The wrong guy: Backup outfit Spanning deleted my personal data, claims Cohesity field CTO
- Reference: 1614775337
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/03/cohesity/
- Source link:
Writing yesterday in his personal blog, [1]Colotti revealed that "Spanning Backup simply DELETED all my backups from the last 3+ years," exhibiting what he termed to be "horrible stewardship of the data" and "process failures."
[2]
"This is a personal horror story," he said in a heavily caps-locked blog, "What I came to find out later about what they did to my data, and their EULA has been nothing short of maddening."
Chris Colotti
[3]
Colotti said he used Spanning for more than 36 months to store "my personal data and the data of my wife's small business," for Google's G Suite. He said his complaint had "nothing to do in any way with my day job working for another data protection vendor."
[4]Spanning Backup for G Suite costs $48 per user per year and claims to provide "unlimited storage of all your G Suite data."
Colotti said he'd renewed his Spanning account on November 12, 2020 but found his backup data had been deleted when he tried to login on February 18 this year. He opened a support ticket.
Spanning support staff, meanwhile, said the company had sent him a warning email about excessive capacity usage on October 22, 2020. He said he never saw it, as "it looked just like most other messages from them I got weekly or monthly."
His annual renewal was accepted on November 12 but then all 36TB of his backup data was deleted on November 28 with no emails about the deletion, he claimed.
Colotti wrote: "There was NO other notifications ZIP, ZERO, NADA! In fact they took my money for renewal AFTER the warning and BEFORE the data was reaped, and their process had not [sic] other notifications I mean how screwed up is that?!"
Spanning EULA
Colotti examined Spanning's [5]End User License Agreement [PDF] (EULA) and found it applies a restriction to the "unlimited storage" claim, as our highlighting of the EULA's section 4 text shows:
[6]
Click to enlarge
Customers backing up more than 10GB per month for two months are deemed excessive users and have a five-day period after receipt of a mailed alert to pay for the excessive usage. This is despite section 4.1 declaring: "Spanning does not impose any pre-set limits on the amount of storage capacity Users are allowed to consume."
It seems Colotti had 36TB worth of backup, which likely falls under the category "storage consumption [that] far exceeds the Fees for the Services as calculated by Spanning." The fee was $48/year.
Had they signed up with the Business Standard tier for Google Workspace/G Suite, for example, they'd have received 2TB of cloud storage for $144.
Colotti's blog continued: "Don't tell people there's no limit… when there really is, just state it and move on. Don't be shady as shit, just state it and ALSO state the cost for more! This is not news to anyone, but sucking people in for $4/month/user then pulling this crap is unacceptable." ( His emphasis. )
Colotti went on to attack what he described as Spanning's "classic bait and switch. They pull you in with a $4/user/month price claiming no limits but when you hit one they want more money… I even [7]tagged the CEO of Kaseya on LinkedIn , with no response, which I am not surprised. Fred Voccola should be ashamed as shit of doing this to even a small business."
He added that Spanning had made "no viable offer" of compensation or retribution for the "three years of lost data."
Kaseya's SVP for corporate marketing, Dana Liedholm, told us: "We are actively looking into this customer's allegations and are unable to comment at this time. Our customers are our top priority, and we remain committed to their success."
[8]
Kaseya typically sells IT management products to MSPs and medium-size on-premises IT shops. The company [9]acquired SaaS backup service Spanning in October 2018. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.chriscolotti.us/everything-else/miscellaneous/stop-trusting-spanning-backup-with-your-data/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/storage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YD-AqipofMcHHwCbGyvUfgAAAAE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/storage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YD-AqipofMcHHwCbGyvUfgAAAAE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://spanning.com/products/google-apps-backup/
[5] https://s3.wasabisys.com/chriscolotti.us/Spanning_EULA.pdf
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/03/03/spanning-eula-highlight-2.jpg
[7] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ccolotti_fred-voccola-needs-to-explain-to-how-a-single-activity-6769783293366874112-6yza
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/storage&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YD-AqipofMcHHwCbGyvUfgAAAAE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/01/kaseya_buys_spanning/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: If you cannot touch it do not complain when it evaporates
I still wait for someone creating a “neighbour” based system. Both you and your neighbour buy in, then each has one backup in their home and one in the other home. Save as long as both homes don’t burn down at the same time.
Re: If you cannot touch it do not complain when it evaporates
For less than twice the cost of 1 year's subscription, you can buy a 1TB portable HDD. This will back up 10GB of data per month for more than 8 years. If it is only powered up when you backup or restore data, it is likely to be more reliable than an online backup service - as well as being a heck of a lot faster.
I sympathise with the guy because that EULA isn't worth the ASCII it's written in, but at the same time if you want to be absolutely sure you've got your data, back it up yourself on your own hardware!
Here, here, cloud backups, if used at all should be third or fourth in line for backups to do.
Not sure I would use the Cloud for backups - just as a way to transfer my data from one place to another.
The Cloud - your data on someone else's computer
Cheap as chips
Bad form on Kayeya part, all they had to do (in extreme) was put the account on hold while they sorted the customer out. If you must buy a 'all you can eat buffet' service at $48 a year, why not have 2x services, it's peanuts compared to the value of the data being stored.
Such bad planning!
Terabytes stored ONLY in cloud backups? That's bad planning.
Sure, you need an off-site backup for the worst possible case. For many large companies, it can be at another site that they own or have long-term secure access to. But for small companies and individuals, the cloud is fine.
However, you should always have a local store as well. Because a large amount of data is going to be faster off local spindles than down through your internet connection. Sure, your worst case is that fire or flood means you have to go with offsite. But onsite is what you should be reaching for in most situations.
