'The Cloud'.....Someone explain to me (Please)

Started by Techno, 15 May 2016, 12:55:31 PM

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Techno

OK.

My current understanding is that various firms offer the facility that enables you to back up (your) important information away/separate from the hard drive on your PC....In case you lose everything from your PC....Then it can be retrieved....Hurrah !!

(I hope I've at least got that bit right !)

So....Am I right in assuming that if you use whatever firms' 'Cloud'.....Somewhere there is a physical ENORMOUSLY powerful hard drive that stores this info for you....

Is that right ?.......

More questions will follow after any answers.   :D

Cheers - Phil

petercooman


Ithoriel

The short answer to your questions Phil is yes, that's right.

The longer answer is covered by petercooman's post.

All over the planet there are server farms that exist primarily to distribute computer storage in such a way as to mitigate the effects of anything less than global catastrophe.

As a private individual if you opt for cloud storage your data is stored on a drive in one of these server farms.

Essential data for big business may be stored as multiple copies spread over different servers or even different farms. I was involved on the edges of a project which stipulated that back-ups could not be stored on the same continent as the primary files!

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

petercooman

It is quite common these days. We have our own server room At work to accomodate all computers there. And everything is backuped in france.

d_Guy

Just read "Cloud Crash: a Technothriller" by which Phil Edwards. A decent read which details some of the vulnerabilities.
Apparently Techno would find it particularly thrilling.  :)
Sleep with clean hands ...

Techno

Thanks chaps....

So next question, then.

If one of these server farms  (I'll make one up, and call it "TechnoCloud.com")...were hit by some unforeseen catastrophe.....flooding, earthquake, terrorist attack, whatever.....Would that effectively destroy all the data stored on that particular 'cloud' ?....(I assume it would.)..Or would "TechnoCloud.com have a 'backup' server farm, like my external hard drive ?

From what Peter says......I assume that, that's the case ?...Which makes a lot more sense to me than my original, ignorant thought of......"If the massive storage facility is destroyed....That's it....It's all gone."

I know I'm a complete numpty as far as computers are concerned.....But I like to 'understand' these things as much as possible.  :)

Quote from: d_Guy on 15 May 2016, 02:21:25 PM
Just read "Cloud Crash: a Technothriller" by which Phil Edwards. A decent read which details some of the vulnerabilities.
Apparently Techno would find it particularly thrilling.  :)

;D ;D ;D ;D..... I probably would, Guy.

Cheers - Phil






Norm

The cloud can be more than simple 'back-up'

You can have photographs and files there that you can share with others. They can even work on the file and then it is saved back to your cloud account.

I use Dropbox as one of my services. This allows me to say save a set of home made rules to there as a PDF. I can then make a post here giving a link to my rules and. Anyone can click on that link and directly get a copy as a download.

I also use iCloud, so at home I work on a file on the desktop computer and a copy goes to iCloud. Then while I am out and about, I can pop into an Internet cafe, download the file and work on it on my iPad, it then gets saved back to the iCloud as a new version.

Ithoriel

Who's up for doing an ELI5 for Phil on Raid Arrays?

<walks away whistling nonchalantly>
There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

d_Guy

I am so old I can only do RAID 0 and 1 - apparently we are up to 6 now. Remember yanking hot swappables out of a server going up in smoke!
Sleep with clean hands ...

fsn

ELI5 - That's Elizabethan longbowmen isn't it?
Lord Oik of Runcorn (You may refer to me as Milord Oik)

Oik of the Year 2013, 2014; Prize for originality and 'having a go, bless him', 2015
3 votes in the 2016 Painting Competition!; 2017-2019 The Wilderness years
Oik of the Year 2020; 7 votes in the 2021 Painting Competition
11 votes in the 2022 Painting Competition (Double figures!)
2023 - the year of Gerald:
2024 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

Ithoriel

Quote from: fsn on 15 May 2016, 04:32:23 PM
ELI5 - That's Elizabethan longbowmen isn't it?

That and "Explain Like I'm Five"

It's a sub-reddit - not to be confused with a Red Sub ;)
There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

Techno

I probably still wouldn't understand.  :'( :'( :'(

When Mrs T was a 'programmer' (and apparently a very good one) she brought home the first few pages of how to work with one of the very old computer languages.
COBOL ? ASCII ?....Thinking, that as I was pretty good at 'logical' games, I should find it a breeze.

I was lost after the first couple of paragraphs.......The 'Penny simply would not drop'.

Computers have been a mystery to me ever since.

When the BBC announced it was going to give primary school children some piece of kit to help them how to start writing code...I was tempted to see if I could con them into sending me one.  X_X

Cheers - Phil.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

The answer is to think in ENGLISH NOT WELSH.

IanS
FOG IN CHANNEL - EUROPE CUT OFF
Lord Kermit of Birkenhead
Muppet of the year 2019, 2020 and 2021

Techno

The text might has well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphs for all the sense it made, Ian.
I suppose it almost gave me a clue, as to what it must be like to suffer from dyslexia.

Cheers - Phil

fsn

COBOL was a language. ASCII is a set of codes for characters e.g. code 32 is a space. You see it in Excel now, with CODE() and CHAR() which allow you to show an ascii code and convert an ascii code to a character.

For me, it was FORTRAN and a compiled version of BASIC, though I did some COBOL and even a little PASCAL and ALGOL.

Happy days!
Lord Oik of Runcorn (You may refer to me as Milord Oik)

Oik of the Year 2013, 2014; Prize for originality and 'having a go, bless him', 2015
3 votes in the 2016 Painting Competition!; 2017-2019 The Wilderness years
Oik of the Year 2020; 7 votes in the 2021 Painting Competition
11 votes in the 2022 Painting Competition (Double figures!)
2023 - the year of Gerald:
2024 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!