The Cloud Part 3 -- Centralized Storage versus Distributed Storage

Do you ever wonder where your data goes when it is stored in the “cloud?” When it comes to online backup, many companies store all your data in one centralized place. While this approach is simpler for the company, and may make access quicker and easier for the customer, what if the centralized storage fails? If a server crashes, or a storage hard-drive dies, having all your files in one place means losing everything. This completely overrides the point of having a backup system in the first place. As we discussed in our last blog post, what if someone hacks into the data center? This has happened at Citibank, Sony, Amazon and Visa.

Digital Lifeboat uses automated distributed file storage – breaking your files into small fragments, replicating and encrypting them, and sending them out into the cloud to be stored in multiple locations. Think of it as putting your eggs in a few different baskets, or diversifying your stock portfolio. Case in point: if you only schedule a backup to your Western Digital hard-drive, and your house burns down – you lose that data. Or if you forget to schedule a backup, and your laptop hard-drive crashes, your files are gone. With our process, your data isn’t all in one place, and it’s always accessible to you.
Maybe you keep all your documents stored on Google Docs; all your photos stored on Picasa; 300mb of CRUCIAL data, stored on Google’s cloud; none of which are backed up anywhere else. Imagine Google unexpectedly deletes your account in error, or you receive a “network server error” (much like the Amazon outage) – where would you turn?

At Digital Lifeboat, we don’t keep all your eggs in one basket, which makes your data easily accessible to you, regardless of power outages and acts of nature. We understand the nature of backup systems and we keep your crucial data safe with our encryption and online file storage process.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

57 Years After the March on Washington, Have MLK’s Dreams been Realized?

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."  – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (August 28, 1963) Fifty-seven years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington D.C., where 250,000 people gathered in one of the largest political rallies in U.S. history. The March is credited with helping pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. While Dr. King’s speech is rightfully immortalized, fewer remember that the March’s organizers at the time also had very concrete political demands that were as much about economic justice as racial equality. On the recent anniversary of the March, I began to wonder whether or not the March’s “10 Demands” for freedom, education and equality have been realized – and, more importantly, what we still need to do as a nat...
Read more
MEGATHREATS? MAYBE, BUT NOT INEVITABLE I recently read "Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them" by Nouriel Roubini (made famous as the predictor of the 2008-9 housing crisis). It is purposefully, "alarming. Roubini lists 10 "Megathreats:" The mother of all debt crises -- he points out that public and private debt is 350% of Gross World Product. He forecasts that defaults like Argentina (9 times since 1816 independence) will be commonplace. The bailout trap -- when banks go bad, government bails them out; when autos go bad, government bails them out; when utilities fail...you get the point. The demographic time bomb -- western civilization (and Japan) are rapidly aging. Old people don't produce, and young people don't save. The easy money trap leading to cycles of booms and busts. Stagflation Currency meltdowns Border closings and deglobalization -- immigration into the north from the south has kept labor ...
Read more

Will We Waste the Lessons of the Covid Crisis?

 We find ourselves at a critical moment in the world’s history. Our country has weathered a global pandemic and economic collapse just a decade following a catastrophic financial crisis—the Great Recession. We have survived, but is that enough? Don’t we want more for every citizen and our communities? For ourselves and our families? A sense of urgency can serve as a catalyst to improve our lives, but we must avoid falling prey to the hysteria trap set by many in politics and the media. The world is not ending. And clearly, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has accelerated many changes and advancements in the way we work, including greater flexibility in where and when. This, in turn, has created tremendous workplace diversity from a geographic perspective. The global pandemic has also energized innovation and progress in the way we obtain professional services. Perhaps the biggest example is telemedicine, which leverages technology to make a board-certified profession available to ever...
Read more