Posts made by cakeis_not_alie

Reminder to everyone that today is the last day! Designs don't have to be fancy, the design I used here is a great example: http://www.iofabric.com/before-and-after-vicinity/

Good luck everyone!

ioFABRIC is giving away an NVMe card to the person who submits a winning design for how they'd use ioFABRIC's Vicinity in their lab.

http://www.iofabric.com/nvme-contest/ <-- Winner picks the form factor!

Only one day left, but worth a few minutes out of your day!

@MattSpeller returns to the mists of the test lab

@MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Wondering if Trevor Pott still hangs out around here. Also, how many beers I'd need to buy him to get an article about the new epyc chips.

You summoned me?

Clearly, we need to find someone else to blame for this mess. Now where'd I put that bag of dice...

@Brett-at-ioSafe But it's all your fault. You're the one that informed me this superpowered awesome machine existed...

@MattSpeller RIGHT? Want want want, want want, want. So many things I could do with those. So awesome. So much win.

@MattSpeller Forget my BBQ. Have you seen this: https://iosafe.com/products-server5-overview ?

Xeon-D capable of 8 cores and 128GB of RAM in a fireproof box with up to 8 3.5" hard drives. I have a nerd boner that can be seen from space.

Who? What? Where?

We use Sync religiously, company-wide. Wouldn't use another solution. Damned fune company with amazing support. Great product. Top tier all the way. One of the very, very, very, very, very few cloud products I will endorse without reservation.

@zuphzuph Why back up a whole system image? Back up data, configs and (maybe) installers. 2FA is the sort of thing every public cloud account that handles sensitive data should have, however, that doesn't remove the need to encrypt the local/NAS copy.

It's also good practice to encrypt what you're putting into cloud storage (be that OneDrive or any backup solution, such as Backblaze, Glacier, etc). Your level of trust/care about being party to Yahoo-style mass surveillance will determine whether or not you want to take the minimal effort required to defend against that threat. (I take offence to rational concerns backed up by evidence called conspiracy theories, BTW. There are enough of those out there without vilifying legitimate threats.)

I should also point out that your ability to solve your own personal storage needs by basically saying "meh, **** it, I'll take the risk" re: backups is pretty rare. I personally have at least three non-phone devices, certainly wouldn't relish rebuilding them!

"Personal use" can also include spouse, children, etc. It doesn't take much for running a household's IT to become as complicated as running that of a small business. More pressing, perhaps, as the angry users know where you sleep.

Also..."just keep what you need in the cloud account" isn't enough for some things. That's okay for my music collection, but I'm going to want better redundancy that that for my home pictures and my tax returns.

3-2-1: Your data should be on three devices, on two different types of media with one of those copies being offsite.

If your data doesn't exist in at least two places, then it simply doesn't exist. Being in OneDrive/Dropbox/etc isn't good enough. Public cloud services have had failures and they have lost data. So if you want to use cloud as your primary storage location, make sure you back that cloud up to another, separate cloud.

Alternately, keep a local copy that is really, really unlikely to go pfffft at the same time the cloud copy has an oopsie. Given how awesome cheap NASes are at this stuff today, proper layered backups should be achievable for cheap, even for the home user.

@IRJ I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm advancing very real world concerns that are based on actual events.

Maybe you don't care to build in mass surveillance into your threat models, but that doesn't mean it is irrational to do so. (Personally, I think you're a fool if you don't.) A lot more matters in life than the cash in your pocket or the numbers in your bank account.

The border patrol thing is a great example. As a Canadian tech journo I need to periodically get into the US to do my job. If I am unable to do so because of data hoovered up by the US government, I've got a big problem.

I can do absolutely nothing wrong and yet still have huge roadblocks put in my way because some algorithm interpreted data poorly, or because someone who knows someone I know did something wrong. That's simply the reality of how things work today.

Can I keep the NSA out of my data if they are making a concerted effort to attack me personally? No. Targeted efforts by any state actor and 95% of non-state hacking groups would steamroller any defenses I (or any cloud/service provider) could mount. That's the cold, hard truth.

Despite this, I can take some very simple efforts to remove myself from mass surveillance trawling. In reality, I am far more likely to be negatively affected by mass surveillance (and associated Big Data analysis) than I am a targeted attack.

Targeted attacks are like meteor impacts: there isn't a heck of a lot you can do about them as an individual so you pretty much have to ignore them. (Disaster recovery is useful here, from an IT standpoint.)

But mass surveillance is a very real, very tangible threat that impacts most if not all of us. And it is something we can do something about. So why not take the steps to protect yourself?

