Sun, Oracle save Microsoft's Pink after Danger data disaster

2

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 55
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    .... ..



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tiadimundo View Post


    seriously, i don't see why this is big news here on an apple oriented site. Maybe i'm missing something because of my poor english?



    ms' continued idiocy is always fun fodder for the apple faithful. Why not post it. It's legitimate news, and its appropriateness on an apple site can be argued either way, so the staff might as well post it for the hits.



    is it really a surprise that sun and oracle experts helped to recover when ms has nothing to do with the setup? It's like calling the plumber isn't it?



    not really a surprise, no. But in a way, ironic.



    and why does appleinsider not report on the guest account issue in such detail?



    appleinsider did report it, but there wasn't a lot of information to go on. Especially since the bug was quite rare, difficult to reproduce, and did not affect everyone with an active guest account in leopard upgrading to snow leopard. Most sl users were never in any real danger. In any event, the ms/danger blunder affected every sidekick user. That's big news, any way you slice it.




  • Reply 22 of 55
    ...Ho wrote, "we have made changes to improve the overall stability of the Sidekick service and initiated a more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of our database backups is maintained."



    IOW, we are going to migrate all your data onto servers running Microsoft Windows, and using MS SQL. No more of this namby-pamby Oracle crap! If the data had originally been in a Windows database (even Access), this problem would never have occurred.
  • Reply 23 of 55
    My money is on at least a few weeks of the delay being the lawyers working out a deal in which Microsoft pays a HUGE sum of money and neither they, Oracle/Sun nor Verizon gets to claim credit nor lay blame. I'll bet very little is said about it moving forward, due to "confidentiality agreements", and Ho moves on to spend "more time with her family". The question then will be, how does Verizon handle their pissed off customers? Do they force Microsoft to divest themselves of Danger completely, maybe selling it to Verizon for a song and a hold harmless agreement? If even the barest majority of the data is actually recovered, Sidekick users are likely not to win a class action and will just have to suck it up. And the final question will be, lacking any solid blame or absolution, how much does this affect analyst's comments on Azure and the rest of Microsoft's cloud strategy, and thus influence Microsoft's stock. And anyone know what Microsoft's board looks like? At some point anyone even remotely "independent" has to start making noises. If Azure and Cloud Office tank because of this, and Windows 7 doesn't sell, the fire under the whole executive suite gets mighty hot. Someday we may look back and say "That was the moment when Microsoft as a monopoly really died.



    I hope.



    Gordon
  • Reply 24 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GordonPrice67 View Post


    My money is on at least a few weeks of the delay being the lawyers working out a deal in which Microsoft pays a HUGE sum of money and neither they, Oracle/Sun nor Verizon gets to claim credit nor lay blame. I'll bet very little is said about it moving forward, due to "confidentiality agreements", and Ho moves on to spend "more time with her family". The question then will be, how does Verizon handle their pissed off customers? Do they force Microsoft to divest themselves of Danger completely, maybe selling it to Verizon for a song and a hold harmless agreement? If even the barest majority of the data is actually recovered, Sidekick users are likely not to win a class action and will just have to suck it up. And the final question will be, lacking any solid blame or absolution, how much does this affect analyst's comments on Azure and the rest of Microsoft's cloud strategy, and thus influence Microsoft's stock. And anyone know what Microsoft's board looks like? At some point anyone even remotely "independent" has to start making noises. If Azure and Cloud Office tank because of this, and Windows 7 doesn't sell, the fire under the whole executive suite gets mighty hot. Someday we may look back and say "That was the moment when Microsoft as a monopoly really died.



    I hope.



    Gordon



    this was probably an orchestrated thing, i'm sure it wasn't 100% her responsibility...there was probably a certain element of sabotage, a certain element of wanting to get rid of her...and god knows what else...
  • Reply 25 of 55
    akacakac Posts: 512member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by All Day Breakfast View Post


    what I don't underestand is why the top gurus from Sun and Oracle were called in. Isn't Microsoft running their businesses on their own OS and database software? Did they really set up a major IT project that they control using Sun Hardware and an Oracle database? Surely I've got this wrong?



    Well because it wasn't a MS company. MS bought a pre-existing company that had a pre-existing service running off Sun and Oracle.
  • Reply 26 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Akac View Post


    Well because it wasn't a MS company. MS bought a pre-existing company that had a pre-existing service running off Sun and Oracle.



