Carbonite tells Promise: You're toast Online backup service supplier Carbonite is suing Promise Technology, a supplier of disk drive array technology, for failing to protect data as it promised it would. Carbonite filed its suit for breach of contract in Suffolk Superior Court, Massachusetts, and says it bought more than $3m of RAID array hardware from Promise via …
You're a backup firm that lost data? I've already lost interest. However, as an exercise, let's continue.
You lost data because a RAID failed? Okay. Where are the backups? You know... backups. That thing that you claim to sell. RAID is not a backup, nor it is even assurance of correct data.
You had automated systems that replaced drives without checking that the integrity of the data was correct? So how did you check that the RAID controllers weren't corrupting data in the first place, let alone that they weren't doing it on failover?
You *lost data* not because of the RAID controller, but because you're idiots and didn't have any sort of integrity checking or other backups. I hope you lose every customer you have.
Everyone knows the whole 'redundancy is not backup!' mantra, but evidently not everyone actually believes in it.
Well; this is what happens. If you don't have any disaster recovery plans, you are totally, totally doomed. Good luck suing your way out of a pit you've been digging for yourselves, Carbonite.
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Maybe I've misunderstood something here but you are all basically saying "But everyone knows that this stuff doesn't really work therefore it's Carbonite's fault, not the company who sells the stuff that doesn't work"? Am I right?
Sure, you can argue Carbonite should have done MORE but this article is about a suit that effectively says "You sold us a product that you said could do A and it didn't" which, with what we currently know, seems a pretty reasonable argument.
Tried it, it kept glitching, gave them three times to sort it out, they kept suggesting each time I start again, and I couldn't see why I would. Either it works or it doesn't. To be fair, they credited me my unused money. Decided I didn't need total back-up and my essential docs were safe on Dropsend.
No they're saying that a RAID setup is not intended to be a back-up solution, it's a mitigation against hard drive failure that can *seem* like it's taking care of your back-up. However really all your doing is moving the single point of failure from the disk to the controller. The chances of lost data reduce, but not to zero.
To file a suit against a company claiming their hardware lost them data, well fill yer boots guys. I bet Promise's lawyers are already filling out their expense claims and rubbing their hands with glee, while every other IT company are sitting back with their popcorn to watch Carbonite make fools of themselves (I certainly am). They'll be suing Seagate for a failing drive next.
@Reg - please PLEASE follow this story to completion, even if it takes years. It'll be an absolute circus and hugely entertaining.
(Sits back and waits for the counter-suit of "you didn't follow the manual to the letter - prove otherwise please")
No offense intended, but anyone who relies on Promise chips for RAID arrays for *important* data has rocks in her/his head. Yeah, Promise is cheap, but the reason 3Ware, Adaptec, LSI, AMI, IBM, HP (and so on) RAID controllers cost is because they have solid fully hardware implementations. Promise RAID exists at least partly somewhere in kernel driver space.
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What a bunch of total idiots. First, everybody who is serious about data integrity knows not to even consider Promise controllers. No offense to them, but their products just are not enterprise level. They may work on your two-drive RAID0/1 home system, but even those have a habit of failing in my experience (on both Windows and Linux). Add to that the fact that all the Promise controllers I've ever seen aren't real (hardware) RAID, but are basically multi-port controllers with the software (hence, the system's CPU) doing the real work. There's a reason the cards are cheap. Inexpensive, too.
Regardless of which manufacturer they chose, who was the idiot that designed the arrays? So here you are running an online backup system, and you don't have a backup? Huh? What? I'm sorry, I'm having "if it weren't for my horse..." flashbacks. Unless the controllers failed catastrophically, you would be able to replace failed drives with no data loss. That is, unless you designed a horrible array which virtually guarantees data loss (too many drives in an array, RAID0, etc).
Oh, and here's the relevant part of the article (and of the product) -- "The array product was WARRANTED for three years..." Please note the terminology. Warranted, not guaranteed. There IS a difference, a very big difference. Guaranteed not to fail means "it won't fail". Warranted not to fail means "we'll replace it when it fails". EVERYTHING electronic WILL fail. It's not a question of "if", it's a matter of "when". Also, if you read the documentation that came with the product, I'm certain it will say that they are not responsible for losses, including data and financial losses, and losses to your reputation, and it most likely also states that there are no guarantees, either express or implied.
But again, seriously, what kind of backup company doesn't make backups of its data, especially when it's someone else's data? To store data on any kind of RAID with no backup is just asking for trouble. If your OS acts up and writes bad data, or the system gets infected with a virus, or a disgruntled (ex-)employee decides to trash the data, you've just lost your data while the RAID controller did exactly what it was supposed to. Any backup company which can't design an appropriate array or follow basic data integrity practices (including keeping multiple backups, including at least one off-site backup) deserves to go out of business.
"The array product was warranted for three years to detect failing drives and copy the data on them to functioning drives. Carbonite alleges that it did not, and resulted in Carbonite losing customers' data."
If the product failed to detect failing drives and it was claimed to detect failing drives then Carbonite may have a case, irrespective of the fact whether or not they had a backup.
Of course, Carbonite should have a backup strategy and I would hope they do (cos I use them, but they are only one part of my backup strategy), but really that is irrelevant if the above quote is correct.
In a high availability production environment?
Maybe they should give that other darling of the cheap-and-nasty-raid-cards-that-are-almost-guaranteed-to-lose-your-data market segment "Highpoint", aka "Lowpoint" a go.
Should keep their liarwers happy at the very least.
Paris, because nobody's hard dic/Hsk ever fails when Paris is around
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