Apple device owners unable to restore from backup as iCloud outage continues [u]

AppleInsider · June 29, 2017 1:36AM

An unspecified service outage that has been ongoing for nearly 36 hours is impacting a small percentage of Apple customers attempting to use iCloud Backup, prohibiting them from creating new backups or restore from previous saves.

According to Apple's system status webpage, the company's iCloud Backup service has been down since 8 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday. The downtime is ongoing at the time of this writing.

As its name suggests, iCloud Backup allows users to backup device settings, app data and other critical assets to the cloud for later retrieval. Like local backups to iTunes, device backups to the cloud provide peace of mind in the case of a drastic system failure.

More frequently, however, iCloud Backup is used to provision and move data over to newly purchased devices. For example, a customer purchasing a new iPhone might use iCloud Backup to transfer over saved device preferences, call histories, iMessage strings, App Store purchases and more from their previous device. iCloud Backup also handles Apple Watch backups.

Apple notes less than one percent of users are impacted by the outage, but with an install base of millions, that number runs into the hundreds of thousands.

The company failed to specify the origin of today's troubles, but it can be assumed that engineers are working to resolve the issue. Apple has not commented on the downtime and does not provide estimates as to when a fix will be in place.

Update: Apple resolved the issue at approximately 5 a.m. Pacific on Thursday.

anantksundaram · June 29, 2017 1:44AM

Maybe this is from the left field (and may sound quasi-paranoid), but my phone has been acting twitchy in the past 36 hours (lost cell signals, lost wifi signals, regular freezing up of websites, problems signing on to iCloud). The same types of problems were reported by a colleague at work.

Given all the hacking going around (the latest one having started yesterday), I wonder if there's something impacting some major provider of cloud services that we're not hearing about.

foggyhill · June 29, 2017 2:18AM

anantksundaram said:

Maybe this is from the left field (and may sound quasi-paranoid), but my phone has been acting twitchy in the past 36 hours (lost cell signals, lost wifi signals, regular freezing up of websites, problems signing on to iCloud). The same types of problems were reported by a colleague at work.

Given all the hacking going around (the latest one having started yesterday), I wonder if there's something impacting some major provider of cloud services that we're not hearing about.

Not sure how it would since its a windows issue that we've been hearing about and we would be talking here of servers.

bdkennedy1002 · June 29, 2017 2:57AM

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

larrya · June 29, 2017 3:04AM

bdkennedy said:

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

My sentiments exactly! I use it to share docs, but nothing that I absolutely rely on.

sgt storms(trooper) · June 29, 2017 3:46AM

Well played, ad network...

ksec · June 29, 2017 4:47AM

You can argue that Google and Amazon has set the standard too high, where both have had MUCH more customers then Apple to serve but has far fewer downtimes on their Server Infrastructure. I think it is also worth mention that Apple 's Cloud is getting ( finally ) better over the past 12 months with fewer problems. Lets hope they keep on improving.

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

You will have to take care your Data Safety such as bit flop, HDD failure, ransomeware, fire hazard etc. I am not against having an own server. But seriously I want BOTH. I want a Time Machine that takes my backup first, and iCloud as my secondary backup.

foggyhill · June 29, 2017 6:33AM

ksec said:

You can argue that Google and Amazon has set the standard too high, where both have had MUCH more customers then Apple to serve but has far fewer downtimes on their Server Infrastructure. I think it is also worth mention that Apple 's Cloud is getting ( finally ) better over the past 12 months with fewer problems. Lets hope they keep on improving.

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

You will have to take care your Data Safety such as bit flop, HDD failure, ransomeware, fire hazard etc. I am not against having an own server. But seriously I want BOTH. I want a Time Machine that takes my backup first, and iCloud as my secondary backup.

Well, I think Apple was using someone else's backend for at least part of its Icloud solutions cause they certainly didn't have enough of it when the Iphone had its explosive growth from 2010 to 2015. There is a reason they've been building data centers like crazy.

I think saying Amazon have a stellar report here is a bit much considering Amazon has had major fucks in the last year were thousands of companies were affected.

Don't have enough info on Google to comment either way.

techrules · June 29, 2017 11:05AM

foggyhill said:

ksec said:

You can argue that Google and Amazon has set the standard too high, where both have had MUCH more customers then Apple to serve but has far fewer downtimes on their Server Infrastructure. I think it is also worth mention that Apple 's Cloud is getting ( finally ) better over the past 12 months with fewer problems. Lets hope they keep on improving.

