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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

#861

Post by oasisbob »

waste_monk wrote: post #757
sleepybrett wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>Can halon systems not put out lithium fires? As the other commenter said, Halon hasn't been a thing for a fair while, but inert gas fire suppression systems in general are still popular. I would expect it wouldn't be sufficient for a lithium ion battery fire - you'd temporarily displace the oxygen, sure, but the conditions for fire would still exist - as soon as enough nitrogen (or whatever suppressant gas is in use…

> I would expect it wouldn't be sufficient for a lithium ion battery fire - you'd temporarily displace the oxygen

(Edit: sorry, in hindsight it's obvious the comment I'm replying to was referring to inert gas systems, and not halogenated systems)

Halon and friends don't work through an oxygen displacement mechanism, their fire suppression effects are primarily due to how the halogen moieties interfere with the decomposition of other substances in the flame. IIRC, A key mechanism is the formation of hydrogen(!) from hydrogen radicals.

Apparently if the calibration is correct, halon can de deployed in a space to suppress a fire without posing as asphyxiation risk.

A good review is here: https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/el/fire_research...

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

#862

Post by delfinom »

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 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...

They can't. The trump admin sanctioning the international criminal court and Microsoft blocking them from all services as a result are proof of why.

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

#863

Post by linksnapzz »

palmotea wrote: post #832
tooltalk wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some foolishly believed that the twin towers were invincible after the 1993 WTC bombing. Before 9/11, most DR (disaster recovery) sites were in Jersey City, NJ just across the river from their main offices in WFC or WTC, or roughly 3-5 miles away. After 9/11, the financial industry adopted a 50+ miles rule.

Before 9/11, most DR (disaster recovery) sites were in Jersey City, NJ just across the river from their main offices in WFC or WTC, or roughly 3-5 miles away. After 9/11, the financial industry adopted a 50+ miles rule. IIRC, multiple IBM mainframes can be setup so they run and are administered as a single system for DR, but there are distance limits.

A Geographically-Dispersed Parallel Sysplex for z\OS mainframes, which IBM has been selling since the '90s, can have redundancy out to about 120 miles.

At a former employer, we used a datacenter in East Brunswick NJ that had mainframes in sysplex with partners in lower manhattan.

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

#864

Post by throwaway2037 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #513
throwaway2037 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. Can you share more context?

The US is threatening to invade Greenland, what means active war with Denmark.

Great point! I forgot that Greenland is not (yet) an independent nation. It is still a part of Denmark.

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

#865

Post by linksnapzz »

url00 wrote: post #796
razakel wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? >No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.

Yes minister! Great show that no one in the US has heard of which is a shame.

"We must do something --> this is something --> We must do this!"

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

#866

Post by throwaway2037 »

justinclift wrote: post #559
throwaway2037 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Korea is great at a lot of engineering disciplines. Sadly, software is not one of them I disagree. People say the same about Japan and Taiwan (and Germany). IMHO, they are overlooking the incredible talents in embedded programming. Think of all of the electronics (including automobiles) produced in those countries.

Embedded electronics, including from those countries, does not have an enviable reputation. :(

What about automobiles from Japan, Korea, and Germany? They are world class. All modern cars must have millions of lines of code to run all kinds of embedded electronics. Do I misunderstand?

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

#867

Post by flufluflufluffy »

phatfish wrote: post #736

"The stored data amounts to 858TB (terabytes), equivalent to 449.5 billion A4 sheets" Just so we can all visualise this in an understandable way, if laid end-to-end how many times round the world would the A4 sheets go? And what is their total area in football fields?

Double-sided?

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

#868

Post by hylaride »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #387
skissane wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a week of my life at a major insurance company in Seoul once, and the military style security, the obsession with corporate espionage, when all they were working on was an internal corporate portal for an insurance company… The developers had to use machines with no Internet access, I wasn’t allowed to bring my laptop with me lest I use it to steal their precious code. A South Korean colleague told me it was…

> South Korean corporate management is stuffed full of ex-military officers For those unaware, all "able-bodied" South Korean men are required to do about two years of military service. This sentence doesn't do much for me. Also, please remember that Germany also had required military service until quite recently. That means anyone "old" (over 40) and doing corp mgmt was probably also a military officer.

Also Israel - and their tech echo system is tier 1.

As somebody that has also done work in Korea (with on of their banks), my observation was that almost all decision making was top-down, and people were forced to do a ton of monotonous work based on the whims of upper management, and people below could not talk back. I literally stood and watched a director walk in after racking a bunch of equipment and commented that the disk arrays should be higher up. When I asked why (they were at the bottom for weight and centre of gravity reasons), he looked shocked that I even asked and tersely said that the blinking lights of the disks at eye level show the value of the purchase better.

I can't imagine writing software in that kind of environment. It'd be almost impossible to do clean work, and even if you did it'd get interfered with. On top of that nobody could go home before the boss.

I did enjoy the fact that the younger Koreans we were working with asked me and my colleague how old we were, because my colleague was 10 years older than me and they were flabbergasted that I was not deferring to him in every conversation, even though we were both equals professionally.

This was circa 2010, so maybe things are better, but oh my god I'm glad it was business trips and I was happy to be flying home each time (though my mouth still waters at the marinaded beef at the bbq restaurants I went to...).

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

#869

Post by delfinom »

oceansky wrote: post #179
rini17 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery fire is impossible to suppress.

Much harder, but not impossible.

Lithium ion batteries go into thermal runaway. The flame can be somewhat suppressed by displacing oxygen and/or spraying shit on it to prevent the burning of material. But it's still going thermalnuclear and putting out incredibly hot gasses. The only way to suppress it is by dunking the batteries in water to sap the energy out of them.

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

#870

Post by _vqpz »

miningape wrote: post #797
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US economy is one of the world's most diverse in terms of exports: https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/... Side note: Why is there so much fact-free anti-US sentiment on HN?

Orange man bad

Yes, he is orange and bad. Glad we agree.
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