back to article Avere SPEC benchmark shows cloud's just as fast as on-premise

Bezos' boys will be pleased while data centre storage admins become fearful; Avere has run a file access benchmark showing file access to Amazon S3 in the cloud is the same as WAN file access to a ZFS data store - and Cleversafe object storage. It claims that it is the first and only vendor to provide low-latency, scalable NAS …

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  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Fine but whathappens when...

    1) Some idiot with a JCB (backhoe) digs up your business critical network link and it is down for several days?

    2) When the cloud hosting company has a snafu in their billing system and cuts you off from your business IT systems?

    IMHO, these alone makes using something like Azure or S3 incredibly dangerous to a business if you don't have a 'plan b'.

    The same goes for using server hosting companies for this stuff as well.

    IMHO, put your web frontend out there in the cloud but do you really want all your critical systems exposed like this? After all, if these are down/unreadable your business could go down the tubes.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fine but whathappens when...

      'Avere states that cloud storage "provides infinitely scalable capacity with [the] lowest cost, simplest management and highest reliability."'

      I stopped reading right there. It seems unwise to be guided by technical advice from someone who seriously believes that anything can be "infinitely scaleable".

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fine but whathappens when...

      > Some idiot with a JCB (backhoe) digs up your business critical network link and it is down for several days?

      You would face a similar problem with on premise storage, no company is an island. Presumably if this was a 'business critical network' then you would have a disaster recovery plan which would be activated.

      > When the cloud hosting company has a snafu in their billing system and cuts you off from your business IT systems?

      That would be down to incredibly bad administrative practices on the part of the provider which would be bad for both them and their customers. Presumably you would have done proper due diligence on your provider and would have proper server level agreements and escalation procedures in place prior to signing any contract, as you would with any critical service being provided to the business, whether that be hosting, consulting, hardware/software support etc.

      I'm ambivalent on cloud storage, it's all horses for courses as far as I'm concerned, but throwing up poorly thought out arguments isn't going to help anybody. Treating it like any other service which is used by the business in terms of its fitness for purpose, cost and proper planning around its usage and limits pretty much goes without saying.

      1. pig

        Re: Fine but whathappens when...

        "> Some idiot with a JCB (backhoe) digs up your business critical network link and it is down for several days?

        You would face a similar problem with on premise storage"

        No, we wouldn't.

        My organisation is going the full cloud.

        At the moment we have our own onsite data centre. If the internet line to the building goes down than the only effect is a notable upswing in actual work being done.

        In a year or so's time, once we have gone fully Desktop as a Service (I can't wait...) the effect of the internet line to the building going down will be that no work can be done.

        And yes, we do have a backup. In fact we have 3 internet lines coming in to the building. Primary and 2 back ups.

        Being Local Governemnt though the 3 lines are all Virgin cable and, most likely, anything to take out 1 would also take out the other 2.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Fine but whathappens when...

          > No, we wouldn't.

          For all IT operations conducted internally at that site. As I said, no business, or for that matter geographical organisation unit, is an island. If comms go down then a lot of operations would suffer not just access to hosted storage. If you are a site where no comms go out and no comms come in (how quaint) then you don't need any kind of 'business critical network link'.

  2. Tim99 Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    What'll the speed be when your provider has you by the throat...

    ..after you have disassembled your internal IT and moved all of your files into the cloud?

  3. Emperor Zarg
    Headmaster

    --- PREMISES ---

    It's not "premise", it is "premises".

    Premise is not the singular of premises. Premise is an idea, a theory. Even in American English.

    Premises is a building. Please!

    .

    premise

    noun [C] /ˈprem.ɪs/

    › an idea or theory on which a statement or action is based:

    [+ that] They had started with the premise that all men are created equal.

    The research project is based on the premise stated earlier.

  4. b0hem1us

    Been there done that. We tried AWS for some heavy duty HPC app while back and the performance was.... Well it was horrible. Buying physical boxes with the same specs as the AWS instances yeilded 300% performance increase. I think these people really should be publicly hanged for spreading utter lies. Enuf said!

  5. david 12 Silver badge

    compare apples to apples

    The article compares the speed of their cloud service to a WAN.

    Yes, WAN performance sucks compared to LAN performance.

    And yes, if someone puts a backhoe through your internet connection, your WAN is down.

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