Check out the SANS tidbit below and links to articles. I use gmail, but every five minutes fetchmail grabs new messages and copies them to my Ubuntu box -- all of my email is stored there (using RAID 1) and then backed up somewhere else. I can't see myself using "the cloud" without retaining local copies. Mike ************************************************************************** SANS NewsBites April 29, 2011 Vol. 13, Num. 034 ************************************************************************** TOP OF THE NEWS --Some Customer Data Permanently Destroyed in Amazon Cloud Crash (April 28, 2011) The crash of Amazon's cloud services not only inconvenienced its customers because of web site inaccessibility, but in some cases, data were permanently destroyed. A thorough explanation of the crash has not yet been offered. Two businesses that use Amazon's cloud services managed to continue running undisrupted during the crash because they had taken measures themselves to protect themselves from such an incident. http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/28/6549775-amazons-cloud-crash-destroyed-many-customers-data http://www.informationweek.com/news/cloud-computing/infrastructure/229402385 Editor's Notes: (Ranum): You can put your data in the cloud - it's getting it back that's the hard part. (Schultz): Amazon has an excellent reputation as a cloud service provider; I am baffled by what happened. At the same time, there is a huge lesson to be learned here--never, never completely rely on a cloud provider for anything--always have a plan B, as the two businesses mentioned in this story so nicely illustrate.