Data Not Safe Let’s Blame the ‘Cloud’
Posted by brennels on October 16, 2009
ABC News published a column by Michael S. Malone today “Sidekick Disaster Shows Data’s Not Safe in the ‘Cloud’“ which title eludes that the cloud infrastructure was responsible for a recent Sidekick data loss. Mr. Malone does make some valid points though regarding the consumer’s expectation and more likely the lack of understanding of what the “cloud” is. The cloud is nothing more than a virtual server farm in a data center with storage and access that can be used on a pay per use model. But, like any server and or IT infrastructure solid backup and recovery procedures are required for a solid business resiliency plan. The misconception is that somehow the Cloud is not safe and I think that argument is that no server is safe without consistent and regularly exercised backup and recovery procedures.
The cloud is completely a viable option for backup and recovery but should be used in combination with other backup solutions to help supplement the backup and recovery process. This is always risk of data loss with any backup which is why well designed business continuity plans will include multiple backup media as well as locations. This isn’t any different than losing a server and then realized that the truck full of the tape backups being lost or destroyed and unable to recover. This issue isn’t the cloud, but the processes in place for redundancy of backup and recovery. The cloud is and will continue to be a growing and viable option for server backup and recovery.
However, let’s not fool ourselves that outages and failures are always a risk regardless of the platform.
