Am I the only person that doesn't like the CLOUD?

[SL4P]

Add your own words!

[miguelvp]

cloud storage or cloud computing?
don't like the first unless attached to the second.

[jimon]

Clouds are good if you need to go from 1 server to 1000 servers in 1-2 minutes and you want to pay as less as possible for this (high load management). AWS ( http://aws.amazon.com/ ) is extremely good on this. Also clouds are good if you want to try infiniband with rdma (40 gbit\s network) for "free" (10-20$)

Clouds are bad because they could be compromised, but well, ANY hardware in this world can be compromised, ANY data in this world can be leaked and deciphered, just design your systems (or use of systems if you are only user) with this sane requirements and have rescue plans for critical situations.

For example if my pc will die, I have copies of my data in web, if web clouds\servers will die, I have copies of my pc's, if both of them will die - I will find another guy with copies of my data, or lose this data forever

[ozwolf]

Nope! I'm much happier keeping my data (and my customer's data) on my drives in my office (and on backup drives at home).

Having said that, sometimes you aren't given a choice with some online services. 

Did you know that many banks are now sending loan applications overseas for (outsourced) credit analysis?  Lot's of personal data in those applications.  Worries me a lot!

Ozwolf

[Psi]

You can use the cloud to store your own encrypted data, that takes care of the issue of data leaks or spying.

[n45048]

Nope.

All of my stuff is stored offline.

[Stonent]

[madires]

No, I'm not a big fan either:
- the cloud service may be shut down any time for any reason
- encryption is nice for storage but how can encrypted data be processed remotely?
- any storage or processing outside a geographic region might be illegal for companies
- the same as above, but also for non-local cloud service providers with datacenters in the local region

An European stock company wouldn't be allowed to use any cloud service from an US based provider, even if the datacenter is located in the EU. There's currently a fight between MS and the US about the issue, because the US claims lawful access to data stored in MS' EU datacenters. And that violates EU laws. The whole EU market for the US cloud business is at stake. I doubt, that the US will back down.

[GK]

Just don't upload pictures of yourself posing in the nude (or doing certain other things in the nude) and then give you password away to people pretending to be cloud maintenance men.

Oh wait, unless you're a celebrity you're probably not that retarded.
 

[digsys]

      

Ahhhhh .... that's me :-)

[elgonzo]

Ahhhhh .... that's me :-)

Me too... 

[Kjelt]

Just don't upload pictures of yourself posing in the nude (or doing certain other things in the nude) and then give you password away to people pretending to be cloud maintenance men.
Oh wait, unless you're a celebrity you're probably not that retarded.

or a celebrity wannabe 

But I don't like other companies having my data.
On the other hand, my money is always in the hand of other companies....... they call themselves banks  .

[Tandy]

Cloud file storage is useful for off-site backup and remote access to those files. However I much prefer to have the primary source of my files locally for both security and performance. It would be silly to use cloud storage as your only file storage facility as no matter how well managed and backed up there is always a risk of failure. Hard drive space is so inexpensive that it doesn't make sense not to have at least one local copy. Syncing local storage with cloud storage seems a convenient option.

Cloud computing where you use a proprietary application that is on-line only is a recipe for disaster. Not only do you have the immediate issues such as what happens when your broadband dies or their servers crash, you have the problem of long term availability. I have several old software packages from long since dead companies that I have to keep an old windows xp virtual machine running so that I can load something in that old software. If your file is not something that can easily be converted into an alternative format and the company disappears over night, so does access to your files. At least when you get a copy to run locally you can keep an old system running so you can still access those old files, not an option with a dead cloud supplier.

Cloud computing where you run your own software on their systems is viable, instead of having to buy all your own hardware you can run your software on the cloud platform and scale it as large as you need. As long as you have a copy of the software and data locally so that you can move to another provider if the one you are using goes out of business it is a smart way to avoid having to buy your own hardware with high up-front costs and having to maintain it yourself.

So the short answer is, Cloud is only good if you can avoid lock-in.

[Rigby]

I used to dislike the cloud quite a bit, but then I came to realize that I don't WANT to be in the storage business anymore.  I don't want to manage my own servers anymore.  I don't want to dink around with network hardware and all that.

Spinning up some VMs and storage on AWS or Rackspace is FAR easier, FAR cheaper, FAR faster, and FAR more scalable than anything I could do on my own.

"The Cloud" is a no brainer.

[GreyWoolfe]

When we got our replacement company laptops a few years ago, the IT dept installed an online backup program.  I polled the other techs and the manager and no one decided to use it.  All of our data is VERY proprietary and no one wanted to chance backing the info to the cloud.  My manager actually laughed when I asked him if he was going to use it.  I keep an external company hard drive attached to my docking station and I do weekly backups.  I also burn the critical file folder backups to disc as a precaution.  On my personal computer, only the OS and programs are on the internal hard drive.  All my data is on an external hard drive and I burn to disc the important documents I don't want to lose.  I don't want my head in the clouds, so to speak.

