If Smugmug was based in New Orleans...would all of our pictures be gone?

DodgeV83

I know Smugmug uses many servers, so if one goes down our pics are still safe...but are they all in the same building or are they spread out? Just curious.

Francois

FWIW, 'my' pictures are on 2 separate disk drives here in the office and on a backup DVD.....

Andy

excellent question, which i'm sure onethumb or baldy will address.

fwiw, i consider smugmug to be the "fort knox" for my photos. but, it's just 1/3 of my overall backup strategy:

1. nightly backup to external disk drive on my mac
2. monthly backup to dvd
3. smugmug has copy of all originals on a regular basis

DodgeV83

Yea I was going to note that Smugmug isn't my ONLY backup source, but I'm tired and just wanted to post it now lol. If they are all in the same room/building I wouldn't be surprised, or hold it against Smugmug. Its just something I was thinking about after reading the news of some web servers that were based in New Orleans getting destroyed.

andy wrote:

excellent question, which i'm sure onethumb or baldy will address.

fwiw, i consider smugmug to be the "fort knox" for my photos. but, it's just 1/3 of my overall backup strategy:

1. nightly backup to external disk drive on my mac
2. monthly backup to dvd
3. smugmug has copy of all originals on a regular basis

Mike Lane

DodgeV83 wrote:

I know Smugmug uses many servers, so if one goes down our pics are still safe...but are they all in the same building or are they spread out? Just curious.

Good question. Does smugmug do offsite backup?

onethumb

Mike Lane wrote:

Good question. Does smugmug do offsite backup?

smugmug has > 100TB of storage installed. Offsite backup isn't really an option at any of the price levels we charge.

I think if smugmug were in New Orleans, your photos would probably be safe, but they probably wouldn't be accessible, given all the power and network outages in the area. It's tough to know exactly, though, since power outages do strange things to PCs and hard drives from time to time.

We don't store photos in two dramatically different geographic locations (say, East Coast vs West Coast) at the moment, though it's something we've thought about. It's a huge headache dealing with the stinking speed of light constant , so separate coasts becomes a big pain.

As we continue to grow and become more successful (read: can spend more $$ on infrastructure), you'll continue to see our site and your photos become more redundant, secure, and reliable.

We're still a fairly small, young company and have limited resources.

Hope that helps!

Don

3rdPlanetPhotography

Young and small but absolutly the best as far as I'm concerned. I can understand some concern for my files but I'd never have my only source of files on Smugmug. No offense but it's almost unfair to ask "what if" in the face of a terrible terrible catastrophe of this size.

I thought about it earlier and thought about the "what if's". I can't even imagine.... the sun would come up and we'd first have to worry about feeding our families. I couldn't imagine waking up with no job. What about my house and belongings that I still have. The bank might have been blown away? What do you do about these kind of things? I just can't imagine. However it would be nice for a quick pay off.

Just my .5 cent!
Scott - kc7dji

onethumb wrote:

smugmug has > 100TB of storage installed. Offsite backup isn't really an option at any of the price levels we charge.

I think if smugmug were in New Orleans, your photos would probably be safe, but they probably wouldn't be accessible, given all the power and network outages in the area. It's tough to know exactly, though, since power outages do strange things to PCs and hard drives from time to time.

We don't store photos in two dramatically different geographic locations (say, East Coast vs West Coast) at the moment, though it's something we've thought about. It's a huge headache dealing with the stinking speed of light constant , so separate coasts becomes a big pain.

As we continue to grow and become more successful (read: can spend more $$ on infrastructure), you'll continue to see our site and your photos become more redundant, secure, and reliable.

We're still a fairly small, young company and have limited resources.

Hope that helps!

Don

Francois

Hmmmmm... waking up without a job has meanwhile happened to many of us, I would say NOT nice, for sure, I can tell ya.

Waking up without my Smugmug pictures...... I can live with that : Got them stored.....

Both of these are dwarfed by 'real' problems such as experienced by many people in the New Orleans area currently, and, in fact, by millions of people all over the globe !!

jamescalder

onethumb wrote:

...you'll continue to see our site and your photos become more redundant...

Francois

Indeed.. I hope it was meant 'tongue in cheek' ...haha !

As for being 'redundant'... I have become alergic to that phrase, since it nowadays it too often is 'corporate speak' used for human beings

Rhuarc

Backing up?
Just a quick question, is Smugmug ok with us using their site as a backup? What I was considering doing was creating one private gallery, (or multiple ones) and then uploading ALL my photos into thos private galleries. Right now I don't have too many files, about 4 Gigs. These private galleries would be the backup only. Many of the pictures would be duplicated in my public galleries that I have for people to view. Is this ok to do, or what does everyone reccomend?

