back to article Microsoft comes right out and says backup software is dead

Microsoft's been making lots of noise lately about its send-your-snapshots-to-the-cloud service Azure Site Recovery. But now it's come right out and said it: Redmond reckons backup software deserves to die. “If cloud storage had existed decades ago, it’s unlikely that the industry would have developed the backup processes that …

  1. James 51

    Perhaps eventually one day if we don't give a toss about security. My work does a full on site disaster recovery every six months to the point they rent an AS400 for a week and have users test it. Expensive yes but we know baring major civil disruption we can be back up in twenty four hours. I am guess with MS that might be achieved with the flick of a switch but there's always a catch.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Perhaps eventually one day if we don't give a toss about security"

      With Microsoft's cloud backups you control the encryption keys on site - and it uses AES256 encryption:

      http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/storsimple/Features.aspx

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "..you control the encryption keys on site..."

        But company XYZ controls your control! People who are serious about data need to get their heads out of the cloud.

        BTW, it was called "off site backup" before it was called the "cloud". But, thanks to marketing spin, the old term and its superior functions are being replaced with inferior functions and terms. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with backing your family photos up to either, but only 1 is a serious data plan.

      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        "With Microsoft's cloud backups you control the encryption keys on site - and it uses AES256 encryption:"

        No I can't. I'm an SMB. I don't have $virgins to give Microsoft for special consideration. Even if I did, there's no guarantee that Microsoft or the NSA haven't backdoored some aspect of the solution. Microsoft is an American cloud provider. As such, they flat out cannot be trusted.

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Duh...

      Just copy the directory to your portable HDD. Done.

      Much easier to go in and find a lost or misplaced file. Takes two minutes, not two hours. No stupid backup software required.

    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Perhaps eventually one day if we don't give a toss about security.

      Yes, yes. Every "cloud" story must elicit exactly the same damn arguments in the comments section. Perhaps you people could just put them all in a wiki somewhere and post a link each time? That'd be great. Thanks.

      Of course, back in the day we had service bureaus offering utility computing, and they did a nice tidy bit of business before mostly being run off by people who thought every firm could do a good job of managing its own IT. Just like every firm does a great job of generating its own power, running its own transportation infrastructure, providing its own physical security, running its own custodial service...

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        "Of course, back in the day we had service bureaus offering utility computing, and they did a nice tidy bit of business before mostly being run off by people who thought every firm could do a good job of managing its own IT. Just like every firm does a great job of generating its own power, running its own transportation infrastructure, providing its own physical security, running its own custodial service..."

        I have better uptime than amazon. And I build my shit out of the IT equivalent of used coconuts and duct tape. I have better security than megaliths like Sony, or Anthem, or...

        ...wait, why, exactly is it a great idea for me to hand my data - and with it, my business, livelihood and the ability to pay myself and my staff - over to an outsourcer?

        And even if I did think cloud computing was a great plan - and I do, for certain workloads - why the metric donkey fuck would I have all my bits of digital precious over to Americans, of all people?

        I mean, yes, the Brits and the Aussies have far more deplorable privacy policies - and hey, Canada is a member of five eyes and all that - but if I'm going to get my data stolen, why not get it stolen by my own government? At least then it's up to my own courts in my own nation to sort out liability, not some byzantine backroom international horror.

        American cloud providers can't be trusted. Ever. Maybe no cloud providers can. But if that's the so, then the case for keeping your data managed by a supply chain of companies that are answerable only to your own legal jurisdiction is made all the stronger by that reality, not weaker.

        1. jelabarre59

          Yeah, backup all your data to the cloud. And if you're one of those unfortunates to hace a Crapcast 300GB/month cap? Oh boy, does suXfinity have a special price structure for you..... Thanks, but I'll keep my backups to myself.

  2. JamesTQuirk

    Why go to trouble of securing your system, then live it in a online clod drive, for anyone with a lockpick to play with, whenever they want !!

    With Microsoft's bug record, Azurb clod drives are/will be a security nightmare ..

  3. dan1980

    "To Microsoft, the cloud is its backup hammer and every problem looks like a nail."

    Never a truer word.

    Indeed, to Microsoft and many other providers, all problems are nails in need of cloudy hammers.

