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Data Storage IT

Russia Will Run Out of Data Storage In Two Months (bleepingcomputer.com) 138

Posted by BeauHD from the IT-crisis dept.
"A little noticed side effect of all the sanctions Russia is under for its invasion of Ukraine is that related to IT," writes Slashdot reader quonset. "U.S. sanctions prohibit any technology transfers to the country, including computer chips. However, another issue is Russia is now cut off from cloud storage companies in the West. As a result, Russia is two months away from using up all its domestic storage capacity. Four options have been proposed to counter this issue. BleepingComputer reports: Last week, the Ministry of Digital Development amended the Yarovaya Law (2016) to suspend a yearly requirement for telecom operators to increase storage capacity allocations by 15% for anti-terrorist surveillance purposes. Another move that could free up space would be to demand ISPs abandon media streaming services and other online entertainment platforms that eat up precious resources. Thirdly, there's the option of buying out all available storage from domestic data processing centers. However, this will likely lead to further problems for entertainment providers who need additional storage to add services and content. Russia is also considering seizing IT servers and storage left behind by companies who pulled out of Russia and integrating them into public infrastructure. There is one more option mentioned in the report and it has to do with China. Russia could "tap into Chinese cloud service providers and IT system sellers," reports BleepingComputer, although China has yet to decide how much it's willing to help Russia.
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Russia Will Run Out of Data Storage In Two Months More

Russia Will Run Out of Data Storage In Two Months

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  • Just an idea: They could free up most of their existing storage space by setting a bot loose to identify & delete photos & videos of cats, memes, & dashcam videos.

    • Just an idea: They could free up most of their existing storage space by setting a bot loose to identify & delete photos & videos of cats, memes, & dashcam videos.

      Don't forget pron... it and cat videos are still wildly more watched than conspiracy videos, although the gap is closing.

      The Russkyes need not a war though, but rather a specifically targeted special deletion operation to bring down these fascist data storage hogs.

      • Don't forget pron...

        And not just your normal, run of the mill pron, but gay pron. Russia is well know for being one of the top producers of gay pron on the planet. At least they were.

        • And since Putin says there are no gays in all of Russia, it means that those guys must be really good method actors.

  • "anti-terrorist surveilance" (Score:3)

    by splutty ( 43475 ) on Thursday March 17, 2022 @08:10AM (#62365877)

    Uh huh. Sure. We absolutely believe you're only spying on terrorists, for certain values of 'terrorist'.

  • Assuming active capacity cannot increase, I think tape storage is going to be utilized and grow since it's bulk and easy. If they don't make it nationally then China can provide them with this rather easily. However, conditions seem to be primed for an HDD/SSD repair industry to arise, long before they start making their own.

    Of course, this all presumes that Putin remains in power in the long-term.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Assuming active capacity cannot increase, I think tape storage is going to be utilized and grow since it's bulk and easy. If they don't make it nationally then China can provide them with this rather easily.

      Can and will are, of course, two different things. Even China is having a hard time stomaching what Russia is doing.

      • China has been playing up sovereignty in order to build a case that Taiwan is internal business and it is entitled to do as it pleases with no interference. In the meanwhile Russia doesn't give a fuck about sovereignty, messing China's game.

      • Even China is having a hard time stomaching what Russia is doing.

        Not at all. China has done far worse to it's own people. China refuses to impose a single sanction because not doing so will benefit them. They save face by sending less than $1M in aid money.

        China has zero problems with people being killed/tortured/etc. so long as it doesn't impact China.

      • Even China is having a hard time stomaching what Russia is doing.

        No not at all. China has no problem with ethnic and culture cleansing, assimilating neighbors, murdering people who oppose the party or cling to their old ethnicities, religion and cultures, etc.

        All China is worried about is if supporting Russia can have blowback that effects China's economic growth. If supporting Russia can lead to sanctions against China, a rejection of the Silk Road initiative, etc.

