Danger in the cloud: backup nightmare

By    John Garner on  Sunday, October 11, 2009
Summary: T-Mobile users of the sidekick device have been warned to not let their devices drain completely after a server from the Danger company (owned by Microsoft) had a catastrophic failure, specifically the server managing this service. Seems weird when you read up on cloud computing that one server would hold all the data and not […]

T-Mobile users of the sidekick device have been warned to not let their devices drain completely after a server from the Danger company (owned by Microsoft) had a catastrophic failure, specifically the server managing this service. Seems weird when you read up on cloud computing that one server would hold all the data and not have any type of backup system! Especially when it concerns so many people's everyday digital life! Read more about the event here and here.
Through the different accounts of the incident it seems that there a) wasn't an ongoing backup system and b) when upgrading the system the techies at Danger didn't actually perform a backup, so when things went wrong they were, well, out of options! c) data is not saved on a proper backup system on the Sidekick since the battery draining itself can kill all the data and relies too much on the cloud / offsite storage system!
It is obvious that this story is a dream com true for consultants and companies that work in the backup industry and a nightmare for T-Mobile users concerned...

Article written by  John Garner

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