Thanks!

Richard

Rhuarc wrote:

Just a quick question, is Smugmug ok with us using their site as a backup? What I was considering doing was creating one private gallery, (or multiple ones) and then uploading ALL my photos into thos private galleries. Right now I don't have too many files, about 4 Gigs. These private galleries would be the backup only. Many of the pictures would be duplicated in my public galleries that I have for people to view. Is this ok to do, or what does everyone reccomend?

Thanks!

You might want to look at this thread.

The main point is that you should think through your own personal backup scheme carefully. I think most computer professionals would agree that at a minimum you need removable media (think CD or DVD) and storage that is at a diffenet physical location than your primary copy.

Cheers,

mercphoto

DodgeV83 wrote:

I know Smugmug uses many servers, so if one goes down our pics are still safe...but are they all in the same building or are they spread out? Just curious.

When I was at Motorola a few years back, the Israel location (MSIL) had two separate companies provide for their Internet access and some off-site data storage. The idea was a good one - spread the risk between two companies in case disaster struck.

And it did, in the form of a flood no less. The company had the servers and routers in the basement of a building on an island in the Mediterranean, off Greece if memory serves. Correction, both companies happened to be on that island. In basements. Of the same building. Of course, nobody knew until after the flood and neither connection worked.

Strange things can happen.

mbrady

Rhuarc wrote:

Just a quick question, is Smugmug ok with us using their site as a backup? What I was considering doing was creating one private gallery, (or multiple ones) and then uploading ALL my photos into thos private galleries. Right now I don't have too many files, about 4 Gigs. These private galleries would be the backup only. Many of the pictures would be duplicated in my public galleries that I have for people to view. Is this ok to do, or what does everyone reccomend?

Thanks!

I've actually been doing just that same thing myself (with about 4GB of pics too) seperate from my regular public galleries. Since the'yr private galleries, they don't really add to the bandwidth of smugmug (aside from the initial upload). They are by no means my sole backup, but do have the added benefit of being accessible from any PC.

Matt

Rhuarc

mbrady wrote:

I've actually been doing just that same thing myself (with about 4GB of pics too) seperate from my regular public galleries. Since the'yr private galleries, they don't really add to the bandwidth of smugmug (aside from the initial upload). They are by no means my sole backup, but do have the added benefit of being accessible from any PC.

Matt

I'll probably do this as well, although I found an online backup solution that should work for me. mynetstorage.com has a deal 3.99 a month for 5Gb of space. Or 14.99 a month for 25Gb of space. They back up their dataevery Friday, and the backups are stored offsite in a bank vault. I called them and signed up for two accounts (total of 10 Gb's) which they were able to consolidate into one account. So, for 8 bucks a month I have 10Gb of storage that is backed up every week. I'll probably use SmugMug as a secondary backup for my main catalog of pictures.

Baldy

Update: I've never been comfortable with making claims about our safety even though we keep two separate copies of your photos on separate industrial arrays.

Last week we went a step or two further, however. We now keep 4 copies of your originals in 3 states. We provide real-time backup over high-speed links to a company in the business of safe, archival storage, so if our storage arrays fail, we can instantly serve up images from theirs.

They're well-known and were capable of choking down 400 million images (counting the display copies we make) and 100 terrabytes of storage without blinking. They'll probably mention us in some of their PR activities, but I'll let them do that when they're ready.

Mike Lane

:jawdrop

Baldy

Mike Lane wrote:

:jawdrop

Don't try copying 100 TB on your cable modem at home.

pathfinder

I can remember the original Apple hard drives for the Apple III, that stored all of 5 Megabytes.

My, how times have changed.

It is nice to hear of Smugmug's back up arrangement. Very comforting.

I am sure that is more secure than most of us are with our own storage at home.

Baldy

I should clarify: all new photos are automatically copied to the extra locations. Photos uploaded prior to last week are also being copied, but it's a process that could take months to complete.

Matthew Saville

Baldy wrote:

I should clarify: all new photos are automatically copied to the extra locations. Photos uploaded prior to last week are also being copied, but it's a process that could take months to complete.

So wait Baldy, are you now confirming that Smugmug has the "two separate locations" feature that Onethumb just said was further down the road? I'm confused...