        And of course China is worried about further armaments going to Taiwan and Taiwan improving its train

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      But China can provide anything, which is key missing here. The west is not going boycott China because it continues to sell to Russia. This could even be informal. My understanding is the border is very porous. One Russian told me that border areas fe so close marriages regularly happen between citizens of the countries.

    • If they don't make it nationally then China can provide them with this rather easily

      Putin/Russia is becoming China's Mussolini/FascistItaly. Both needed to be bailed out militarily after failed invasions, both needed ongoing economic support. Hopefully Russia will be a drag on China and make an invasion of Taiwan more difficult, as Fascist Italy was a drag on Fascist Germany and made their invasion of Russia more difficult.

      Or if Vlad is too proud to become a Chinese puppet he can always look to North Korea for advice on being a hermit kingdom.

      • China is in a tough spot because they have been playing up national sovereignty and Russia is really undermining that message by attacking Ukraine, a globally recognized nation. They also don't want to come under sanctions themselves, so they sent humanitarian aid (a meager $870K) to Ukraine. If they send support to Russia then they will demand something of high value in return. The real question is what does Russia have that China wants?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          The real question is what does Russia have that China wants?

          Coal, oil, nat gas, metals, machinery, chemicals, food. These are some of the things that Russia wants to export and needs to find new buyers for. What will China want, very low prices and more control. Putin is putting Russia into a position where it will be a vassal state. Sort of like Cuba was to the Soviet Union.

          The other thing China wants is not to piss off the world so that their Silk Road initiative is not dropped. Having their brand tarnished by association with Russia could destroy this project

          • I wouldn't be surprised if Russia uses one of it's own vassal states like Belarus to be act as resource launderer. China buys from Belarus and Belarus buys from Russia. China regularly exploits the international community by playing to the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law outright.

    • Why can't we just let them use Microsoft of Amazon cloud services? That solves Russia's storage problem, and because those companies are already sifting through all those files in the cloud they can forward them to intelligence agencies when they're done.

  • The majority of Russian men smoke (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sometimesblue ( 6685784 ) on Thursday March 17, 2022 @08:28AM (#62365927)
    The majority of Russian men smoke. The majority of cigarettes are imported. The biggest foreign suppliers, like British-American tobacco, have all quit. Never mind the oil, data storage or even McDonalds. I know which embargo is going to win the war.

    • Also, profitable. Prices will skyrocket and black market will flourish along with the sale of "loosies".
      If anything, sanctions on tobacco will further enrich the oligarchs.

      After all, tobacco IS a drug and they ARE criminals - and buying container-loads of cigarettes across the border and smuggling them into Russia will not be hard while it will be EXTREMELY profitable.
      As a bonus that will only be illegal OUTSIDE of Russia.
      Meanwhile, in fascist Russia, government will do the smuggling.

      Should the war in Ukrai

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Fascists killed 20 million Russians and 0.05 million Americans. Americans using the fascist tag to insult people is cultural appropriation.

        • That's OK. At the rate Putin is going, he will have no problem following Stalin's example of killing more Russians than the enemy managed to. Now pick up that can^H^H^H rifle, soldier.

        • Except that Putin's regime bears every outward sign of being a fascist.
          - highly authoritarian
          - a single undisputed leader
          - forcible repression of all opposition and referring to dissent as traitorous
          - tight and ruthless control over the media
          - the belief that democracy is obsolete
          - moves towards imperialism
          - moves towards rejecting foreign economic and cultural dependencies
          - a desire to unite all slavic peoples

          Really, most of what's missing is Putin wearing a special military uniform.

          (to be fair, I'm leavin

    • Beware. Next year's headline could be "Putin Saves Millions of Russians from Early Death by Curing Tobacco Addiction."

      I know several people who have successfully quit smoking and I'm one of them. It's actually quite possible to do, despite what you've seen in Cat's Eye.

      • Now if there was a vodka shortage on the other hand... Imagine an entire nation getting the shakes.

