April 23, 2011 20 Comments

Cloud Computing Requires Backup

Am I an angry cloud or a happy cloud?

I’m a huge believer in cloud computing. We use several tools that keep our data accessible anywhere the web is, and it works rather well for us. Except when it doesn’t.

Recently, Amazon Web Services had a huge outage. One of the products I use, Springpad, has been offline for two days. Another product I love, Hootsuite (affiliate link), also had a bad day (but finally restored). In a lot of cases, these outages left people in a rough spot, but in my estimation, it’s because the tools weren’t used as developers might have intended them to be used.

Simply, Back Up

Now, this isn’t always easy. Springpad only recently released a form of backup for its online note-taking system. They don’t (yet) have a desktop app like Evernote, so if your data was lost in the clouds, it’s still locked up. But, if you’re going to put really important data somewhere that you can’t access without the Internet, you should really keep the same information backed up somewhere locally, either on your computer, or at least on a hard drive.

You can’t back up everything, but you can back up lots of things. I use Google Apps for my calendar (backed up into Apple’s iCal). I use Google Apps for my mail (I have other accounts on other services, and use Apple’s Mail to download copies of my inbox). I use Google Docs for my documents. I don’t back them up enough, but I *could*. (If someone invented a one-touch g-docs backup that worked with Google Apps, I’d buy).

And as for your notes? Keep those backed up, too.

The Cloud Isn’t Evil. It’s Just Not Perfect

People who know that I love cloud computing and have really pushed it for years came at me with a “nyah nyah” attitude when this big outage cripped quite a bunch of popular Web 2.0 sites. I don’t think any less of cloud computing, though I was every bit as frustrated when some of my favorite services went offline. Instead, I just realized how much LESS suffering and annoyance I have to go through by using cloud apps versus most local or server-side applications.

I’m grateful that other people maintain the computing power these days. It’s akin to not having to generate my own electricity to charge my cell phone. It’s a plus. When it works well.

And what it doesn’t? Back up.

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  • http://www.andicrook.com Andrew Crook

    Many of Amazons storage based services do come with backup. the issue is if you want to trust them. Personally I would backup to a third party to spread the risk, however, if you have huge amounts of data that’s not going to be easy or even possible.

  • http://raulcolon.net Raul Colon

    Going back to working in the IT Security having back ups of your information is key but also having a back up plan is also important. If you depend so much on an application and its critical to your business make sure you have control of it and have a plan to get it back into place. If you have no control of the application then you need another one that can fill its place or a manual process. Something very common even after we went to support some businesses in Mississippi after Katrina they had backed up all the Data but did not have copies of the software that would read it.

    It is always good to take a step back and think the worst possible scenario that can come into your head and try to plan against. Like our friend Robbie Vorhaus says the best way to combat crisis is to be resilient and work around it.

    In my case I use Hootsuite and had to go with my backup on my Ipad Twittelator It did make me fall behind on some client scheduled posts but I left it for another occasions. Living on an Island with many mishaps happening and not many options you become very creative in always finding a quick fix to get things done in many ways.

    I love Hootsuite and after many years of using it I have only suffered one day of an outage not bad. But I guess it taught us all a lesson on analyzing what apps we might need to continue thoughout the day. Systems will fail but we need to like my old military instructors would say Adapt and Overcome!

  • http://maximumcustomerexperience.com KellyatMCEBlog

    Chris,

    Quora was killed by the AWS outage, too. They had a backup, but it was 24 hours old… which in Quora terms is a big deal. Lots of input that they… hope… they’ll recover… sometime. Ow.

    For most of us, though, a backup that was only 24 hours old would be a significant improvement. (My essential work gets backed up instantly—a habit from my old college days when computers were infinitely less reliable—but home stuff… yeesh. Once a month probably.) Thanks for the reminder!

    Regards,

    Kelly

  • Anonymous

    I’m really not onboard with the whole cloud computing thing yet, as one well placed EMP can ruin your whole day…. This may change if I get a second or 3rd generation iPad.