    Cloud storage is amazing - super cheap and easy to provision and available wherever you need it. However, even assuming one is fine with the security implications*, the problem is not storing backups in the cloud but transferring them there - and back. Yes, yes de-dupe; yes, yes snapshots. BUT, even with the smallest transfers UP, if you have to re-image a server, that's a hell of a lot to bring back down.

    Not that backing up to the cloud is inherently a bad idea for all situations; it's not. The problem is exactly as the author says: providers like Microsoft are pushing 'The Cloud' as the one-size-fits-all panacea that will bring us all to undreamed-of realms of IT serenity and ease.

    Unfortunately, the world simply does not function like that. Indeed, one of the reasons for the complexity and diversity of backup solutions in place - often within a single organisation - is that no one solution fits all needs.

    The problem, however, is that Microsoft (and, again, many other vendors) view the cloud as a solution to their needs - namely revenue.

    * - If they have been considered at all; far too many haven't.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "BUT, even with the smallest transfers UP, if you have to re-image a server, that's a hell of a lot to bring back down."

      You keep the latest copies locally too on your Microsoft StorSimple device. You only need a full download if you loose the whole site. At which point you would be failing over to your DR site anyway.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        "You keep the latest copies locally too on your Microsoft StorSimple device. You only need a full download if you loose the whole site. At which point you would be failing over to your DR site anyway."

        Which costs what? There are way - way - more SMBs out there than enterprises. And how do we know we can trust Microsoft with our encryption keys? Or what's on that Storsimple device? Has it been audited? How do we know there aren't backdoors? Or backdoors in the cloud?

        How can we ever trust an American cloud provider? And for that matter, why should most companies consider this as a solution, given the entry level price?, Especially if you want proper security? (Assuming such a thing is allowed to even exist.)

        Lots of talk and marketing and sales going on here, AC. Not a hell of a lot of hard, tangible proof that this is applicable, trustworthy and safe to the mass market. Especially the non-American mass market.

        1. dan1980

          @Trevor

          It's exactly this kind of hand-waving (from our cowardly friend) that is the problem: "just" do this, Don'tchaknow?

    2. Wade Burchette

      "Cloud first, mobile first" really means "customer last".

      The same myopic thinking is what led to Windows 8. Microsoft forgot that you don't put a screw in with a hammer and you don't put a nail in with a screwdriver; different tools have different purposes. A desktop/laptop is a different tool than a tablet. Microsoft assumed using the same tool for the same job would work. But it was a disaster.

      And I hate the cloud. I have very fast internet, 50 megs. But I tell you the truth, I avoid the cloud like the plague. Can you really trust your information when it is on someone's else server? What happens when, not if, your internet goes down and the copy you need right now is in the cloud? Though very reliable, outages do happen and you better hope you have a cached copy. What happens when, not if, their servers go down and you need right now a copy in that cloud? Look what happened with Adobe Create Cloud went down for several hours. It is my opinion that the only use for the cloud is for sharing files and secondary backups. It is also my opinion that businesses are pushing the cloud because they want to take money from you every month for the rest of your life.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        totally agree with you. Even sticking your email on the cloud is too risky. Look how many times all the big players (Microsoft, Apple and google) have had issues in the past year. Let alone other problems that might hit you somewhere along your route, such as some clown digging up your fibre connection an issue with your isp, etc

  4. Mage Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Not dead

    Just getting more difficult to do properly.

    The Cloud is at best another tool and at worst a disaster waiting to happen.

    How does the Cloud provider backup?

    How good is their security?

    How do you access them and have you a backup internet access?

    This is just typical nonsensical "cloud" hype. It's just someone else's servers, It's just outsourcing with more than usual level of opacity about what you are really getting for the money.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: Not dead

      If your data is all in the "cloud" and said cloud provider deletes it due to a contractual dispute or simple fsck-up, or goes bust, etc. What then?

      Both your primary operational data and the backup/snapshot are gone in a flash.

      The old adage about a backup having to be "off site" should be extended to the requirement that any backup is held by another organisation if cloudy, or better still, you have it in your own possession (but not the same building).