    • The majority of Russian men smoke. The majority of cigarettes are imported. The biggest foreign suppliers, like British-American tobacco, have all quit. Never mind the oil, data storage or even McDonalds. I know which embargo is going to win the war.

      China is literally the largest tobacco producer in the world [statista.com] and right next door.

    • It won't be tobacco - that will just get people cranky until they've kicked the habit.

      The embargo that will break their spirits will be on track suits. You take away the track suits, and you'll see some serious shit.

    • Ah yes, grumpy Russian men spoiling for a fight due to nicotine withdrawal - that will help. Could David Hasselhoff go over for a peace concert in Ukraine though? One time he played and the Berlin Wall fell!
  • Russia could end the invasion of Ukraine. Then they could come back to the table and negotiate an end of the sanctions in exchange for a Russian nuclear disarmament. Wow there's an entirely different option that hadn't been reckoned upon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      If Russia gave up its nukes there'd be a forced regime change there within 24 hours. Rogozin famously presented his analysis to the Kremlin years ago... if a conventional war breaks out between NATO and Russia, then Russia would lose the war within 6 hours. Russia's yearly spending on defense is roughly $60B, where just the US spending is around $720B not including the rest of NATO. Plus it looks like Russia spent it all on fancy tanks and planes and didn't spend any money on training. Russia started th
      • I agree with most of your assessment. However, I don't like that you didn't take into account the number of Ukrainian civilians who will be killed. From a pure military perspective you are at least close to 100% correct. I've pushed for the No Fly Zone enforced with aircraft. But if what we get is a no fly zone enforced with anti-aircraft missiles, well, that's still pretty good.

        Putin is getting old enough that there has to be regime change at some point. That would be a great time to get nuclear d

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          I watch the news every night, and in particular I'm horrified about the plight of the Ukrainians. But when it comes to the moral quandary, it's hard not to look at this as a trolley problem: it's not clear that it's morally correct to risk the lives of literally billions of people in a small but real risk of a nuclear war just to go barreling into Ukraine as the saviors when you aren't actually responsible for the situation that's been created there. Putin is clearly responsible. He needs to stop. But i
          • Again I agree with your assessment and reasoning. However, if Putin is going to use nuclear weapons anyway (which more and more seems to be the case), delaying the inevitable only increases the body count and doing something sooner makes the most moral sense. But yes it is some form of the trolley problem. The challenge we have right now is that US leadership has repeated the Russian propaganda in the worst way. An escalation in Ukraine leads to a high chance of nuclear war. But trying to avoid the esca

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by RobinH ( 124750 )
              I've noticed your reasoning popping up in a lot of US news recently. Certainly the pundits are becoming hawkish. The argument seems to be that a confrontation between the US and Russia is inevitable. If it is, then the logic is that it makes sense to get it over with. I'm not sure I agree with that. Every day Russia drags this out they get weaker, so there's no reason to rush into a conflict. At best you'll trade Ukrainian lives for some other lives. Plus, I'm not sure we're on the same page. The ta
              • I also don't agree that a conflict is inevitable and when I read your posts I don't actually see anything with which I disagree. The conflict is neither completely inevitable nor completely fait accompli. This is a game of risk assessment and probabilities (which are hard to calculate when you can't really know what the other guy with nukes is thinking).

                Every day that Russia drags this out, they get weaker... and more desperate... which does *not* reduce the risk of nuclear war! As you said, Putin mi

            • A nuclear war however is also genocide, at a hugely large scale. It's essentially game over and restart from scratch. Best case scenario, with limited strikes, western Russia and Europe are uninhabitable.

              We may think that Putin is crazy and will do it anyway, but if there's a chance that he's still sane it's worth taking.

              • All efforts should be taken to *avoid* a nuclear war. I can't imagine anybody thinking otherwise. The consequences are horrendous. It's not worth "getting it over with." Every avenue should be explored other than complete surrender. However, what we don't want to do is to give up nearly everything to *delay* a nuclear war. That's also obscene. But the idea of "bring it" is crazy talk.

