And this is why I don't trust free cloud - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2017, 11:06:11 pm
content: The solution is not even half decent. Luckily I don't have any designs in that software.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 03, 2017, 11:58:32 pm
content: I don't trust cloud, full stop. You never know when services will be shut down, bought out by another company etc...Whilst it would be rather tempting to pay for 10TB of storage with someone like Google and have backups, power and everything else taken care of, I still prefer to run my own file server at home.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 12:04:12 am
content: Same thing can happen with any cloud or any companies product. When Microsoft dropped support of Access 1.0 and 2.0 didn't support converting Access 1.0 databases I had to redo all my inventory.The only real way to protect against this is to use open source software and keep your own copy of the source so you can keep the software going yourself if the project dies.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 12:34:01 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 03, 2017, 11:58:32 pmNeither do I.Quote... or hacked.QuoteSame here.The more I look at what is happening in the computing world, the more I see the old ways coming back ... or at least trying to.When I first started out, computers were centralised machines and terminals were not common. Then the 3270 dumb terminal became dominant, connected to a mainframe somewhere, where all the work was done.Any failure in the network or the mainframe and you were dead in the water. Completely. Utterly.Following developments, we went through Client/Server to thin client and now Cloud based - which turns our computers into little more than fancy 3270 terminals that can do good graphics.Any failure in the network or the Cloud and you are dead in the water. Completely. Utterly.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 12:53:10 am
content: I build software for a living and the cloud is really the only feasible option for what I'm doing right now.The flexibility of cloud infrastructure is very appealing - particularly when you have operated under the restrictions of a corporate IT environment. Lots of bureaucracy and not much action. I can stand up a server on the other side of the world in a few minutes, and there is no upfront cost - so no grovelling to anyone to approve a P.O. and waiting while they debate it etc.The reliability is no worse than the equivalent local system - in fact it should be better as a single team does the infrastructure and the code.

author: gnif
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 12:58:43 am
content: I don't trust public clouds, I trust my own though, being in control of the hardware and infrastructure is critical in my line of work, not only for the reliability nature, but also security.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 01:03:49 am
content: I'm using owncloud myself. Setup ddns though afriad.org then e4ward to forward e-mail for my ddns domain to my real e-mail so I could get a real ssl cert. All my devices sync to my own cloud so I still have my data and not someone else. And its all a synch'ed copy, if I loose connection I can just work from the local copy until the connection is back and everything updates.

author: MarkS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 01:18:25 am
content: Use the cloud, but do so at your own peril. If you post nudes or intellectual property or whatever to the cloud, don't be surprised when it is hacked and leaked. Assume that there is no security.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 01:21:09 am
content: QuoteSoftware exists for the convenience of the users .Hardware exists for the convenience of the softwareThe "cloud" exists for the convenience of the the companies providing "cloud" services.When it stops being convenient, it stops.usually customers are at the mercy of the most important1organ of the bodyhttp://www.c4vct.com/kym/humor/whoboss.htm

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 01:36:01 am
content: Quote from: MarkS on March 04, 2017, 01:18:25 amOf course everything can be hacked - but of course don't forget that your home server/PC/whatever is also on the cloud...