  5. Bronek Kozicki

    there are two ways

    ... to interpret Microsoft's projections:

    1. your data is not stored at your location, instead it is "in the cloud" and you either have to access it online, or refer to locally synchronized offline copy. Well, that works with phones.

    2. your data is stored at your location and you maintain synchronized backup "in the cloud". Again, how fast is upload speed of average customer?

    IMO, both are as naiive as assumption that people will not longer use keyboards or mouse, and the only UI that an operating system has to provide should be "touch friendly". We all know how well this assumption worked in Windows 8.

    Microsoft - there must be some people there who realize this is total bollocks, just come off it.

  6. Paddy

    All your data subject to US courts?

    I thought that some American court was still trying to rape data held in Microsoft's Irish data-centre?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All your data subject to US courts?

      "I thought that some American court was still trying to rape data held in Microsoft's Irish data-centre?"

      As a corporate, you can take steps to make that very difficult on Microsoft's cloud if you want to . You can use Azure RMS and 'bring your own keys', and set them so that they can't be accessed from the USA:

      https://www.thales-esecurity.com/msrms/cloud

      https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn440580.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

      "As an additional protection measure, Azure RMS uses separate security worlds for its data centers in North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), and Asia. When you manage your own tenant key, it is tied to the security world of the region in which your RMS tenant is registered. For example, a tenant key from a European customer cannot be used in data centers in North America or Asia."

      1. JamesTQuirk

        Re: All your data subject to US courts?

        Nice of NSA to leave cloud untouched ....

        With MS's security problems in "house of cards" OS, how can people believe that this time it's secure ...?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: All your data subject to US courts?

          "With MS's security problems in "house of cards" OS, how can people believe that this time it's secure ..."

          Windows had fewer security holes last year than the Linux Kernel (let alone a distribution), and OS-X so it's likely not the worst choice...

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: All your data subject to US courts?

            "Windows had fewer security holes last year than the Linux Kernel (let alone a distribution), and OS-X so it's likely not the worst choice..."

            Windows is the most popular consumer OS created by a company which is beholden to a government obsessed with spying on consumers. There's no possible way it can be trusted. Now, there's an argument to be made that no OS can be trusted...but Windows is the Big Fat Target, and American corporations can never be trusted. Just ask Cisco about how the government has helped them "enhance shareholder value" through their foreign and domestic espionage programs...

      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: All your data subject to US courts?

        "As a corporate, you can take steps to make that very difficult on Microsoft's cloud if you want to . You can use Azure RMS and 'bring your own keys', and set them so that they can't be accessed from the USA:"

        And this costs what? What's the entry price? Is it available to the mass market? Has the code been inspected so we're sure it's free of backdoors? Is it randomly audited? By whom? Who pays for the audits? Who checks the credentials of the auditors? Where is the chain of trust in the bullshit you're peddling, and how universal in applicability is it to market?

        I see sales and handwaving. And your links don't answer the hard questions.

      3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: All your data subject to US courts?

        "RMS BYOK capability allows you to match the security properties of an on-premise RMS deployment generating your own tenant key on your premises per your IT policies. Transfer your tenant key securely to the cloud-based Thales nShield HSM hosted by Microsoft. "

        Wait. WHAT? So your solution to security issues in Microsoft's cloud is to use an encryption service that lives on Microsoft's cloud?!?

        A service where my encryption key will have to go over the internet. A service where the thing that encrypts and decrypts data is not something that I have a 100% chain of custody on. A service where there is more than ample opportunity for the bad guys (and yes, the US government are the frucking bad guys, just as much as any hacker) to get hold of the keys and unlock my data?

        Fucking nooooooooooooooooooooooooooope.

  7. Dan 55 Silver badge
    WTF?

    They're not selling it to me

    I believe mainframe operators took backups back in the day. Are MS saying they don't backup their cloud services?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They're not selling it to me

      "Are MS saying they don't backup their cloud services?"

      When you choose Azure storage (including for backups), you choose how many copies of the data you want kept. Typically 3. And you can choose the level of geographic dispersion too.

      1. John Tserkezis

        Re: They're not selling it to me

        "And you can choose the level of geographic dispersion too."

        I choose the geographic dispersion that's located directly within our premises.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: They're not selling it to me

          "I choose the geographic dispersion that's located directly within our premises."