To not have that for 36Tb of data is baffling. Is it actually a backup? Or is it an archive? If it's just an archive, then it needs its own backup.
Either way, it's bad planning. Hopefully he's learned a lesson here...
Re: Such bad planning!
What makes you think it was only stored there? It's certainly not mentioned in the article.
> "found his backup data had been deleted when he tried to login on February 18 this year"
Doesn't mean that he _needed_ to get something from the backup, nor that there wasn't any other backup. It's quite possible that this was when he logged in to test his restore process.
Offline backups forever
Is shit like this why I keep my personal backups and do them offline.
Also:
[His annual renewal was accepted on November 12 but then all 36TB of his backup data was deleted on November 28 with no emails about the deletion, he claimed.]
That is scummy as hell.
....and another thing........
.....about backups...........the general tone of the article implies that backups are a "push" process.......along the lines of "upload the backup AND ONLY download if you happen to need something".
*
This implication is quite misleading. It's important to do regular testing of the restore process. If these tests expose ANY FAILURE AT ALL, then the backup is likely to be either corrupt or completely useless when a restore is really needed.
*
This regular testing is necessary for local backups, and I would have thought it is EVEN MORE necessary for cloud backups. I wonder if Chris Colotti was completely certain that his 36TB would be effective when he really needed to restore all or part of it! If he was not certain, then he was wasting his $48/year fees.
this guy is a STORAGE EXEC
wow...
unlike some of you guys, I have no sympathy for him. He definitely should know better.
Re: this guy is a STORAGE EXEC
Including knowing to read the EULA. And to put on the least favourable construction when clauses clash.
Re: this guy is a STORAGE EXEC
Why bother to try to read the EULA? We all know that it says "You agree to send us money and we don't promise to do anything -- at all ... ever -- in return" in about 100,000 carefully chosen, incomprehensible, words.
As far as I can see the only hope we consumers have is that a vengeful and angry deity will someday turn up and start casting nasty vendors and their legal staffs into a blazing pit. I do not anticipate that happening any time soon.
Re: this guy is a STORAGE EXEC
And according to the article works for "another data protection vendor".
Why didn't he use his own company's system? Not as good as Spanning?
Re: this guy is a STORAGE EXEC
Not as good as Spanning?
Wow, even worse? Is that actually possible?
The mist clears......
..... as "it looked just like most other messages from them I got weekly or monthly." ....
sounds like a moronic plot to force you to read their marketing bollocks.
Honestly, yeah, if you sign up with a company that offers unlimited hosting and then they change around the EULA so that when you renew, you're kicked off, that's absolutely shitty and I sympathize. I doubt this dude lost everything, or anything like that, but he's royally pissed off that a promise that was offered wasn't kept, and I would be too.
Let this be a lesson to any company that offers "unlimited" anything.
If its too good to be true...
If a service is really offering to store 36TB for only $48 a year then either (i) it is a scam - the data won't be there when you need it, or (ii) the company is going to go bust and the data won't be there when you need it.
If you really want to store important backups online, check out major market leaders (Amazon, Google, Backblaze, etc) and expect to pay prices similar to those. Otherwise: the data won't be there when you need it .
For my personal data, I have good local backups and I use cloud storage for offline backup - expecting to never need it but just in case. I am storing a few TB and I am paying much more than $48/year.
Amazon S3 Glacier?
I'm not suggesting that AWS S3 Glacier is the cheapest online storage available, but it's certainly not expensive. Their quick calculator suggests that they charge ~$4/TB/month, so he'd be looking at ~$144/month plus retrieval charges. The guy supposedly understands storage so how did he think he was going to get away with 36TB for $4/month?
Re: Amazon S3 Glacier?
Come to that, why didn't he use his own company's service? Probably because this was cheaper. Now he knows why.
Such things like this is why I prefer to keep three copies of backup.
One on Amazon glacier. At this stage it is cheap enough, so we'll just keep on filling it up until we reach a certain point, then look at deleting older data.
One on a NAS - weekly
One on a removable HDD (a new HDD is procured every month and a full backup is chucked onto it) - monthly for 6 months.
And just another reason...
Not to trust ANYONE else with your data. My 16 TB is replicated across two servers and a tape system; none of the three are collocated and both servers are dissimilar systems. Compared to the loss of the data, the cost of the system, built in 2013, is immaterial.
The universe is finite
NOTHING is unlimited. I don't expect average people to understand this. But ANYONE working a technical job in the IT industry must know this. Even CTOs.
Honestly, I would expect England's advertising standards body to go after anyone making an "unlimited" offer.
But I'm having a really, really hard time sympathizing with this guy.
Rules Testing
Reminds me of numerous stories going back to compuserve/AoL days; users would use a verbal/ad loophole to abuse a commercial offering and then be all rage upset over inevitable take down.
This is always going to be the way shady dealers think - the data isn't yours any more. You've given it to them, now you're just renting it back.
Kind of like one of those all-your-data-is-encrypted-now-pay-us-money ransomware schemes, except with a monthly payment deal.
$48 a year CxO
If your data is so important that $48 a year is the max, guess how good the Cohesity product must be...
I need ...
A reliable backup service. I will pay an unlimited amount of money for this service.
(Of course, by "unlimited" I mean "not excessive". And I define "excessive" as anything more than 50 pence.)
If you cannot touch it do not complain when it evaporates
This time is was Kaseya being arse holes, next time it could be some malfunction, either way Kayeya are unlikely to worry much. How much work would you do for $48/year ?
The only way of being safe is to take your own backup, preferably two that you keep in different locations.
Yes: it is harder, more work, needs thought - but how much is your data worth to you ?