back to article Swissdisk suffers spectacular cloud snafu

US cloud storage supplier SwissDisk has suffered a catastrophic hardware failure resulting in users being unable to access their data. Last week users reported problems accessing their data. After first saying emergency maintenance was underway and that users could "rest assured that (their) data is safe," SwissDisk support …

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  1. Lionel Baden

    can we have a chart plz

    Either in the formn of

    There has been ## days since a cloud went down

    Or a graph chart of the amount of times per month a cloud falls from the sky ???

    kthnxby

  2. Phil Endecott

    Is Amazon worth $40B ?

    There aren't many $40B companies around; is Amazon one of them? So they're going to be reborn as an Amazon S3 reseller?

    Presumably the cost of doing backups exceeds the cost of not doing them in this business.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Must have been written in a hurry

    "it's", "truely" (twice), "resiliant", "propietary".

  4. Andy ORourke
    Happy

    That's OK.....

    I mean no one would trust all their data to any cloud storage provider without having a robust back-up policy in place would they?

  5. Sebastian Brosig
    Thumb Up

    let me be the firs to say

    Swiss cheese disk

  6. James 5
    Alert

    I'm sure this'll ...

    .. have every business owner rushing to sign all their operations over to cloud !

    Though seriously, I can see the advocates of Human Generated Climate Change using it for their raw data storage - "Sorry, we've lost all our data when the cloud went down! So you can't check it - tough!"

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clouds, vapour, tears

    Like all clouds, just a pile of vapour and usually ends in tears.

    When I read Swiss.... all that came to mind was Swiss cheese, which is full of holes, looks like the user data is following the same model.

    Until there are open standards between cloud service providers that allow replication between providers, these services are not going to provide the reliability that business needs.

  8. Youvegottobe Joking
    FAIL

    Another online data storage company with propietary kit/software goes titsup

    Another online data storage company with propietary kit/software goes titsup - whowouldathunkit

    Questions are:

    Whose kit are they buying to give the service that people thought they were paying for?

    What happened to the backups?

    How many customers do they think they can fool a second time? (1, Dubya teehee)

  9. Qux
    Headmaster

    "truely world class", eh?

    If the quality of the spelling and grammar from customer support is any indication of the level of professionalism they employ elsewhere, I'll stick with my old-fashioned local storage, thanks.

  10. Matt 13

    a fool and his data.....

    oh look, another scenario where remotely stored data just vanishes! the new system should provide 99.95% uptime? I expect the original blurb prbably gave a similar figure... its the odd bits of % that cause the real damage...

    I hope the users had a real backup of their work........

  11. Platypus
    Grenade

    Just what we needed

    Thanks a lot, SwissDisk guys, for making sure that users will run away from a fundamentally sound and useful idea because of your lousy implementation/operations. You've screwed up not only your own business but other people's. Users, too, will now be so fearful that some of them will cobble together their own ad-hoc solutions instead and probably lose more data total than ever would have happened with cloud storage implemented and operated by competent people. In a just world, after all the damage you've caused, you'd be prohibited from ever offering services like this again.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    yet again the clouds rain

    cloud computing = out sourcing your data

    out sourcing your data = willing to loose it.

    that is all.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    in-house devloped SDrive technology

    Not anymore..

    Guess thats what happens when your keys get corrupted and you dont have a backup!

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Planning

    "We regret to inform you that due to an unplanned and unforeseen catastrophic hardware failure..."

    So how many catastrophic hardware failures had they actually planned to have, then?

    They don't need to bother now!

  15. Trygve

    Swiss?

    Presumably they are attempting to trade off the 'chocolate' connotation, rather than the equally famous 'watch' or 'cuckoo clock' aspects of Swissness.

    Although by the looks of that email, maybe they're thinking more along the lines of 'chocolate cuckoo clock'?

  16. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Concentrating on Future Info Issues rather Past Sorry Tales

    "With the Sidekick data outage fresh in everyone's mind, it's obvious that, at this stage of the cloud computing service game, all cloud service providers, be they large or small, can fail. Users had better protect themselves against such failures if the service they get from a cloud service supplier is critical."

    Rather than failing, you may like to consider that their Servers and Services are rapidly evolving 42 Lead with Beta Entertainment and Edutainment.

