Chp 7 Case Study 1. Public “Personal” Clouds

Q1: Do some research on Amazon's Cloud Drive. What is the amount of free storage space?

Everyone gets 5 GB free.

What is the annual cost for additional storage?

20GB at USD10 per year.

What about Apple's iCloud? Is it still free?

By default you get 5GB of free storage with the basic account.

Does Microsoft charge anything for use of its SkyDrive cloud service?

OneDrive is the new name for SkyDrive and each account gets 7 GB free. Additional 50GB will cost USD50, additional 100GB at USD100 and additional 200GB at USD200.

Q2:Putting all your personal information in the cloud means letting go of some control over information like you tax files, personal photos that you might not want anyone else to see, term papers you're currently writing, and so on. What is your level of concern for the security of these personal digital assets in the cloud? Explain why you level of concern is high or low.

My level of security concern is high. This is because, most Cloud Storage providers do not provide at rest data encryption security. Therefore, any personal digital assets are vulnerable to privacy violation by unethical Cloud Storage providers' storage administrators.

Q3:As we move more of our personal storage needs to the cloud, will computers really need disk storage space?

Yes. The local disk is still required for the operating system and offline applications.

Is it possible that we're in the early stages of an outrageous industry transformation?

Yes. Currently we are in the Internet and Cloud phenomenon.

Who are the major manufacturers of disk storage for personal computers and laptops?

Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba.

Q4:If you choose to store all you personal information in the cloud, you'll need a personal continuity plan, much like organizations have business continuity plans in case of some sort of disaster, Suppose that right now you begin storing all your personal information only in the cloud. Of that information, what will you also back up onto a flash drive?

Information that are not being required to be synchronized and accessed anywhere and anytime can still be backed up onto a flash drive.

How often would you perform the backup up process?

Ideally, information should be synchronized real time. However, the backup up process frequency depends on the recovery time objective (RTO) and the recovery point objective (RPO) requirements.  

How often do you currently back up information on your computer's hard drive?

Twice a day via a backup tools scheduled to backup at lunch time and at end of business day.

Q5:Do some research on personal cloud providers. What sort of service level agreement (SLA) do they offer?

The most common covers the monthly service uptime percentage and financial backing whenever the the service uptime percentage is not achieved.

Are you willing to store you information with a personal cloud provider that offers no SLA? Why or why not?

Yes, if the information are no much important and can be retrieved elsewhere if need be.