    While this may be true, the lack of a successful Backup and Restore process leads me to believe something else is wrong here. My guess is that a) there simply was an inadequate system in place (unlikely) or b) proper backup and restore procedures were not followed.



    If this were a Sun/Oracle/Hitachi environment, some sort of Backup and Restore system *should* have been in place. Maybe this information was lost with the user data



    Seriously, when Sun purchased StorageTek they acquired one of the leading Backup vendors in the world (this may be all they acquired).



    Hopefully, the full story will come out one day. In the meantime, this was Microsoft's 'CNN moment'.
  • Reply 27 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JSmith View Post


    You can also bet that MS will never say thank you publically to Sun or Oracle for their help in rescuing their butts.



    Oh it's worse than that. As the article says, Microsoft is actively blaming Sun and Oracle for the outage.



    As an IT architect who has designed very large Windows, Unix, and Linux architectures at some of the best known companies in the world i find it amazing that Microsoft would claim five nines availability with their architecture. That is a blatant lie.
  • Reply 28 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by doyourownthing View Post


    this was probably an orchestrated thing, i'm sure it wasn't 100% her responsibility...there was probably a certain element of sabotage, a certain element of wanting to get rid of her...and god knows what else...



    Oh please. Your walking into Microsoft off the cuff lies about it being due to internal sabotage. i don't believe that for a minute. it was incompetent management.
  • Reply 29 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TiAdiMundo View Post


    Seriously, I don't see why this is big news here on an Apple oriented site. Maybe I'm missing something because of my poor English?

    Is it really a surprise that Sun and Oracle experts helped to recover when MS has nothing to do with the setup? It's like calling the plumber isn't it?

    And why does Appleinsider not report on the guest account issue in such detail?



    Nowhere in the article does it say its surprising that Sun and Oracle were called in. Nobody seems surprised by it. So apparently you made it up then attacked what you made up. How odd.



    Apple Insider did report on the guest issue. Apparently you are unaware how the search function works. But the guest account thing has affected a tiny number of users and is in the process of being fixed.



    This debacle has affected perceptions of "the cloud" especially Microsoft offerings, and is a big deal. As usual Microsoft has made things worse by lying about it.
  • Reply 30 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by goodcow View Post


    Roz Ho is clearly incompetent, as seen by her management of this and the MacBU, and it's amazing she still has a job.



    As a network admin myself it is my job to make sure my organization has proper backups, not some top level exec. The possibility I'm not doing my job is the reason companies do internal audits and frankly for a company as big as Microsoft not to have thought to do a backup before this all started is just ridiculous. Roz may have dropped the ball in some regard but from what's come out so far there isn't any evidence she was negligent in any way (that aside she did do a terrible job with MacBU).



    I suspect a lot of people will probably loose their jobs over this one, & depending on how big all this becomes this could actually seriously cripple Pink.
  • Reply 31 of 55
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by doyourownthing View Post


    this was probably an orchestrated thing, i'm sure it wasn't 100% her responsibility...there was probably a certain element of sabotage, a certain element of wanting to get rid of her...and god knows what else...



    Microsoft bought a company (Danger) with a technology base (Oracle/Solaris) that Microsoft doesn't have experience in.



    This is actually worse than you'd normally expect; Microsoft operates under a "dogfooding" edict where they are mandated to use their own products and technologies internally. What that means is that Microsoft doesn't grow or retain experience in managing competing products or platforms. And it's not impossible to screw up an Oracle database recovery if you don't know exactly what you are doing.



    So it's probable that their Oracle backup and recovery strategy had large holes in it, esp. if it's true that Microsoft started letting go the original crew (assuming previous reports are accurate) and tried taking over the Danger/Sidekick with their own team members (and migrating to their own SAN infrastructure, which is where this story began).



    Sabotage? Hanlon's Razor says, "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
  • Reply 32 of 55
    mactelmactel Posts: 1,275member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by All Day Breakfast View Post


    what I don't underestand is why the top gurus from Sun and Oracle were called in. Isn't Microsoft running their businesses on their own OS and database software? Did they really set up a major IT project that they control using Sun Hardware and an Oracle database? Surely I've got this wrong?



    They bought this company in February of 2008. They bought them for their technology and the Danger folks were rumored to be working on Pink (a.k.a. the Zune phone).



    The contract with T-Mobile is multi-year so whatever architecture was being used for the Sidekick service was acceptable since that wasn't Microsoft's reason for buying Danger.