  • http://www.sigmacreativeonline.com Christian Adams

    Working for a hosting company I always tell customers, “Backup, Backup, Backup” We have the tools to do so, but make the time to do so. Technology is not perfect. Until AI exists it will always be that way.

  • Matt Brennan

    As a writer, it’s the same thing as save, save, save. There’s nothing more catastrophic than finishing a document, or working significantly on it at least, and then the computer crashes. Or the power goes out, or whatever the case may be. You can’t count on technology.

  • http://sorebuttcheeks.blogspot.com/ Anabolic Steroids

    i’m sure there will be plenty of cloud backup services along soon

  • http://twitter.com/infonote Infonote

    First of all I think for business critical apps, the cloud should only be used as a business continuity system and not as a replacement.

    For non-critical apps that are only available on the cloud, how about “backing” data to multiple cloud systems?

  • http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

    The cloud creates wonderful features, efficiencies, redundancies, etc. That said, it’s all ones and zeros stored on physical devices. So even if Amazon says its triple backed up. I want my wedding photos stored in 2 other places, thank you very much!

    PS. Apple time capsule rocks. Saved my bacon a few times already… but even then, I still backup to another machine just in case.

  • http://www.ruudhein.com Ruud Hein

    Gladinet has an excellent desktop app which can sync/backup your Google Documents (and many other cloud services). Can backup/syn *to* it as well. Highly recommended.

  • http://www.ruudhein.com Ruud Hein

    Gladinet has an excellent desktop app which can sync/backup your Google Documents (and many other cloud services). Can backup/syn *to* it as well. Highly recommended.

  • http://onstagetechnologies.com Scott Kantner

    Backup isn’t enough. You also need a way to use the data locally when the cloud is offline. Evernote is great example of this – the desktop version lets you keep on going. If you depend on pure software as a service (e.g. Highrise, Basecamp, Salesforce) however, you still have a real problem. Local copies (exports, etc) aren’t necessarily going to help, especially if they’re in a proprietary or binary format.

    So “backup” means data AND workflow. The question really is “How will I do business when the cloud evaporates?”

    The resilience of utility computing continues to improve, but it until it achieves the reliability of the electricity in our homes, betting the business ranch on the cloud calls for careful contingency planning.

    //Scott

    • http://www.andover-it.co.uk/blog/cloud-computing-great-until-theres-a-storm/ Andover IT

      That’s a good point Scott. Having the data is fine, but it needs a way of being used quickly and easily.

  • http://twitter.com/geekbabe Jean Parks

    I use the cloud because once you’re setup it’s easy, fortunately I also backup locally, losing tons of pics and posts/ well lemmie just say I can’t afford the bar bill that would result from such a disaster.

    Thank you Chris for reminding everyone that like friends, you can never have too many backups!

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  • http://www.iblogzone.com/ DiTesco

    Its amazing how a complicated issues could have been avoided by a “simple” backup. Wonder what kind of “loss” hootsuite had during this outage. Took them a while to get back up.. So to show you that it is still something that falls behind in many people’s category. Can get careful enough, which reminds me, gotta do it now for this week :)

  • http://www.simplyzesty.com Niall Harbison

    I do agree that everything should be backed up but the problem is that we are all going to be relying on Cloud Computing so much that we won’t even think about it. What about stuff like email, surely we can’t be expected and never would be expcted to back something like Gmail up?

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  • http://www.ventureneer.com Geri Stengel

    You’ve got it! Backing up that which you can’t do without is absolutely essential. Of course, you need to assess what you can’t do without for 2 days versus what is inconvenient. Otherwise, you end up defeating the purpose of cloud computing. Massive outages like that at Amazon make the news; the daily outages of local servers or in your own business — my computer crashed! — and the wait for IT add up to a lot more downtime than Amazon gave us. And why hasn’t someone created an app to backup Google docs? I’d buy it, too.

  • http://businessonlinesolutions.net Vahur Kõrge

    I agreed. Cloud computing is not evil, it is a better solutions in future.

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