[Novalug] OT: Microsoft Danger's loss of all data on Sidekick servers

Paul D. Bain paulbain@pobox.com
Mon Oct 12 16:46:45 EDT 2009


Megan Larko wrote:
> Hello List,
> 
> This article appeared on AOL "News" today shortly after 6 a.m.
> 
> What puzzled me about the short news item was that I thought, analogous to an iPod I guess, that the 
>   data/info was stored on the device itself.    The article seems to indicate that all info is on a 
> remote server somewhere.    I'm not sure why that would be necessary and I'm not certain it is an 
> idea with which I personally am comfortable---that my info resides _only_ remotely.
> 
> URL:
> http://247wallst.com/2009/10/12/microsoft-msft-failure-destroys-t-mobile-customer-data/#
> 
> Apparently I don't understand this.    Is this remote data scenario only T-Mobile or is iPhone and 
> Blackberry and Android also using this model of data storage?

	The Slashdot discussion of this matter was very informative. The 
Sidekick was made and supported by Danger, Inc. From the Slashdot 
discussion, I gathered that, after M$ acquired Danger, Inc., last year, 
they laid off most of Danger's employees. Then, about a week ago, M$ 
decided to have Hitachi upgrade the Danger SAN -- without _first_ 
backing up the SAN (or perhaps the backups failed). During the upgrade, 
Hitachi "hosed" the entire SAN. I speculate that, if the SAN 
administrators had not been laid off, they might have been able to 
preclude this result or, at any rate, mitigate the harm. This last part 
is mere speculation. Perhaps we will learn more in a few weeks, as the 
laid-off employees offer their opinions as to the cause of this calamity.

	Lesson learned: DO NOT trust M$ with respect to "cloud" computing. 
Indeed, be wary of any cloud computing service, ASP, or SaaS provider 
that does not permit you to backup your data to your own backup device 
or backup medium.

-- Paul Bain



More information about the Novalug mailing list