At approximately 10:49 AM EST on Aug 23 2014 the Virtual Machine (VM) and its associated Virtual Hard Drives (VHD) that resided on Microsoft's Azure platform and contained our customer data for lack of a better term went poof. Microsoft's official word on this is as follows “Thank you for your update. I understand your frustration regarding your deleted data. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned in my previous email, we do not the tools to restore customer data due to security, privacy and compliance reasons. There is nothing that I can do at this point to restore your data”.
Due to the overwhelming size of the database our backup structure is one designed to only minimize the damage in the event of such a catastrophic failure. Daily backups resided on one of the afflicted VHD's while monthly offsite backups are still available. Our last monthly offsite backup is approximately 2 week’s old meaning we have lost about 2 weeks of trade data, balances, registrations, deposits, withdrawals, etc. Such a loss is something I hoped never would happen however despite my plea to Microsoft to try and restore the data they contend the following "Azure cloud storage does not function in the same way as conventional SAN on premise storage solution, we do not have the ability to access storage directly and recover specific data".
It saddens me very much to have lost faith in the idea of cloud computing and its ability to reliably store data.
In light of this I have decided it best to offer everyone 2 options:
- We continue using the current site and infrastructure as planned until we switch over to our private servers.
- I break my back and try and get the new system up and running as fast as possible while leaving the site offline.
Both solutions still mean we have to deal with the loss of data. This will mean a loss for some and a gain for others. As I have no way of knowing any balances, trade data, deposits, withdrawals, new accounts, etc. after the last offsite backup. I am open to any and all suggestions so please feel free to include your constructive input.