      • "If their nukes didn't get them a permanent seat on the UN security council way back when"

        The USSR's nukes didn't get them their permanent Security Council seat; they didn't have nukes until four years after the UN was founded. What got them the permanent seat was that they were one of the major Allied countries that had just won WWII. All of those Allied countries got a permanent Security Council seat: US, USSR (whose seat was inherited by Russia), UK, France, China (then Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist go

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          I graciously submit you're right. So... how do we kick Russia out of the permanent seat?

      • Well, no one outside of the 5 big with veto powers give a flying fire-truck about the UN. So long as on only a privileged minority have veto, the UN has no legitimacy and all resolutions are tainted.

        Everyone, or no one.

        I am tending to think that a number of things will happen here.
        1 - Europe will ween itself off Russian carbon. In doing so it will lead the world in renewable technologies. Not not, but given the 5 to 10 year horizon.
        2 - Win or lose, Russia's economy is a basket case. The moment Vlad's eyes a

      • Plus it looks like Russia spent it all on fancy tanks and planes and didn't spend any money on training

        It might look that way, and that's what's on paper, but in reality they SAY they spent it on "fancy" tanks and planes, but really they spent it on shitty tanks, hookers, blow, caviar, super-yachts, and track suits.

        God forbid someone would forget to steal and actually spend military money on military equipment; but right now I think we should all be thankful that they kept right on siphoning off that cash or Ukraine would look a lot more conquered than it does.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        All Putin really needs to win the war is follow Truman doctrine. Nuke a couple of cities and the enemy will surrender saving millions of soldiers lives. He just needs to try for a month or two to be able to say I tried to avoid nukes.

        • That principle only applies if you were not the first one to strike/invade.

          If you go first, you lose all moral credibility.

    • That would likely be the end of Putin. Strongmen lose authority when they demonstrate publicly how weak they are. I'm not expecting anything like that anytime soon.

      This feels like Saddam and Iraq v Kuwait. The last time Russia invaded Ukraine, the world said "please stop and you can have everything you took". It's not unreasonable for Russia to have assumed a similar response to taking the Black Sea coast. We honey potted him and now his regime is at the most risk its ever been of falling apart.

      Putin got pl

      • I can't call this hilarious with the number of people dying. Russia will never admit that they lost. However, at this point, they are so disorganized, I don't even see how they can manage a retreat. Their vehicles will run out of gas on the way out, the soldiers will abandon them and surrender. Maybe Ukraine will offer to bus the soldiers back to Belarus as part of the peace negotiation. The Russian military equipment is so bad, it's not clear what Ukraine would do with it. Maybe recycle the metal to

        • Actually, most of the military equipment is about the same, so Ukraine can very well use it.

        • Ah the minds of lemmings who believe everything the mainstream media feeds them. Nice obedient children.
        • Russia's war aim was for Ukraine not to join NATO. At this point Ukraine has so much Russian equipment they have no need to join NATO.
          • Russia's aim was not to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. What makes you say that? Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO. But, as you say, the Ukrainian military is so capable that they can defeat Russia themselves. The one bright spot in this conflict is that Germany and Turkey are talking about giving Ukraine security guarantees when this is over. The downside is that no nuclear armed country will ever disarm again except maybe Russia might be forced to do so.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by etash ( 1907284 )
        exactly. would mod up if i could.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        There might be another end to Putin. What about that cleaning woman, whose son was studying at Charkiv University, and whose daughter worked as a nurse in Mariupol? What if she brought a gun to work and let it look as if Vladmir Vladimirovitch committed suicide?
      • The American taxpayer got played by Biden, who is ultimately going to pay for all of this.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by knaapie ( 214889 )

        Don't be so sure he is being played.
        Putin and Russia are used to demanding the most they can think of, because in general the west is perceived to be weak and can be played. Until now they have been pretty right.

