Comments on: When the Cloud Fails: T-Mobile, Microsoft Lose Sidekick Customer Data

By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:28:56 +0000

It doesn’t matter if data is highly dynamic. There are solutions for that. As users of home computers, we imagine that we have to copy everything and wait until the operation has finished, because that’s what we do at home. The enterprise world knows more advanced methods. You can even make a backup of terabytes of constantly changing data in less than a millisecond. When data changes afterwards, you make a modified copy of the block instead of changing the block itself. You need special filesystems for that (e.g. NetApp does this). This method combined with redundant copies is pretty safe.

By: Concerned

Concerned — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:34:58 +0000

The actual site address is http://sidekickfail.com for the home page and http://forum.sidekickfail.com for the forum.

By: Angry Customer

Angry Customer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:40:21 +0000

Forum.sidekickfail.com has recently been created as an open and neutral place sidekick customers can exchange ideas and vent without the fear of their valuable thoughts, ideas, and opinions being deleted and disrespected as T-Mobile has been doing on their forums.

By: Jo Shmo

Jo Shmo — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:56:46 +0000

Well cmon! Let’s start with the name. DANGER?! Yeah that instills confidence.

Have you heard GM has a new line of cars called The Roller!

#whatsinanameindeed!

By: Surj

Surj — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:31:06 +0000

I think the lesson here is the same as that has been learned from big disasters in architecture and engineering disciplines: Learn from your mistakes by understanding why it happened and never let it happen again.

I will say one thing though – traditionally those disciplines have had the maturity to share their learning’s from their mistakes for the collective good. Sadly in IT we don’t have that. The mistake and the career of the person making it get buried waiting for it to happen again to someone else.

The cloud paradigm makes long term sense as it’s the correct evolution of technology. We just need to bring maturity and the willingness to the industry to share what went wrong.

By: elle

elle — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:26:09 +0000

Bad history for cloud technology, and backups should have been a basic, no-brainer. Shameful.

Even as a consumer, I would have kept my own backups, if possible (on a microSD or pc sync).

By: Stephen - NYC

Stephen - NYC — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:30:23 +0000

Assuming you have some sort of webmail account, then Josh’s comment below is accurate. However, ensure the setting on your local email client (e.g., Outlook or Thunderbird) that indicates “Leave mail on Server” is checked. You don’t want to substitute one single point of failure with another. This way your email is left on the webmail account and is also brought into your local system, which of course, you backup every night.

By: Ian Rae

Ian Rae — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:32:56 +0000

roflol

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:42:42 +0000

There is simply no excuse for not doing backups.

If you have a system design that makes it hard to do design (and almost any system can be backed up with the right technology), change it. Many enterprises have critical systems that are used 24/7 yet still manage to back them up – the technology of snapshots and hot database backups is very well proven.

By: Yacko

Yacko — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:42:33 +0000

What is the logic for Adobe to absorb and destroy Macromedia? There is a large part of the illustration market that worships Freehand. And this is just one of many Adobe examples. Removing the competition – priceless. Anyway, people should have known it was not safe doing business with a company named Danger, Inc, though I have to say that 20+ years ago, Dr. Evil Laboratories was a benefit to the Commodore 64 community.

By: Todd

Todd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:55:15 +0000

Ok, if we are just not going to be accountable, then this should be this post’s headline:

MICROSOFT’S AZURE DOOMED BASED ON SIDEKICK DATA LOSS

By: uz

uz — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:21:07 +0000

First, in defense of Om’s headline, there are two ways “cloud” is used in talking about network storage/computing: 1) the actual hardware/software solution facilitating and 2) the concept of data/computing done remotely. I’m not a big fan of the latter usage as it obfuscates (to me anyway… and to some of you) the former. But leave the tech journalists to their jargon ;-) So in the 2) context, the headline translates to “the user is screwed if all of their data is hosted out on the intarwubs and then lost”.

Regarding data backups, the question had to have come up during the risk assessment. Perhaps the costs to have two copies of that data were very high. We are talking about highly trained experienced professionals here. (I lol’d in RL) Also, we don’t know that its related to Microsoft technology.

Could be this was yet another symptom of the (allegedly) imploding MS Pink project:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/10/09/ms.pink.and.danger.team.at.risk/

By: Todd

Todd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:17:03 +0000

Regardless of which Microsoft product is in use – the catastrophic loss of data was not the fault of cloud computing.

This post’s “When Cloud Fails” headline is just irresponsible.

I respectfully ask this post be edited, swapping out the words “cloud computing” for the specific Microsoft product name as soon as its known.

By: Dominik

Dominik — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:07:07 +0000

This is terrible.

Up until today I’ve been a big supporter of Cloud computing eventually replacing not only the way that we store our personal information but also our media.

There is no excuse for this.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:54:03 +0000

Regardless of what they’re running – heads should roll for not having a DR strategy.

By: Ian Rae

Ian Rae — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:50:47 +0000

Why are application design and operational issues being called “cloud failures.” More like boneheaded “failure to use cloud computing in a way that protects your data” – which has a long history of occurring no matter how you “compute”. This is a human fail, not a tech fail.