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 01:46:21 am
content: I don't trust the cloud, but in this particular case at least they have an offline tool.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 02:14:34 am
content: Quote from: DimitriP on March 04, 2017, 01:21:09 amTrue, they could kill the infrastructure at any time - if that happens then I'll have to move it to somewhere else.Not terribly likely to happen in the near future for what I'm using, and it can be handled if it should occur without major cost.So in this instance the convenience I can do now outweighs the cost and time to build infrastructure for something unlikely that may happen in the future.OTOH we could get a tsunami through here at any time that would wipe out all of the datacentres in the city... The guys in Christchurch learned a lot about the cloud after the quake. The city was cordoned off and power was off so even undamaged servers could not be accessed. Cloud based stuff hosted elsewhere was still running and people could work from home.It's all swings and roundabouts. I guess the idea is to keep all options open where possible.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 03:01:17 am
content: The only cloud I trust is my own.Since yeah even paid services you never know when they decide to go tits up. Heck even at work, I have trouble trusting any services such as Sharepoint because at any time the company might decide to turn it off. It's happened. All your documentation, poof.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 06:27:45 am
content: I hate browser based software due to the constraints of running within a browser, and most of it is in a constant state of flux and never really finished, I'll choose a proper desktop client every time when I can and upgrade when I choose. Cloud is ok for backups of stuff I'm not overly concerned about falling into the wrong hands but I would never rely on it for critical storage or applications. I guess it appeals to the millennials with their millisecond attention spans and never having experienced proper software where the user is in control.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 06:52:31 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 04, 2017, 06:27:45 amSigh.Older generations always bitch about younger generations, and so on it goes etc etc for ever and ever amen.When I realised that I stopped bitching because its dumb.Proper client software is useful. However there is much to be said for zero deployment when you have more than one machine to manage. Browsers are cross platform too which is a bonus.Been there done that on the home server(s) front. Maintaining them gets old after many years, and I actually just chucked three of them in a skip. They got damaged after the (ex) cat decided it was a nice warm place to take a piss, and then I discovered the fridge was leaking condensation through the floor above onto them.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 08:00:15 am
content: Sure there are all kinds of advantages of browser based "software" as a service, but the user experience sucks. I've used it for years and the old desktop clients we used to have are vastly superior from a user standpoint. Just look at the web based MS Outlook, it's complete garbage. They've ruined the desktop version too in recent releases but it still works better than OWS.

author: Nerull
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 08:05:53 am
content: If you're worried about the reliability of the cloud, just throwing together a home NAS if you don't really know what you're doing is even more risky. There are a lot of ways for things to fail that will lose all your data, and the superficial understanding of most "power users" isn't really enough to build a reliable setup. Companies have gone out of business because the founders thought they understood tech well enough to setup their own storage systems, which failed. Gitlab just had a major outage where they discovered that not a single one of their 5 redundant backup solutions actually functioned.EEs with computers are like software developers with soldering irons - dunning kruger runs wild.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 08:25:18 am
content: Whether you run your own stuff or use the cloud you should have backups anyway. But with the cloud you're using something proprietary in most cases and backing up may not even be an option. Ex: you won't have SSH or sFTP access to the raw data.I cringe at the thought of using any service where your work is just "there" but you have no actual file for it.As for home NAS if it's setup right you won't have any production impact issues even if a disk fails. I've had disk failures right in the middle of doing something and I could just continue on as normal. Though normally if I get a disk failure I'll want to check it right away, but my work is not lost, and my files are still accessible. Pop in a spare drive and let it rebuild and keep on trucking.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 08:35:02 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 04, 2017, 08:00:15 amNot a good example to be fair. MS have always put zero effort into OWS presumably for sales reasons. Not to mention that MS have historically been complete clueless muppets stumbling around on the www with things like their single platform standards on a cross platform medium. Actually calling them clueless is wrong as the reality was they were doing it on purpose.Times are changing now of course and they have finally started moving in the right direction. I recently blocked IE from the app I'm working on which was most satisfying.I do take the point that web software is often not as good. However I think times are changing. On the desktop side the standardisation that used to make Windows apps consistent and easy to use is rapidly being abandoned. On the web side new standards and performance improvements are making it much easier to develop close to desktop equivalent software.In the last enterprise I worked in there was _zero_ desktop software being built. But that was business software not EDA type software. And the web stuff was being written using desktop apps. Nothing is simple

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 01:30:28 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on March 04, 2017, 08:25:18 amThe questions I then like to ask are:1. Do your backups provide what you expect them to?2. Have youproventhat?I know I've flown this flag before - but it's one that is worth raising again........By the wayproofisnotsimply checking off a list of files. It's taking a brand new lump of hardware you've just bought from the local supplier, rebuild from your backups AND thencheck the data.If you have someone who has set up your backups and says they're working, get them to grab a set and then send them away to get everything running on some virgin hardware.... because if your system is lost in, for example, a fire - that's exactly what you will be doing.