  17. Dick Emery
    FAIL

    Blackup

    Next time we will really truly seriously protect your data because we really truly honestly have a PROPER server from a megalomaniac...err...bigtime bigname super duper ultra resilient company with super duper ultra reslient technology behind us, like. Honest guv. So please stay with us why dontcha? PULLEEEEZE!

  18. Ramon Cahenzli

    Bavarian cuckoo clocks, darnit

    @Trygve: Cuckoo clocks are from Bavaria (Germany), not Switzerland. I don't have any idea why people keep associating them with Switzerland.

    And in other news, why do they call themselves SwissDisk? They don't seem to be a Swiss company, they aren't Swiss people, they just want to abuse our cute square little flag for their dirty cloud-based get-rich-quick scheme.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Swiss?

    Swissdisk seems to be based in Las Vegas, Nevada and not in Switzerland at all, so cut it out with the cheese jokes you guys.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Based in Las Vegas?

    You mean they gambled all the cheese?

  21. SilverWave
    Happy

    This is a parody of the MS-Danger story right... right?

    You are kidding shirey!

  22. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    @ Bavarian cuckoo clocks / @ Swiss

    As a matter of fact, the whole "Swiss" thing might become an extra problem now they're on the radar. The "Swiss" aspect plus Swiss flag they use are trademarked. Not only is it nigh impossible they have any entitlement to the trademark, the fact that they have caused negative publicity on top may not go down very well with those charged to protect the Swiss brand.

    I would not be surprised if this company soon gets legal questions on top of its problems.

  23. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    "Swiis" IS protected..

    Just found the relevant page: https://www.ige.ch/en/legal-info/legal-areas/made-in-switzerland.html

    This could provide extra entertainment..

  24. Yes Me Silver badge
    Badgers

    Re: Swiss?

    I trust the Swiss embassy in the USA will be suing them or something. Where do they get off using a name like that? I guess they thought it sounded better than Nevadadisk. Or in Las Vegas, maybe they should have called it Gambledisk... oh, wait, CrapDisk.

  25. Frozen Ghost

    catastrophic what?

    Can anyone explain how a "catastrophic hardware failure" can ever lead to the loss ALL data in a situation where there must be many racks of drives? - without using an EM pulse of course

    Its not like they just had a NAS box in their basement and called it cloud storage...

    I could possibly believe 'catastrophic software failure' but 'catastrophic human error' sounds about right

  26. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Grenade

    Virtual Titanic Cloud Rainfall 42 Start Life ... not Drown in with WMD2* Play Actors.

    "I could possibly believe 'catastrophic software failure' but 'catastrophic human error' sounds about right" .... By Frozen Ghost Posted Monday 19th October 2009 23:39 GMT

    Frozen Ghost, That is much more Probable given the Stupidity in Man.

    And even the dogs in the field know that Clouds are an Alien Environment to Humans and under the Control of Myriad Active Dynamic Forces/Natural AIgents which do not hold or conceal Stupidity.

    *Writedowns, Meltdowns and Dodgy Diseases aka Wacky Wheezes.

  27. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Worldly Meltdown Diaspora

    "To prevent any future outages SwissDisk management has signed a contractual service agreement with a $40B company."

    Who is this fantastic $40B company, who would "guaranteeing" presumably, that future outages are prevented? Such service deserves investment and would be a Veritable and Virtual Goldmine and Money Spinner...... or is that Privileged Top Secret Insider Information only available to a Chosen Few?

    Or does that give the Game away with IT Revealing another Artificial Impossible Guarantee in the Veritable and Virtual Goldmine and Money Spinner Industry ...... Fabrication Market?

  28. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Cloud???

    A cloud system is a multi site, multi replication, multi redundancy, with multiple failovers, gigantic system that makes it not only virtually impossible to lose data, but even almost impossible for user's to notice any failure. Any data centre failure would automatically redirect users to another site where all their data is also available. That's what cloud is designed to do.

    "This", is NOT a cloud, just sounds like a big datacenter to me. Neither was Sidekick.

  29. cmaurand

    Cloud = Vapor

    Yawn, the cloud. I work for an insurance company. This is why cloud computing is not even on our radar screens.

  30. Jeff 11
    FAIL

    99.95% availability

    As in nine FIVE? Less than 4 nines? For a 'data retention' company? Seriously?

    How lame.

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