          So when say your premises catch fire, both your data and your backups get nuked?

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: They're not selling it to me

            "So when say your premises catch fire, both your data and your backups get nuked?"

            Then it's lovely that we have colocation facilities and regional cloud providers which provide cloud services and data storage by companies with a complete legal and jurisdictional chain of custody that means every aspect of the company I use for remote storage is 100% under the same legal jurisdiction as my own company.

            Holy pants, Batman. It's like I can get all the benefit of cloud whatsit without Americans conducting economic espionage on all my clients' data and I can remove the legal uncertainty of having anything to do with a company that is at any point foreign being involved in my data sovereignty.

            Bonus points: if I need all my data back, the colo can put some drives in a box and courier to me within the same business day. Sure beats trying to suck my entire existence down an ADSL straw!

            Wait, why the hell would I ever choose anything else?

      2. Dan 55 Silver badge
        Megaphone

        Re: They're not selling it to me

        I'm starting to think that El Reg should remove the anonymous option if it's used by MS shills every time their news scraper * picks up any mention of Lumia or Azure.

        * Obviously not Bing News which is like a desert.

      3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: They're not selling it to me

        1) Microsoft's Ireland Datacenter: oh, wait, that's apparently American now.

        2) Microsoft's Canadian...oh wait, they don't have one.

        3) The NSA's Utah Datacenter: hey, where's my user panel to get my data out? If you're going to store it, I want access in case of emergency...

  8. Cliff

    Backup policies

    Different solutions fit different problems. Backup vendors for years encouraged punters to 'back everything up' and 'back up your computer', when in reality it was a couple of hundred files that needed backing up and the rest was rebuildable. Most organisations won't have fallen for that, but smaller ones frequently did, I've seen a lot of operating systems backed up. Those are the guys who would really benefit, bigger organisations just need policies about what actually is business critical and what isn't.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Backup policies

      And for some systems the rebuild is an expensive operation if, for example, you have a large number of applications installed, COM+ component, a myriad of settings tweaks and security settings in all manner of folders and registry entries to allow the apps to work (like permissions to access private keys if you're doing stuff involving PKI).

      Like most things the answer is it depends and the cost benefit needs to be weighted up.

      As for M$ answer of cloud rather than backups...It's a depend again but I am getting fed up with IT companies (of all sorts) just talking absolute bo***cks to sell to managers who know f**k all. Ho hum...

    2. PhilBuk

      Re: Backup policies

      Give the choice of restoring a SAP system and associated DB from tape and rebuilding the the system from scratch I'll take the former - it's about 2 weeks faster.

      Phil.

      1. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: Backup policies

        PhilBuk: "...the choice of restoring a SAP system..."

        Why on Earth would you do that?

        If Ebola was eliminated, would you restore it?

        1. PhilBuk

          Re: Backup policies

          Who gives a fuck about how good or bad it is. It paid my wages!

          Phil.

          1. Cliff

            Re: Backup policies

            Anon coward with the M$ comment - I agree that 'cloud' backup is a bad solution for where you actually want machine images - but that's not your typical user - most could easily use any office-on-windows build/image and within a couple of hundred files, be fully up and running, even on replacement hardware. I'd also suggest you don't really want machine images of each user's machines, or how the heck do you manage the image schedule? By all means image an ideal, well set up blank machine, speed up your rebuilds, but imaging everybody's cat photos and comet cursors on each machine is less likely helpful.

            It's just what I was saying, policy is where it's at for larger orgs.

  9. Mike Shepherd

    What I want

    What I want is a cloud of encrypted data I can operate with family and friends, not with a corporation (probably foreign) hiding behind a sheaf of terms and conditions. It will let me know if duplication is falling behind target and, if I ever need a complete restore, I can call round and take a fast copy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What I want

      crashplan. Or if you really want the DIY approach, rsync and some scripted backups.

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: What I want

      So...teamdrive?

  10. Mike Mike

    I Use The Cloud - My Cloud

    For my clients that require a Cloud Base backup I use a server that is located locally which I can actually walk up to and connect an external hard drive, retrieve their encrypted data and be back on site same day. The internet can be taken down and I still have access to my clients cloud base backup data.