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 08:19:31 pm
content: Quote from: hendorog on March 04, 2017, 02:14:34 amOops. If they kill the infrastructure anytime, where are you gong to 'move' it from?Ahah, ok, you also run a local copy of the data.Makes sense using a cloud as an offsite backup if security isn't important.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 04, 2017, 08:36:03 pm
content: Quote from: SL4P on March 04, 2017, 08:19:31 pmIf security is important, you really should be encrypting the data anyways. The storage provider should have zero knowledge of the contents. In that regards, if you were performing security conscious backups using a properly managed encryption key, it wouldn't even matter if the (encrypted) data were made completely public.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 12:03:32 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on March 04, 2017, 12:04:12 amWhy did you *have* to do that? Couldn't you keep the old version installed? I've kept old software going quite often in the past because of the file formats.QuoteIt's proprietary formats I hate more than software. As long as the program can save in a standard format, which can be read by most software packages, I'm happy.Quote from: hendorog on March 04, 2017, 01:36:01 amWhat do you mean? I could disconnect my PC from the Internet and still be able to use most of the software on it. Crappy cloudware can't do that.At work I still save files to both the local hard drive and company network, in case the latter goes down so I can still get work done.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 12:32:39 am
content: Quote from: SL4P on March 04, 2017, 08:19:31 pmYeah I have multiple ways to recreate the servers if need be, from source and/or various backups both local and in the cloud.Bad wording - by 'at any time' I didn't mean 'to suddenly go permanently offline without any warning'. I meant 'to be notified that the service is going offline in x weeks/months'

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 01:55:30 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 04, 2017, 08:00:15 amThe same can be said forLotusIBM Jokes... I mean Notes... we unfortunately use this clunky horrible system at work. The web client just sucks, it was almost like an afterthought. The desktop client isn't much better. I would prefer Outlook Web Access any day!As for connectivity, I'm connected to Australia's wonderful new National Broadband Network and I use the term "connected" very loosely. I have many drop-outs every single day and when the connection does die, it usually takes a tech a week to come out and fix the broken copper joint somewhere in the street. At least hosting my media here, I can watch it at any time.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 02:09:11 am
content: Quote from: Hero999 on March 05, 2017, 12:03:32 amFor a long time I had both versions installed side by side but eventually they stop supporting the old and/or it doesn't work on newer (MS) OS's. I don't recall why I had to switch over.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 06:19:47 pm
content: The constant state of flux with most of today's web base software is to me a constant annoyance. I am from the old school, you test what you deploy and "don't fixing anything that doesn't need fixing."You may say: must be done to stay secure because of the constant new threat. Well, I bet you, a better design system would not be as vulnerable and would not require constant patches.There was a time when I don't even have to look at the screen and press the right thing to get to the page I need - that allowed me to focus on a conversation while getting to the info I need with the person I was talking to.Today, no chance of doing that with most web based cloud stuff. The UI changes constantly. Worst with Andriod stuff, the the auto-update/downloads happens constantly and you just can't rely on "click on the second button on the left" or something simple like that.How would you like it if the home-construction company remodel your home without even first informing you. You come home to see your wall a different color, your stair case at the wrong side now blocking your view to the TV, and your sofa and your other stuff in the basement? Yeah, they probably kept it; you merely need to "drag and drop" your stuff back to the same place (and hope they work).You boot up just to get something urgent done while on the phone with a client - but by the time you get your machine back to your "working condition", you already lost the contract because the other guy hung up on you while you are figuring out how to get to the summary page with this new set up.newer != better

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 08:49:03 pm
content: I used Outlook as an example because it's something I figured a large number of people would have direct experience with, there are countless others.The constant updates remind me of one of those gearheads with a car that is a perpetual project. They're always tinkering and modifying things, changing their mind and ripping something out and replacing it with something else and the car is never finished. There are always interior panels missing, dangling wires, accessories that aren't hooked up, I've known a few people like that. They never finish anything, they just keep tinkering forever. Fine if it's their stuff but not when it's tools I rely on.

author: moz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2017, 09:31:44 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on March 04, 2017, 08:25:18 amAnd you should test those backups. If it's not worth testing it's not worth backing up.There's always a cheap backup and test option, for me right now it's 8TB "archive" disks from MSY at $360 each. They won't last long in everyday use, but they're cheap backup capacity for the 6TB disk on the desktop computer. And thanks to SATA docks, I can pull the SSD out of the desktop and drop in the old 1TB disk(s) that I back it up to and make sure I can boot off it.QuoteAt work we have the problem that Rackspace provide great backup options, but you can't get a working copy of that backup. Even getting a copy of the backup is ugly, but then you have to extract a mountable disk image from it and copy files off, you can't just boot the image. If Rackspace became unavailable for some reason we'd have to work quite hard to get a replacement up that wasn't one of our in-house test servers on the sad side of a slow internet connection.