I think Smugmug itself is my own personal "separate location" though. I already have my images on my HD and on DVD, so having them many miles away in Smugmug's keeping is already a good enough separate location backup. Smugmug's demise probably couldn't coincide with that of my own home and computer, since I don't live in Mountain View. ( My uncle does, though. Nice place! I might move there someday, and then we'd have a problem indeed if "the big one" hit...)

JimM

This is still terrific news! Thanks for the update Baldy!

And THANK YOU SMUGMUG!!!

mercphoto

JimM wrote:

This is still terrific news! Thanks for the update Baldy!

And THANK YOU SMUGMUG!!!

I do hope you guys realize, with multiple sites now, how price-competitive you are to a service such as PhotoShelter.com. Now about the only thing they have on you is the ability to store virtually any type of file, and search for images even if private. But boy are they expensive...

Baldy

Matthew Saville wrote:

So wait Baldy, are you now confirming that Smugmug has the "two separate locations" feature that Onethumb just said was further down the road? I'm confused...

I may have created some confusion by updating an olde thread...Onethumb posted that in September of '05 when we had two datacenters in relatively close proximity. The expense of opening another data center across the continent made it look far in the future when he wrote that.

What we didn't see then is that we'd be able to use a commercial service like we do now, where we could backup data on our disk arrays to theirs. They have a datacenter two states away from ours and another on the other coast, so now backups are spread across two companies and three states.

True confession: since we started SmugMug and watched how much loving care goes into the photos, captioning, and customization of people's albums, I've been haunted by the loss of Jacques Lowe's 40,000 priceless negatives of the Kennedy family.

He sought the safest place on earth to place them before he died and chose the vault at J.P. Morgan. 6 months to the day after he died, planes flew into the World Trade Center where the vault was, and they were lost.

That's my personal nightmare.

Matthew Saville

Okay thanks Baldy for pointing that out, I indeed did not notice the September-March difference in the posts...

It's nice to know that Smugmug is continually meeting more and more needs than I ever could have dreamed to have in the first place.

All I need now is a method of taking orders for framed / panoramic prints, and I'll have every single web need all rolled into one. Heck, I even have a forum to come too! I guess I'd still check DPReview for wild, insane rumors and daily product updates, though. But I'm sure that someday Smugmug will be big enough to have a photography newsroom... That would be euphoria!

And I'd pay a little more per year for a smugblog, too! Have you ever thought about going truly public with those?

Take care,
-Matt-

JimM

Baldy wrote:

That's my personal nightmare.

The fact that bothers you is the reason why you have such a loyal base! Keep up the good work. We really appreciate you and the Smugmug team!

Thank you!

Dennis

Geo-Redundant architecture
Baldy,

That's really good news regarding the geo-redundant backup architecture. Is that fact easily available for potential customers? I may have missed it, but I'd think that you would want to advertise this great feature.

Andy

Dennis wrote:

Baldy,

That's really good news regarding the geo-redundant backup architecture. Is that fact easily available for potential customers? I may have missed it, but I'd think that you would want to advertise this great feature.

We're in the process of updating some of our info pages

Andy

Andy wrote:

excellent question, which i'm sure onethumb or baldy will address.

fwiw, i consider smugmug to be the "fort knox" for my photos. but, it's just 1/3 of my overall backup strategy:

1. nightly backup to external disk drive on my mac
2. monthly backup to dvd
3. smugmug has copy of all originals on a regular basis

Update, I've replaced the monthly DVD backup with a monthly backup to Amazon S3 service, where all my originals are stored now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261
http://www.jungledisk.com/

Baldy

I also use JungleDisk and Amazon S3 to back up all my files, including Word docs, spreadsheets, .psd files, etc. They rock.

denisegoldberg

Andy wrote:

Update, I've replaced the monthly DVD backup with a monthly backup to Amazon S3 service, where all my originals are stored now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261
http://www.jungledisk.com/

Andy -
I'm so glad you posted this, and I'm doubly glad that I saw it.

I've always kept two backups of my files, each on a separate external hard drive. My intent was to keep one of the backups at home and one at my office. That sometimes worked, but at least half of the time both drives stayed at home, sort of defeating the purpose of the double backup.

Just a week and a half ago, I turned to my computer to find that one of my external drives was showing I/O errors. Oops! I still had 2 copies of my files (on my computer and on the other external drive), but that's just not good enough for me.

At that point I signed up for Amazon S3 and started creating my offsite backup. That's still in progress, but almost done. I feel so much better knowing that my precious files are backed up in multiple physical locations. (And yes, I do have a healthy amount of photos on smugmug, but no where near all of them...)

So - thanks again for the information and the hint!

--- Denise