    The idea of putting my customers data on a Microsoft cloud which is located no telling where in the world in my opinion is just plain stupid. Even if I could possibly locate the actual physical location of this server, there is just no way they would give me hands-on access to my data.

    Another thing that scares the shit out of me is let's say that they have an update on their end or someone somewhere hits the delete key for whatever and you wake up one morning and you do not exist as a client and therefore you no longer have access to your data. Sure maybe after a week or 2 and 30 emails later you might convince someone somewhere that you are legit and the process of trying to recover your data will start.

    The Cloud - Sure. Their Cloud - No Way.

    1. JamesTQuirk

      Re: I Use The Cloud - My Cloud

      Yeah, i seems that modern routers with a USB port, can add a EXT HDD or 64/128gb flash drive, enough cloudiness for me ...

      Things I also consider a issue ..

      1) if MS has a update to it's lineup, and you don't, will it still let you access, what happens if your MS "investment" out of service life ?

      2) If everybody's DATA is on cloud, who backs it up ?

      3) when/If they announce any costs for a year, or "bundle it" with windows, with extra for premium service, it would still be probably cheaper to buy 2 Ext USB drives and use them as mirrored storage ...

      4) If Microsoft Clod Drive gets hacked, and ALL your DATA die's or is stolen, are they responsible enough legally to sue ...?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    oh really!?

    not when you're backing up 50Tb a week like we are. Even down our 1Gb pipe you'd never cope!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: oh really!?

      "not when you're backing up 50Tb a week like we are. Even down our 1Gb pipe you'd never cope!"

      Yes you would. It compresses the data and only sends deltas. And you can send a physical copy to a Microsoft datacentre to start with.

      And even if you did back up 50TB of changed uncompressible data a week, that's still possible over a 1 Gbit link.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: oh really!?

        Deduplication is fine if your data contains significant amounts of duplicated data.

        Where I work at the moment, we generate 6-8TB of UNIQUE data (scientific data collected from the wild plus results of modelling derived from that data) that needs backing up (via incremental forever) every day.

        It's relatively compressible, and TSM compresses the 6-8TB down to 2-3 tapes worth (1TB uncompressed tapes), but I would be very surprised if there is much at the block level that is duplicated, and less at a file level.

        For this type of data, cloud backup is really not an option, and cloud storage does not work because of bandwidth issues. Powerful though the collective resources of your cloud provider are, they don't match the requirements of HPC workloads.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: oh really!?

          yep this is the situation we have. Its scientific data, some models, HPC stuff but mainly remote sensing images so it doesn't dedupe very well at all. We had a Datadomain depue box and it was hopeless for our main bulk of stuff. And try backing up over a 1gb pipe when you're also using that pipe for other work.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: oh really!?

          "It's relatively compressible, and TSM compresses the 6-8TB down to 2-3 tapes worth (1TB uncompressed tapes), "

          You poor guy still using tapes and that ancient horror TSM. Get some low cost disk for local backups, send the offsite stuff to a cloud and replace TSM with something more bearable like CommVault or DPM!

      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: oh really!?

        "And even if you did back up 50TB of changed uncompressible data a week, that's still possible over a 1 Gbit link."

        Can you restore before you go out of business? And don't say "just turn it on using Azure". Non-Americans tend to have rules about where they store data - especially live, unencrypted data. There are a lot of folks who can't "just light things up on Azure". Which means getting the data back. Ho hum. Bankrupt from waiting yet?

        Oh..."just pay more"? But...but...the cloud was supposed to be cheaper! Oh, that's only if you ignore all the "externalities" like connectivity - especially redundant connectivity - security, liability insurance, potential need to litigate in foreign jurisdictions, etc?

        Cute.

  12. chrismeggs

    Cloud, schmo id

    Excuse my ignorance and general lack of awareness. This Cloud business has me confused. For a start, I believe that the cloud is really all the internet was supposed to be in the first place, but has been a long time coming to the show.

    Granted, the entangled mess of backup systems today only serves to decrease the appetite to use them - a one click backup to storage no matter what the medium is certainly an attractive alternative. But the one thing a cloud solution will NOT address is the willingness of operations management to exercise their backup/restore on a regular and frequent basis. Try scheduling a cold metal restart anywhere right now. You will be laughed out of court and demoted by revenue earning projects. Even a token exercise in wiper-production is a virtual impossibility these days, yes, even virtual.

