The issue here is not refusing to use a foreign third party. That makes sense. The issue is mandating the use of remote storage and not backing it up. That’s insane. It’s like the most basic amount of preparation you do. It’s recommended to even the smallest of companies specifically because a fire is a risk. That’s gross mismanagement.

It does only make sense if you are competent enough to manage data, and I mean: Any part of it, forever. It's not impossible, of course, but it is really not as trivial as the self-host crowd makes it out to be, if you absolutely need a certain amount of 9s of reliability. There is a reason why AWS etc can exist. I am sure the cloud market is not entirely reasonable but certainly far more reasonable than relying on some mid consultant to do this for you at this scale.

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

#849

Post by harikb »

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 my fault.. I asked them to save everything in G-Drive (Google Drive)"

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

#850

Post by strawhatguy »

godelski wrote: post #410
covercash wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US government and corporate executives had even half this level of shame, we'd have nobody left in those positions!

You should look at the previous president of SK. Maybe a few more too... they frequently land in jail... I'm not sure Yoon Suk Yeol had any shame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Yoon_Suk_Yeol

The weird thing is 13 days later his temporary successor Han was also impeached, basically because he vetoed two bills doing investigations into Yoon. IIRC, the constitutional court wasn’t fully appointed yet. And also apparently, an impeachment is a simple majority in the Assembly, and appears the DPK (the current majority party) has been impeaching everyone they disagree with. My wife, who’s from Korea, says that Lee, the now president, apparently had a “revolutionary” past, and was thrown in jail; and also one justice from the court also had a criminal record.

It’s pretty crazy over there, Lee’s probably safe right now just because his party’s the majority. But it also sounds like they’ve been abusing the impeachment process against the minority party.

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