    Being a SQL DBA and having been an Oracle DBA it wouldn't have been difficult for Microsoft to have converted the Oracle instances over to SQL Server by now (along with the apps yada yada yada) if that was their intent. Clearly it was not as no one cared to check on house keeping at the Danger data center.



    Microsoft's major initiative is cloud computing and there's no way they would in their right minds allow this to happen. This is serious egg on their faces. It doesn't make Sun (soon to be Oracle) or Oracle look bad at all. In fact it makes them look pretty darn good and Larry Ellison must be laughing all the way to the bank.
  • Reply 33 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by myapplelove View Post


    this might sound as a cheap shot but how can you have a company represantative going by the name of Ho? They are usually picked up from the streets with this name they don't represent companies. And why on earth doesn't she just modify her name a bit, lots of people who had moronic surnames changed them. But maybe with a non idiotic surname she d lose her gravitas in ms. Again, I know it's a cheap shot but losing thousands of peoples personal data isn't much better either.



    She is chinese mate. What does that have to do with anything? Please take your bigotry somewhere else.



    BTW. the term Ho has only been used as whore by the US and only in the last 20 years. The surname Ho is by far older and more respected - re, Stanley Ho of Macau.



    Btw MS blew this one big time. Sure the data was not mission critical but when you force people to rely on your "cloud" then there better be a real cloud.
  • Reply 34 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by goodcow View Post


    Roz Ho is clearly incompetent, as seen by her management of this and the MacBU, and it's amazing she still has a job.



    Well it's not the first time of signs of incompetence by Microsoft leaders... IF Ballmer still has his position, she damn well should keep hers, otherwise to get rid of her, an earlier quote from an earlier post applies to this situation... "wins her a few million in court"!
  • Reply 35 of 55
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by snookie View Post


    Oh it's worse than that. As the article says, Microsoft is actively blaming Sun and Oracle for the outage.



    And as a face-saving measure, this will probably go a long way toward hurting their image in the IT community where interoperability is the real-world name of the game. That excuse may fly with cell phone consumers, but it's a huge red flag to CIOs who can't run a 100% Microsoft shop (for whatever reasons).



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by snookie View Post


    As an IT architect who has designed very large Windows, Unix, and Linux architectures at some of the best known companies in the world i find it amazing that Microsoft would claim five nines availability with their architecture. That is a blatant lie.



    Correct. The fact is that "five nines" is just over five minutes per year. A SQL Server cluster failover can take longer than five minutes to come back online from one node to another. Moving cluster groups back and forth for the ubiquitous monthly server patches will burn up "five nines" by February. OOB SQL Server isn't capable of "five nines".
  • Reply 36 of 55
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TiAdiMundo View Post


    Is it really a surprise that Sun and Oracle experts helped to recover when MS has nothing to do with the setup? It's like calling the plumber isn't it?



    The plumber (to use your analogy) should have never needed to be called.



    Quote:

    And why does Appleinsider not report on the guest account issue in such detail?



    Scale. The Guest account issue simply isn't on the scale of the Sidekick issue. If there were a million Mac OSX users with data loss, you wouldn't just be reading about it on AI



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by All Day Breakfast View Post


    what I don't underestand is why the top gurus from Sun and Oracle were called in. Isn't Microsoft running their businesses on their own OS and database software? Did they really set up a major IT project that they control using Sun Hardware and an Oracle database? Surely I've got this wrong?



    They acquired Danger to try to duplicate with phones what they did with Toshiba on the Zune. It ran long, and in the mean time they either drove off or as a way to cut costs got rid of many of the Danger employees. Compounding their risk, they opted to do a major upgraded without a verified backup. So now only do they have egg on their face, but they are outed in their attempt to "knife the baby" with Windows Mobile like they did for Plays For Sure.



    MS screws up due to extremely poor management decisions and then tries to take a swipe at Oracle and Sun? Priceless...
  • Reply 37 of 55
    Microsoft should have used Macs and Time machines for backing up - not junk old technology
  • Reply 38 of 55
    This will end in tears!
  • Reply 39 of 55
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kzbk81 View Post


    Microsoft should have used Macs and Time machines for backing up - not junk old technology



    Same reason why Bill gates and his family can't go to Disney World or own iPods. Just too much like right!
  • Reply 40 of 55
    aizmovaizmov Posts: 989member
    Microsoft is run by morons from the top all they way to the bottom!

    Who in her right mind would think a backup is unnecessary?!
Sign In or Register to comment.