    What would be needed for any tight and comprehensive set of requirements would be a demonstration of restart capability, but I suspect blood runs cold when this is suggested. It simply is not on for one or more of our major financial line-of-business applications to be out for days and recovered over the course of a month, running crippled in the interim.

    A usual, the technology is bent to provide for a user deficiency. Let's get, the cart before the horse, shall we and state what we want when we are asked. Expensive? Maybe, how expensive is the reputation all risk that associates failure?

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Cloud, schmo id

      "Maybe, how expensive is the reputation all risk that associates failure?"

      Depends on who you ask. According to Sony: completely negligible.

  13. MotionCompensation

    We do cloud backup daily

    We do cloud backup every day. That is: we copy important cloud hosted data to local, on-premises storage.

    Always backup your cloud. You never know when it might get blown away by the wind.

  14. phil dude
    Paris Hilton

    owncloud...

    I have my "owncloud" ;-)

    I can use it instead of the google one for my new Lollipop....

    Paris, well...

    P.

  15. PAT MCCLUNG

    Cloudy

    "The Cloud" is one of the most pervasive "shibboleths" now pervasive in popular thought.

    What is a "Cloud"? Merely a bunch of remote procedure calls we make, sending some operands and data (essentially a security "crap shoot") out there, and (hopefully) getting back the responsive behaviour we desire..

    I come from the 50's-60-s world, when all computing was done remote from the "terminal", since the "user" had little local storage or computation capacity. Then, with the technology revolution predicted by Gordon Moore, we got (and now have - plenty, at a cost of next-to-nothing) enough storage, computation, and connection technology to do whatever we want, and a free network to exchange it and to freely collaborate with others we intelligently select about our sharing our data and our computations, work, and thoughts. You cannot securely "back up" your data? Crawl in a hole and die, somewhere.

    Tell me again, please, what "The Cloud" does for "we, the people"? May do something for others, "pinhead Innovators" and surveillance operatives, but does not do much for we the people, and for our freedom. Highly dangerous, and socially corrosive. I regard most "Cloud" operatives as predators, to be deeply scrutinized and evaluated by us individually in respect of each of our inherent interests, if not to be avoided altogether.

    .

  16. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Cloud?

    Forget the cloud. 5 or 50 GB of cloud storage doesn't work when you have 1500 GB of images.

    And no, I'm not paying $12 month for the Rest Of Time for more space.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cloud?

      "Forget the cloud. 5 or 50 GB of cloud storage doesn't work when you have 1500 GB of images."

      Works just fine here for 50TB of data. Use a local StorSimple array to backup to and it automatically dedupes, compresses, encrypts and uploads to the cloud.

      "And no, I'm not paying $12 month for the Rest Of Time for more space."

      You would likely pay more to have tapes in storage and sent back and forth.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Cloud?

        "Works just fine here for 50TB of data. Use a local StorSimple array to backup to and it automatically dedupes, compresses, encrypts and uploads to the cloud."

        Well of course you do. Anyone shilling that hard for Microsoft is going to get all the good free. And since you clearly give no fucks whatsoever about security or data sovereignty issues, what's good for your customers is just pissed away because it's convenient to you.

        Groovy.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Cloud?

          The keys are controlled and stored on the StorSimple device. The data in the cloud is AES256 encrypted and the keys never leave our site, so there are no security or data sovereignty issues....

  17. Emmeran

    It all boils down to the same old question doesn't it? Keep your money under the mattress or at the bank; both answers are usually bad in one way or another.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Banks (at least in theory) have regulation. For the "simple things" like your personal savings and chequing accounts there are piles and piles of regulations they have to follow. There are long standing international regulations about bank security, privacy, etc. (Not that they are generally good for the individuals, but...)

      The public cloud - espeically the American public cloud - is the Wild West. there are no rules, and no certainties, save American Expectionalism driving ever more disheartening examples of extraterritorial jurisdictional overreach.

  18. Stevie

    Bah!

    But gosh, don't Redmond back up their cloud platters and wafers?

