Where is this “Cloud”?

I’ve met people that take “data cloud” a little too literal. They believe that information in the cloud lives in a kind of vaporous, ethereal state. This usually comes up in data security discussions, e.g. since everything is hanging around in a big cloud, it is less secure than it being in a terrestrial environment.

This comment might inspire some of the biggest eye-rolls in history, but it’s actually worth saying: data in the cloud isn’t stored in that radio wave ether your Smartphone connects to. The truth is: the cloud you know and love is stored in a nondescript building (a.k.a. data centers) with killer air conditioning systems and rows upon rows of servers, which, simply put, is a big computer shared by many people. It’s a fundamental idea to the internet itself; even before the cloud became “the next big thing”, anything you looked at on the internet was stored in “the cloud.” It might not be the consumer-branded cloud, but many of the basic principles are/were the same.

While it may not be as cool as all of the world’s information just floating around in space, data centers nowadays are impressive. It’s a quick growing industry, employing a small army of workers and consuming more resources than you’d expect. Data centers are also often kept secret. Last fall, Wired dubbed Google’s network of centers, “information palaces,”  of which there are around 12, located in some of the more average-sounding mid-size towns in America: Council Bluffs, Iowa; Lenoir, North Carolina. And then onward across the world. In 2011, The New York Times reported that Google’s centers consume enough electricity to power 200,000 homes or about a quarter the capacity of a nuclear power plant.

Google is, obviously, an extreme case but, across the world, data centers are a growing and vital industry. You might remember Gawker and some other big-time websites going down during Hurricane Sandy–that was due to a data center power outage. Fortunately, when you store information in the cloud, you don’t have to worry. Most cloud-storage outfits, Norton included, duplicate your data in several different locations. So, if one data center goes down, the cloud’s contents are still safe. Whereas, if your unbacked-up hard-drive goes down, you won’t be so lucky.