As the saying goes, cloud computing is just someone else's computer. Always backup your cloud backups... in your backup.
Google's spokesperson used the percentage statistic to avoid how
much data was lost. Other cloud providers have also lost customer
data due to various problems. While a well-run cloud service provider
is more reliable than keeping data under your mattress (just like a well-run bank is better than keeping cash under your mattress), its
not magic.
Nature is still more powerful than even Google.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33989384
Google says data has been wiped from discs at one of its data centres in Belgium - after it was struck by lightning four times.
Some people have permanently lost access to their files as a result.
This was data loss on GCE "persistent disks" (equivalent to AWS EBS), not
archival storage. Hopefully very few people are using persistent disks as
*backup* storage (if nothing else, it's more expensive).
The general point is still valid, though -- *any* single instance of data is
vulnerable to loss, whether it's on your computer, or someone else's.
Backups are never optional.
- Matt
Love the phrasing too - "permanently lost access to their data". Their
data is not lost, not gone, not destroyed, oh no! It's still there,
somewhere, but they will just never, ever be able to access it again.
Maybe it's to leave a sliver of hope: "We'll meet again, don't know
where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again (all together now,
customers!) some sunny daaaaay"...
Regards, K.
My read on the situation is Yet Another Intermediate Cacheing Fail in storage, a well known problem. Yes, do a pull the power test on your storage so you KNOW what's committed...
George William Herbert