    Or don't they think that the summer of 2003 could happen again, what with all the money poured hand over fist into the national grid infrastructure*?

    * - Last accounting showed 18 dollars and 52 cents had been spent in the first quarter of 2013, but a review turned up three buttons, a five centavo piece and a washer in that tally"

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    May be Microsoft is talking about DPM?

    This would explain what they are saying, as it does deserve to die.

    1. Vince

      Re: May be Microsoft is talking about DPM?

      I disagree. In our experience, DPM has reliably backed up *AND* restored for us every single time, and it just works.

      Backup Exec on the other hand. now that *does* deserve to do one...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: May be Microsoft is talking about DPM?

        "Backup Exec on the other hand. now that *does* deserve to do one..."

        +1 HP Data "Protector". It protects your data so well, you can sometimes never access it again!

  20. sisk

    Backup to the cloud? Are you insane?

    Backing up cloud services to the cloud is one thing, but backing up our on-site servers to the cloud? Yeah, that's lunacy. And make no mistake, on-site servers are in no danger of dying out. There are some server roles that it simply doesn't make sense to move to the cloud.

    Plus can you imagine the headache of trying to recover from a major disaster that takes out the communication lines to your town, such as an F5 tornado, without local backups? One town in this area that got hit by one of those didn't have internet for weeks (and no decent internet for months), but the city and school systems were back up (albeit in temporary buildings) in just about 48 hours thanks to some sysadmin's quick thinking to grab the tapes on their way to the storm shelter. Had they been tied to recovering from the cloud it would have been months before all their systems were back online.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Backup to the cloud? Are you insane?

      Backing up servers as replicated images to the cloud is actually a great option. You just pay for the storage until you need to invoke DR - and only then do you boot up the OS images and pay for the compute resources....

  21. W. Anderson

    Civility and some honesty from Microsoft. What gives?

    Crappy excuses have taken a turn to more nuanced admissions from Microsoft.

    No more denial rants and competitor dissing like those from Steve Ballmer?

  22. Amorous Cowherder
    Facepalm

    You NEVER start of with a backup strategy

    You never, ever start off with the backup strategy, you start off with the restore/recover first. What is it that you would need to have back WHEN ( not if! ) XYZ goes tits up? Once you know what you cannot live without, then you work backwards and from that you can come up with backups that will cover what you have to restore.

  23. Federal

    One thing cloud storage is NOT, is less expensive

    Cloud costs far more than local storage, but there are many reasons it is a good choice, under some circumstances (very granular increments is one).

    But compare the cost of very basic Amazon S3 storage to buying your own:

    Enterprise quality NAS / SAN rated drives go for about $50/TB and are warranted for 5 years. Put 24 in a chassis with controller and software and compare that cost to even the very least expensive cloud storage. Now consider the bandwidth (yours and the cloud provider's) charges and I/O charges for accessing the data. S3 pricing is here: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

    Per GB, cloud costs at least 10 times as much as local storage (up to 100 times or more).

    Cloud has lots of benefits, but the "it's cheaper" argument is simply not true. And you still need an IT staff to set up connections to it and to manage it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One thing cloud storage is NOT, is less expensive

      "Enterprise quality NAS / SAN rated drives go for about $50/TB and are warranted for 5 years. Put 24 in a chassis with controller and software and compare that cost to even the very least expensive cloud storage"

      Now consider that the a Cloud solution will bill you for actual usage over 5 years - at first the array would be empty, and then you must add the cost of Tier 4 datacentre space, power and managing it for the next 5 years, and then migrating of the data when it's end of life. Unless you are large enough to have vast internal economies of scale, Cloud is almost always significantly cheaper when you look at the TOTAL cost of ownership.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: One thing cloud storage is NOT, is less expensive

        Ignoring externalities again? Good little shill. Ignore the costs of bandwidth. Security. Liability insurance. Legal representation in a foreign jurisdiction. Etc. etc...