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

You will have to take care your Data Safety such as bit flop, HDD failure, ransomeware, fire hazard etc. I am not against having an own server. But seriously I want BOTH. I want a Time Machine that takes my backup first, and iCloud as my secondary backup.

Well, I think Apple was using someone else's backend for at least part of its Icloud solutions cause they certainly didn't have enough of it when the Iphone had its explosive growth from 2010 to 2015. There is a reason they've been building data centers like crazy.

I think saying Amazon have a stellar report here is a bit much considering Amazon has had major fucks in the last year were thousands of companies were affected.
Don't have enough info on Google to comment either way.

My understanding is that Apple was using Amazon for the backend of their cloud services and a year ago started moving to Google. Apple is only doing the index while the actual data is stored on Amazon or Google. So it must be an index issue? As Google and Amazon clouds have not had any issues over the last couple of days. I think Google is now going to offer their own backup and restore service which would probably be more reliably than something from Apple.

"Cloud Makes For Strange Bedfellows: Apple Signs On With Google, Cuts Spending With AWS"
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300080062/cloud-makes-for-strange-bedfellows-apple-signs-on-with-google-cuts-spending-with-aws.htm

"Apple and Google reached a deal worth between $400 million and $600 million to host iCloud and other data on Google Cloud Platform. "

macpro · June 29, 2017 11:35AM

techrules said:

foggyhill said:

ksec said:

You can argue that Google and Amazon has set the standard too high, where both have had MUCH more customers then Apple to serve but has far fewer downtimes on their Server Infrastructure. I think it is also worth mention that Apple 's Cloud is getting ( finally ) better over the past 12 months with fewer problems. Lets hope they keep on improving.

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

You will have to take care your Data Safety such as bit flop, HDD failure, ransomeware, fire hazard etc. I am not against having an own server. But seriously I want BOTH. I want a Time Machine that takes my backup first, and iCloud as my secondary backup.

Well, I think Apple was using someone else's backend for at least part of its Icloud solutions cause they certainly didn't have enough of it when the Iphone had its explosive growth from 2010 to 2015. There is a reason they've been building data centers like crazy.

I think saying Amazon have a stellar report here is a bit much considering Amazon has had major fucks in the last year were thousands of companies were affected.
Don't have enough info on Google to comment either way.

My understanding is that Apple was using Amazon for the backend of their cloud services and a year ago started moving to Google. Apple is only doing the index while the actual data is stored on Amazon or Google. So it must be an index issue? As Google and Amazon clouds have not had any issues over the last couple of days. I think Google is now going to offer their own backup and restore service which would probably be more reliably than something from Apple.

"Cloud Makes For Strange Bedfellows: Apple Signs On With Google, Cuts Spending With AWS"
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300080062/cloud-makes-for-strange-bedfellows-apple-signs-on-with-google-cuts-spending-with-aws.htm

"Apple and Google reached a deal worth between $400 million and $600 million to host iCloud and other data on Google Cloud Platform. "

That was my understanding too. Perhaps it is the transition itself behind the issue. I doubt we'll ever hear though. As to comments above about not trusting cloud storage from foggy hill, I agree that using several methods is the best as ksek said. I make Carbon Copy Clones as image files of all my Macs regularly and certainly prior to any beta installations and also family members' regular Macs, when they let me, and store them away on large HDDs locally too. Great thing about modern Macs is the relatively small SSDs make for a fast and easy imaging process. OT a bit but talking about backups and restorations, if you set up a boot disk as APFS you will have fun trying to erase it and set it back to HFS+. I found a fast solution, use Windows (I used Parallels) and used MiniTools to 'Delete' all partitions. Then I was able to re format in Mac OS with disk utilities as HFS+ without issue. If I miss out the MiniTools part I can do a full restoration of a bootable disk onto a formatted disk which Disk Utilities thinks it's formatted but it won't boot as noted by CCC notes. I am sure as the 10.13 betas progress Disk Utilities will work and remove the APFS correctly until then this works. You can also use Terminal but this was faster for me.

lkrupp · June 29, 2017 1:27PM

bdkennedy said:

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

I worked in an AT&T central office for 34 years. Multiple backups as well as off site storage (physical location and cloud) was a religion to us. Shit happens.

nht · June 29, 2017 1:29PM

bdkennedy said:

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

Which could be ransomwared...

georgebmac · June 29, 2017 2:18PM

Nothing is invulnerable. Particularly data...

