Should we worry about the cloud? (Hardware & Concept)
Post date: Dec 4, 2013 6:38:48 PM
People are afraid of cloud for no reason. First of all, Cloud is marketing term, without going into complex details, it's just simply meaningless. Any computer running at my home and connected to the Internet could be hosting IaaS, PaaS and SaaS services. So cloud itself doesn't mean anything at all, other than services provider over the Internet. Well what's the opposite of the cloud? Self hosted systems. I just today witnessed situation at the customer where their cooling system was leaking water, servers were over upside down beer crates, but UPSs were on floor under those crates and getting soaked due to the water leak from cooling system. Also the servers didn't have redundant disk systems, but a daily tape backup. Of course the tape backup tape is the same tape, inserted in the backup tape drive about five years go. I'm quite sure that the tape is well beyond state where it could be possible to restore something from it.
That's the normal situation. So, is cloud worse or better than that?
I think cloud is much better option than 'average to poor' computer facilities.
Of course even if you're using cloud, you don't need to be stupid. You can still have encrypted daily or hourly or real-time, off site backups, to home, office or what ever location (like another cloud) if you want to. So even if the worst happens and the cloud totally disappears right now. You can still recover in reasonable time, and you won't loss any or much of the important data.
Many security and tech freaks often seem to completely forget how dreadful the reality can actually be.
Btw. I did take a photo of that water leak, UPSs and servers. I can share it if someone is interested. It's not fiction.