@stess It's just because she's hanging out on a switch. She's hanging out beign cute.

Actually, she ended up claiming that switch as her "home" and turned the whole half rack into her territory. Because she is the dominant lizard and you will obey!

@scottalanmiller Which I find equally insane. Unless you live in a hipster paradise and never, ever travel beyond the bounds of great wifi connected to awesome backhaul you're going to end up needing local storage to get real work done.

Hell, I can't even shitpost on Twitter without the ability to access my picture and video archive, save things I find off the web, etc. And no, life in a browser doesn't cut it. Browsers have their own problems, not the least of which is that web services tend to be "change fast and break things" to the point of being polymorphic.

I don't handle my computer not working the same as it did yesterday particularly well. It usually leads to rage.

So, assuming I feel the need to use local applications for at least some things, that means needing either local storage or 100% rock solid connectivity to a NAS. Doable for a thin client type affair that's physically in a static location with known good connectivity to said NAS, but practically impossible for mobile use.

@IRJ Wrong.

Your insurance company wants the analysis of your personal files quite badly. As do the credit agencies, banks, governments, border patrol...you name it!

Pretty much every company or agency involved in risk assessment of individuals wants access to as much of your personal data as they can legally get. If they can't legally get it, they will settle for getting "grey market" analysis of data obtained illegally. (The law is still now in on just how illegal this is, or if it is.)

You are kidding yourself if you think, for example, that the US border patrol doesn't want every single personal file of every single foreigner in the world to be fed through a gigantic Big Data engine so that they can determine if you're a risk. You could be a terrorist, a petty criminal or - far, far worse - someone who is trying to do business without claiming so, or claiming to do business in the wrong category.

Sorry man, but everyone wants your data. They don't want to stare at your dick pics, but they absolutely want to know how many dick pics you have, how frequently to take them, who you send them to and what those dick pics reveal about your health, etc.

If you don't understand that threat model, you're not ready to be a sysadmin in today's brave new world.

@BRRABill The only argument "no local data" can offer is Koolaid.jpg

@BRRABill Why run Onedrive, Sync, Dropbox, etc on the local machine unless that machine tends to leave the office? Run it on a NAS so you download once for a fixed site, for multiple people to access from. Then mobile users can enable a local client that downloads selected folders onto their local device as needed.

The NAS can encypt (so can the mobile devices) and it can back up to Backblaze/Glacier/etc in addition to its duties syncing with Onedrive/Sync/Dropbox/etc.

@BRRABill "Why are you storing data locally?"

Because I am a rational, logical IT professional with over 20 years of experience. I am also a technology writer and technology marketing geek who has spent the past 5 years learning how the sausage is made.

"Don't store data locally" is nothing more than a wishlist item from overly engaged marketing types and some really hardcore brand tribalists. I can introduce you to them. Most of them are even aware they're peddling bollocks.

There are lots and lots of great reasons to store data locally that range from workloads that must be local which generally work better (and cost less) if you transact against local data, offline availability of data, the fact that ISPs are not perfectly reliable, cost, cost and cost as well as a host of availability and security concerns that are, quite frankly, more than I'm willing to go into here.

If you want, however, I'm sure I can dig up about three dozen links to various articles I've written that cover every aspect of this topic from multiple angles.

@Dashrender There are NASes without OneDrive clients at this point? Pretty ghetto NASes then.

And if you're worried about someone nicking them, use the device's onboard encryption? See link above re: Synology.

@Dashrender Well, the simple reasons I argue against "all data in the cloud" are as follows:

1. It's ****ing expensive. Way more expensive than local gear

2. Most people's (and business') internet connections are made out of [expletive deleted]

3. I (and my clients) run local workloads that generally work better if I work on local data. That whole bandwidth thing.

4. Oh yeah, even if you have the speed, the ISPs will get you on the volume of data.

5. What happens if someone pwns my login?

6. Cloud providers do some aspects of security better than me, but they're also a big, fat, homogenous and very tempting target.

7. Getting hit by drive bys sucks. Even if you aren't the target, it's increasingly common to have your realm taken offline because someone is DDoSing your neighbour.

8. [Expletive deleted] the NSA. (This is why I only use cloud providers with zero knowledge encryption, like http://www.sync.com)

9. Why use cloud if all the problems I have with it can be solved by a Synology? (Or better yet, an ioSafe.)

10. Google are creepy, Microsoft are creepier (and evil), and I don't trust Amazon as they seem pretty coldly amoral. (Just look at their labour practices.) Call me crazy, but I do sort of like to practice some ethical selection when I spend my cash with vendors. Bizarre concept, I know.