I learned that back in 1977 -- after implementing a new computerized accounting system I was trying to do some historical reporting only to find that the historical data was gone. When I asked for it to be restored I found that they had taken three backups of it -- but all three had either failed or been lost or been accidentally destroyed...

THIS is the voice of experience:

lkrupp
I worked in an AT&T central office for 34 years. Multiple backups as well as off site storage (physical location and cloud) was a religion to us. Shit happens.

eric_in_ct · June 29, 2017 2:59PM

My iMac is from late 2009. The first of the 27"

2TB HDD
All I really care about on it are the 51,000 home photos on it from 2002-present.

I use Time Machine to a (cheap I suppose) backup HD (USB-2), a second cheap usb-2 hard disk with JUST the iphoto library (copied out every now and then), and then I rarely export *some* form to other outputs.

Would love to change the HD to SSD and give the iMac new life (it chugs in Photos), and have watched several youTube video's of the process (including the thermal-cable-stuff), but it's daunting.

Semi-Major surgery and High penalty for failure.

cgwerks · June 29, 2017 4:18PM

GeorgeBMac said:
When I asked for it to be restored I found that they had taken three backups of it -- but all three had either failed or been lost or been accidentally destroyed...

This was actually quite common. Backup systems were so complex and failure-prone, and few people tested them regularly. We're in a whole different world today in terms of options and reliability, but trusting a company with a cloud track record like Apple is probably not prudent. I'm sure the vast majority their customers, especially on iOS, are though. (i.e.: there's a big disaster waiting to happen.)

I've always tried to keep 2 or 3 copies around (through various methods), especially of important data. The cloud is actually great to be one of them, so long as a 'sync' process doesn't go awry and erase something, extremely efficiently across all your devices (my main fear regarding Apple's cloud).

What I've not been happy with, is that in the process of trying to make iOS simple, they've made it incredibly hard to do good and regular backups, manage data, and retrieve/restore data apart from whole-device-state type operations. That's actually one additional reason I'm hesitant on the whole iPad replacing laptop thing, even given the power and advancements of late.

anton zuykov · June 29, 2017 4:43PM

bdkennedy said:

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

Bad idea, unless you know exactly what you are doing. Basically, it is very similar to writing your own cryptographic library vs using the existing one - unless you REALLY know what you are doing, you go for the latter. There are a lot more people who think they know what they are doing, than the number of people who actually know their stuff.

edited June 2017

1st · June 29, 2017 4:50PM

bloody hell, remind me the blackberry BIS outage... proven cloud is not the solution for redundancy, resiliency and reliability, at least not yet...

sidrictheviking · June 29, 2017 5:25PM

It’s saying that’s it’s been resolved now.

k2kw · June 29, 2017 9:49PM

ksec said:

You can argue that Google and Amazon has set the standard too high, where both have had MUCH more customers then Apple to serve but has far fewer downtimes on their Server Infrastructure. I think it is also worth mention that Apple 's Cloud is getting ( finally ) better over the past 12 months with fewer problems. Lets hope they keep on improving.

THIS is why I don't trust my data to the cloud. I have my own server.

You will have to take care your Data Safety such as bit flop, HDD failure, ransomeware, fire hazard etc. I am not against having an own server. But seriously I want BOTH. I want a Time Machine that takes my backup first, and iCloud as my secondary backup.

This is why I wouldn't trust an Apple made self driving car or software.

stevenoz · June 29, 2017 10:09PM

Resolved.

yoyo2222 · June 30, 2017 12:32AM

Eric_in_CT said:

My iMac is from late 2009. The first of the 27"

2TB HDD
All I really care about on it are the 51,000 home photos on it from 2002-present.

I use Time Machine to a (cheap I suppose) backup HD (USB-2), a second cheap usb-2 hard disk with JUST the iphoto library (copied out every now and then), and then I rarely export *some* form to other outputs.

Would love to change the HD to SSD and give the iMac new life (it chugs in Photos), and have watched several youTube video's of the process (including the thermal-cable-stuff), but it's daunting.

Semi-Major surgery and High penalty for failure.

I have a Mid 2010 iMac 27" (2TB HD) to which I added a 500GB SSD in the optical drive spot. It avoids the difficulty of physically getting to the HD. The SSD is the boot drive and I keep all my large files (photos and iTunes media) on the spinning drive. Made it like a new computer.

One hint I used was to keep the iMac standing upright on it's stand during the entire process (unlike what iFixit says). Makes it easier to get to and unplug the various cables when removing the display. Watch the OWC video about opening your model.

Apple device owners unable to restore from backup as iCloud outage continues [u]

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