author: SimonR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2017, 01:17:33 am
content: I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet a couple of years ago and for a while I used the the built in IR with a TV remote control app.I stopped using the app when one day I went to change channel and the app said there was an update available.It would not let me change channel until the update completed. it took me 15 minutes to change channel and another half hour to find the real remote.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2017, 01:40:48 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on March 05, 2017, 02:09:11 amI'm very surprised, because there should have been an upgrade path at least for the data:https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/bc90cd7f-1bae-4dc7-9a4d-8a906fff1879/looking-to-convert-access-10-mdb-databases-to-later-version?forum=accessdevYou would have had to recreate Forms, Queries, Reports etc. and made blank tables to populate with the imported data.Worst case you might have had to first upgrade to v1.1 to get Access Basic, so you could dump the tables to CSV files, even if you had to resort to capturing the Generic/Text Only printer driver output.However if you are misremembering the version numbers, then yes, you could have had a problem if you skipped v2.x.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2017, 02:11:04 am
content: Quote from: Ian.M on March 06, 2017, 01:40:48 amWay back when I did the move from 1.0 to 2.0 yes you could import the data but I did had to redo everything else.They did the same with visio, MS Money also screwed my over too.I've been involved in other projects where vendors had to be paid to extract data from their proprietary format and told myself I'll not let that happen to me.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 07, 2017, 01:53:28 am
content: Quote from: moz on March 05, 2017, 09:31:44 pmOuch that sounds kind of scary. Yeah I personally feel that would be unacceptable even for my own home projects. My setup is not perfect ex: if I lost my server and got a new one setup at another provider I still need to manually reconfigure a lot of stuff, since the location/syntax of config files varies between distros so can't just dump my /etc/ backup into the new /etc/ folder or bad things will happen, but in general once I configure all the major stuff, then I literally just need to rerun my sync scripts for all my websites and it would load all the website data. I'd have to manually restore the SQL and Email stuff though. But basically if I busted my butt, I could probably have all my web infrastructure back up in about an hour from backup if my provider vanished and I had to get an other provider. My actual backups happen nightly and are automated. It syncs everything to my home server. I also have cold backups I bring to work.Once in a while I like to run a total server loss scenario in my head and visit all my backups.

author: moz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 07, 2017, 10:33:54 pm
content: For work I actually restore backups, because that way I know they work. In my case it means refreshing our test server by reverting to an old virtual machine image then updating the OS etc to the correct versions (not the very latest, the current versions that we have tested and are using on our live servers), then restoring the database backup and the current versions of our software. Then I run the "make this database a test database" script (all customer notifications go to me, we don't want customers getting notifications from the test system. And so on). After that we just keep using the test server - we'll hopefully notice if there's a problem.At home I have a much simpler, more reliable and arguably somewhat more brutal system. I buy new backup disks as required, and keep a pool of old ones. So I grab an old 1TB-ish backup disk, shove it in the SATA dock and boot off USB. Then I image the boot disk of that machine onto the docked drive. And unplug the real boot disk then boot off the docked drive to make sure everything comes up. That is fairly easy because I'm running a smallish SSD and a big files-only legacy disk. Backing up the legacy disk is just a matter of "robocopy /mir...", it's the SSD that's tricky (it's windows + veracrypt and has a key to unlock the legacy disk).

author: jacklee
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 08, 2017, 07:18:52 am
content: While I decided use free cloud, I had prepared to lose my documents any time.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 08, 2017, 09:57:29 am
content: Nothing wrong with cloud as such, just need to be aware that it is only one string to your bow, you need to have other options for when the Internet dies at home or place of work, for when the service is discontinued, for when it gets hacked or, more sinister, for when the service provider decides to monetise your content or delete things it thinks you might not hold licence to.Backups are only useful if you can lay your hands on them or guarantee you can connect to them.Same with Cloud based dev tools.