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AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

530 points · 452 comments · berkeleyjunk

  1. cmiles8 · · focus · HN ↗
    This interview with an AWS leader isn’t aging well, from CBS Sunday morning:

    Pogue asked, "I don't mean to give anyone ideas, but let's say I figured out that one of these unmarked buildings was an AWS data center, and I blew it up. Are you saying that it's so backed up and redundant that you probably wouldn't notice?" Wood replied, "Yeah, you wouldn't notice. I mean, we might be a bit upset, but you wouldn't notice!"

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;cloud-computing-loudoun-county-virginia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;cloud-computing-loudoun-county-...

    1. krick · · focus · HN ↗
      That is actually surprising to me. Claims like that are pretty common, they make sense and they should be true, so even though I don&#x27;t really know AWS (&#x2F;Backblaze&#x2F;Azure&#x2F;whatever) redundancy planning in enough detail, I used to trust them. It&#x27;s really worrying when they outright say it will be ok, and then a week later it turns out to be not ok.
      1. sandeepkd · · focus · HN ↗
        The devil is always in the details. Somehow I feel that when we offload the responsibility to some one else we get this feeling that the other person&#x2F;entity would be doing full diligence and whatever else is required to carry out the job perfectly. However in reality most of the times they just do the bare minimum to pass your evaluation criteria to get the job.
        1. jongjong · · focus · HN ↗
          This is almost always the case. It&#x27;s one of the frustrating things about the software industry; because everything is much more complicated than the customer is able to comprehend, a software company can promise anything and the customer can&#x27;t actually verify.

          So any software company&#x2F;project which actually took the time and effort to fully handle the enormous complexity, they can&#x27;t sell themselves based on that fact because every other company (who didn&#x27;t invest the effort) is also claiming it and the customer has no mechanism to verify the claims until some major rare event occurs.

          And most of the effort is required precisely to handle those 1% of rare situations.

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