[AccessD] To the Cloud or Not to the Cloud. that is the Question

Jim Lawrence accessd at shaw.ca
Sat Mar 29 00:06:39 CDT 2014


Hi Bill:

I thought governments were supposed to help. After all we do pay their wages. ;-)

Jim 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Benson" <bensonforums at gmail.com>
To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2014 8:34:23 PM
Subject: Re: [AccessD] To the Cloud or Not to the Cloud. that is the Question

That is so funny.(NSA). There was an attempt I believe by some group once
to get a record of all their own recorded conversations from the NSA using
Freedom of Information Act but I don't think they won.

Good luck getting government to ever give assistance for any reason than to
help you or your business to a jail cell or the auction block.
On Mar 28, 2014 11:25 PM, "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Hi John:
>
> I think that Cloud early adopters suffered greatly from continuous
> Cloud/internet outages....but things have improved dramatically and now
> anyone can just get many Gigs of storage, from a dozen companies offering
> basic backup even for free. I have taken advantage of this and now all of
> my desktop(s) and operational files can easily be accessed from anywhere
> there is a internet access point. (But I wonder if the NSA will ever sell
> backup services?...it should be free to all American of course as you guys
> pay for it in your taxes.)
>
> Like you I believe that complete dependence on the web or any place for
> that matter is unfounded and the more diversified your data and software
> holdings are, the better. Initially, there is nothing cheaper or easier
> than just getting up and running than using Cloud services. That said, in
> the long run it can end up being a lot more expensive if you rely
> completely on web services as it is like a tax you must pay every month
> forever. Someone may say, that paying $100 a month for a full server is
> cheaper, but then there is the additional costs of access time, numbers of
> users, gigabytes of data processed and so on, and the cost can quickly
> creep up to $350 a month...without a good provider you can be nickel and
> dimed to death. Then calculate that out for ten years and it can starts to
> look expensive...then add on additional features like monitoring, backups,
> upgrades and security...and that of course does not count the real road
> block of throughput as performance is rated by !
>  how fast data can moved back and forth across the relatively slow
> internet network. As soon as real fibre-optic cabling is the default
> internet this will not be a problem, but as of yet, there is no match to a
> networks performance.
>
> The big improvement to the whole Cloud experience is type of scaling the
> providers are now using...I think all have switched over. As you know RAID
> 6 is probably one of the secure methods of managing data with a million to
> one chance of loss. The next level up is the use of the RAID ZF or the use
> of the ZFS drive formatting. This format is the most secure method of
> handling data known. It is said that Linux ZFS, on a properly setup site,
> can rate data loss in billions to one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS)
> Maximum size of drive cluster is 256 zebibytes....more data than all the
> data storage in the world today. So I think issues of data lost have almost
> moved to zero.
>
> The next issue is how stable is this network. When the Cloud initially
> started, a provider's fail-over servers and services were rather limited.
> Now the big providers have servers all over the world so the chances of the
> system going down is now more of a regional concern.
>
> In summary, remote regions without excellent internet service are going to
> be left behind in this new development and will languish in the background
> for years to come. If you are fortunate enough to live close to main
> centres, the costs of Cloud service can only come down as competition and
> hardware costs continue to drop and the Cloud becomes very cost effective.
>
> Jim
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John W Colby" <jwcolby at gmail.com>
> To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" <
> accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
> Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 2:08:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] To the Cloud or Not to the Cloud. that is the
> Question
>
> My biggest concern with cloud computing is reliability.  I don't remember
> how long ago it was (last
> year?) but several of the internet "cloud" providers had outages.
> Unrelated, just "stuff" at the
> servers.  The internet is still (IMO) inherently less reliable than an in
> house system.
>
> That said, the companies involved have a huge incentive to get the issues
> fixed.
>
> Several years ago a client up in CT was having issues just getting
> (staying) on the internet.
> Internet up / down / up / down / up.... down / up.... It was an issue with
> the phone company
> routers.  it went on for days.
>
> If the db is in the cloud, then you are twiddling thumbs during the down
> cycles.
>
> It feels like the internet is getting more stable, but it is the nature of
> the beast that things
> might happen.  Last year a group of hackers working for one of the Arab
> "terrorist" groups took
> several banks offline using DOS attacks.  For days at a time the users
> couldn't do web banking.
>
> If the db is in the cloud, then you are twiddling thumbs during the down
> cycles.
>
> John W. Colby
>
> Reality is what refuses to go away
> when you do not believe in it
>
> On 3/27/2014 4:37 PM, Brad Marks wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > A few days ago, I posted a question regarding a new database that will
> > be needed for a new small application (perhaps using Access 2007, MySQL,
> > or Microsoft SQL Server).  I received a number of replies to my question
> > and I appreciate the insights that were shared.
> >
> > In the mean time, I have also been doing some R&D work with Microsoft
> > Azure SQL Database.
> > So far, I have been impressed.
> >
> > Yesterday in less than one hour, I was able accomplish the following -
> > Set up a new Microsoft Azure Account
> > Set up a new SQL Database
> > Then with a small Access 2007 application using ODBC and Pass-through
> > Queries I was able to
> > Add a new table to the new test database
> > Insert rows into the new table
> > Retrieve this data.
> >
> >
> > My background is in mainframe databases (Primarily IBM's DB2 and
> > Cincom's Supra).  I can remember how much work it was to accomplish
> > these same simple steps with these databases.  Sometimes we would spend
> > days, just wrestling with DB2's security.
> >
> > It is my understanding that other Access users are using Azure with some
> > success.  It also sounds like the costs for our use of Azure will be
> > very small ($5.00 - $10.00 per month).
> >
> >
> > At this point in time, it seems like this is a good option for our
> > little project. (We don't have Microsoft SQL Server installed
> > "in-house").
> >
> > I am curious if others have looked closely at Azure and decided to not
> > go down this path.  Perhaps there are downsides that I have not yet read
> > about. Perhaps I am missing some important considerations.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Brad
> >
> >
>
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