        Cloud is cheaper my fat, jiggling ASCII. Next you'll try to convince me supply side economics works in the real world. Why, Alabama is doing just Jim frakking Dandy on that plan, ain't it?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: One thing cloud storage is NOT, is less expensive

          You really are very ignorant. I deal with hybrid, on and off site cloud solutions on a day to day basis and offsite cloud is usually cheaper when you look at the TCO due to the vast economies of scale gained by the cloud providers. Hence why so many companies are moving to it. To deal with each point of FUD that you raise:

          Internet bandwidth costs are relatively tiny these days - and these type of solution can utilise existing links during non peak times.

          Security costs are less as you don't have to secure your own datacentre space and gain from the economies of scale of your provider.

          Liability insurance is usually lower as you have backups in a highly certified and very secure Tier 4 facility as opposed to typically a small equipment room on premises.

          There is no need for "legal representation in a foreign jurisdiction". Now you really make it clear that you have no clue and are just wheeling out any old bs. With pretty much any cloud provider you can choose the location of storage. For instance with Azure you have North Europe and West Europe zones. And even if you did put some data in a foreign jurisdiction, the chances of requiring local legal representation because of it are a quantum leap from zero....

  24. TVC

    Safe as houses

    And then one day, when you need to recover your cloud backup to your server farm you find that the cloud you were using was really just a networked hard drive in a garage in East London being mined by Chinese intellectual property thieves………………………………

    No thank you! I’ll print it all off each night and keep it the Big Yellow Storage lock up.

  25. Wardy01

    Apple do exactly this then repeat!

    What we know as the iCloud is basically amazon and azure storing a replicated copy of all of itunes.

    Expensive but it works.

    Needless to say there are some interesting questions raised around who actually holds / controls the data.

    Most public sector services work the same way today ... Maybe not using azure but the principle is the same ... Take a site and copy it to the cloud and realtime sync any changes and you always have a working copy no matter what happens.

  26. Brian Allan 1

    Until the 1st major hack

    The cloud is really great until the 1st major hack or disgruntled employee destroys everything! Then we'll all wonder where we stored those in-house backups!?

    bwa

  27. shovelDriver

    So What Am I Using Right Now?

    Backup Software is dead? Who knew?

    I guess the package I'm using as I type this (on separate systems) is imaginary. Ah, well, if I had to reach the Cloud to restore, I'd have to throw the "being restored" system away.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft is wrong - (no news here)

    Unless you've got gigabit internet perhaps

    Unless your backup is a 'salesman' demo without terrabytes of data.

    Unless your comparing to Dell Appassure which corrupts your backup and leaves you with nothing. And dell software support seem to think this is acceptable.

    We've been burned badly by appassure, but there is no way cloud can work for our terrabytes of data - yes we could get it up there eventually, but restore time in the event of a disaster would be rediculous. Also, who will garuntee that we as a insignificant size SMB will have any priority for restore if some massive failure takes out cloud access. At least with onsite the surviving onsite staff will have a singular focus on making things work for us. Self preservation is the trump.

    Lets review this in ten years, with billions in Govt debt and fibre to everywhere, perhaps the story will change. Sounds an awful lot like creating the answer you want at that point though.

    Maybe a small upstart company will steal some code and break out with an OS that will break the mainframe hegemony, and then usher in a new erra of freedom....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft is wrong - (no news here)

      "Unless you've got gigabit internet perhaps"

      Which isn't hard to get these days.

      Most enterprises would also have dual redundant internet connections, so at least half your bandwidth is probably unused...

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Microsoft is wrong - (no news here)

        "Which isn't hard to get these days.

        Most enterprises would also have dual redundant internet connections, so at least half your bandwidth is probably unused..."

        Sure it is. My 5 man company can't seem to afford it. But we generate 150TB of unique data a month? Oh, that's just an externality? Cloud is still cheaper?

        Sure it is.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Microsoft is wrong - (no news here)

          To generate 30TB per person of unique data per person per month is not anything close to normal. Just because you find it more difficult to use the cloud doesn't mean that its not cheaper for the masses...

          With companies like HyperOptic providing a full duplex gigabit internet connection for less than £50 a month, the cost is generally spiralling downwards these days.

  29. Daniel von Asmuth
    Paris Hilton

    Quooker Fusion and Microsoft??

    It may not be eactly the same image, but it's close.

    http://www.keukenstudiomaassluis.nl/images/uploads/keuken/Quooker-Fusion-pot-thee.jpg

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