[free_electron]

The cloud is great ! Provided it sits trapped in a box in my own home !

I have multiple NAS blxes that replicate each other. No matter what computer i am on all my data is always there. My machines no longer store data locally with the exception of data under version control. The working set may be local but syncing to my own cloud is done .

I simply use tortoiseSvN for those cases.

[Mechanical Menace]

Given my background I definitely don't mind mainframes, they have their places and uses a PC* just can't compete with. But PC's also have their own niches mainframes can't compete with. There's not a chance I'm going to run public facing services on an in house server farm, but there's also no chance I'm going to make my computer into nothing but a dumb terminal and rely on someone else's machines to do all the real processing and storage.




*And by PC I just mean the old definition of a personal computer, not a particular architecture/platform.

[rdl]

Any back up system can fail. I'd personally never use a cloud service for that.

For backing stuff up, remember that those disks you "burn to" have a finite lifetime. Don't use or trust them for your primary back up. Hard drives eventually go bad and fail, and can also suffer from bit rot. Best to use something like a 3 disk rotation with one disk being rotated out and replaced every few years.

And don't keep your eggs all in one basket, have an off site back up in case your house or business location is destroyed in some unfortunate and unexpected disaster.

[Rigby]

Any back up system can fail. I'd personally never use a cloud service for that.

Why not?  They guarantee things, if you choose a good one.  They're geographically redundant, and physically and electrically redundant beyond that.

For backing stuff up, remember that those disks you "burn to" have a finite lifetime. Don't use or trust them for your primary back up. Hard drives eventually go bad and fail, and can also suffer from bit rot. Best to use something like a 3 disk rotation with one disk being rotated out and replaced every few years.

It is funny how you say the cloud is bad, but recommend DVDs or BluRay disks (with the appropriate caveat.)

Someone a few posts up said that they keep hard drive copies all over the place, and that the cloud wasn't secure enough...  That person needs to learn more about security.

And don't keep your eggs all in one basket, have an off site back up in case your house or business location is destroyed in some unfortunate and unexpected disaster.

Agreed. 

Look, the cloud isn't anything other than you paying a company to very cheaply store files for you.  The amount of resistance I am reading in here about the cloud tells me that I am most definitely correct in my position to use it, selectively.  Multiple positions stated here have been backed up by feelings and not by facts.

Every single one of you knows an attorney or can find one in the phone book.  Read the terms of service and other agreement(s) such as the service level agreement between the customer and the provider, and then have an attorney look at it, and determine for yourself if a particular "cloud" provider meets your needs.

There is no yes/no answer for "the cloud" because "the cloud" isn't a single entity.  It's a thousand entities each with their own differing guarantees, SLAs, and AUPs.

[rdl]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that there are other reasons more important to me that I won't use a cloud back up service. It's an individual choice for everyone I suppose.

I did not recommend any kind of optical disk as a back up, though I guess saying "Don't use or trust them for your primary back up." does imply they might be useful for something else.

[Rigby]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that there are other reasons more important to me that I won't use a cloud back up service. It's an individual choice for everyone I suppose.

Can I ask what those reasons are?  Just curious. 

The NSA being one, I'm sure, and one could encrypt before they upload to fix that pretty easily.  In fact I think one could purpose a Raspberry Pi or some other small single board PC to do the encryption transparently for you as you upload & download.

[opty]

Am I the only person that doesn't like the CLOUD?

Well, I certainly DO NOT TRUST the CLOUD (I keep my private data on my private local backup)
but
I still find it useful in certain cases: my business server is in the cloud (cheaper than local hosting)

[SL4P]

cloud storage or cloud computing?
don't like the first unless attached to the second.

Good point, but to be accceptable, both should offer the simple, unpaid option of moving/copying your resources locally for future security.
No use using online service ABC, if yuo can only save .abc files locally - then the cloud app/sevice is taken away in two years.

[SL4P]

Any back up system can fail. I'd personally never use a cloud service for that.

Why not?  They guarantee things, if you choose a good one.  They're geographically redundant, and physically and electrically redundant beyond that.

Hmmm, if you accept that infrastructure / carrier grade technology is usually under 'Five-9's SLA (99.999%) uptime - and can still fail catastrophically in less frequent events...   you - as one of let's say a million members... has a very real chance of losing some or all your online resources over a period of time.
It may be your cat boarding schedule, or your bank details - or both.

That Five-9's usually only covers the actual availability of the service - it often doesn't guarantee security or perpetual presence of anything.
And you're paying the ISP/telco in the middle to let you access / depend on someone else that you don't know.
-- ok I have trust issues!

[Kevman]

My upload is less than a megabit- something like 600k, so I'm VERY limited what I could use the cloud for personally.

I tell people that to mentally replace the word "cloud" with the phrase "computers you don't own." If it still sounds like a good idea, then its fine.

Lots of people are all  when their phone says "Upload these pictures to The Cloud!" but "Upload these pictures to computers you don't own!" and its suddenly  even though they're functionally identical sentences.