        In this case Putin wants Crimea, Donbas and some other regions and he wants Ukraine not ever join NATO.
        I'm pretty sure he will get what he wants once he either takes Kiev or starts demolishing it.
        The cost will be huge though. Triggered by this war Europe is making a major shift towards renewables an

    • Or or, the Ukraine could sign the Minsk Accords like they were supposed to.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Or or, the Ukraine could sign the Minsk Accords like they were supposed to.

        Or Russia could have abided by the Budapest Memorandum [wikipedia.org] which it agreed to. You know, the one which said Russia would never use force or economic pressure against Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

    • I think there's plenty of people around the world that don't want Russia to lose nuclear arms. Even though they really don't like what's happening right now, I think there's a whole lot of people that silently breathe a sigh of relief that there is a counter-balance to US nuclear arms.

      Unbalanced warfare capabilities lead to really bad places, including the use of some of these weapons because there's no deterrent. And I say this as a citizen of the United States - we need MAD to make sure some asshole lik

      • Like Ukraine did in exchange for security assurances from US, UK and Russia? You can see what that got them. Nobody will ever give up nuclear arms again willingly. But German and Japan gave up armies after WW2. Russia is doing so bad in Ukraine, giving up nuclear weapons might be in their best interest. China is nuclear armed and their military has basic competence. They can ask China for security guarantees.

    • An adviser did suggest this idea to Putin. The funeral will be held on the weekend.

  • some of the data wiping malware [theregister.com] that they have used against Ukraine.

  • Russia will procure everything from China (Score:3)

    by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Thursday March 17, 2022 @08:34AM (#62365951)
    China will gladly continue to buy Russian oil at a discount to world market rates for as long as China needs to import petroleum products. They will pay in Yuan. Russia won't be able to do anything with that other than buy Chinese goods and services. Since Russia is completely dependent on China now - basically a vassal state - there's no reason not to go all in and just accept that little-Penis Putin is not Xi XiaoDingDing's bitch. Even Russian propaganda can't overcome that.
    • Nice to know CIA trolls Slashdot.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You seem to know a lot about this. Would you be willing to clarify whether Putin has to call Beijing for permission to take a dump or does Xi still let Putin take that action without prior approval?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Looked at the list of things Russia imports. Except medicines seems like almost everything they can get from China. On the other hand the Chip industry, the EV industry and the Aircraft industry all use raw materials which are 80-90% controlled by Russia. The longer sanctions go on the better Russia's bargaining power as stockpiles get exhausted.
      • Are comments are in agreement. China will buy those things from Russia at discounted rates and that will help their industry. The west will try to use loosening those sanctions as a bargaining tool while also looking for alternative sources. China is the big winner here no matter what happens.
    • and they'll be forced into stronger ties with the west now (and at a significant disadvantage).

      This war was a terrible idea. Putin wanted to leave an old man's legacy, one last hurray (or more cynically his mid life crisis). Instead he's destroyed his nation and taken them out of the running for the next round of geo political contests.

      This is what happens when you give one man that much power. We're leaning in that direction here in America (lots of folks wanted Trump installed as a dictator and th
      • Russia having stronger ties with the west is a good thing. I hope that the outcome you predict comes true. But it won't happen during Putin's time. The idea that economic ties prevent war when dealing with rational actors is not debunked here. Only the idea that Putin is rational. Economic integration hopefully will serve as a deterrent to wars going forward.
  • Given China's current "we sort of abstractly agree that violations of territorial integrity are bad and stuff; but not enough to have any concrete effect on our friendship with our Russian allies" stance, it doesn't seem like they would need to be actively helpful in order for Russia to be able to, discretely but readily enough, buy plenty of hardware.

    They'd only need overt state support in the event that either suppliers of parts that China integrates but doesn't produce(non-novelty x86 CPUs, GPUs, HDDs
  • I don't think that China will want to lose Russia as an ally since that would mean China and a few stragglers like Iran/N.Korea against the world. China will keep Russia afloat.

  • Quick fix ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Thursday March 17, 2022 @10:33AM (#62366211) Journal

    Have everyone remove their WINDOWS.OLD folder.

  • is that takes a while for them to become effective.
    If you forbid me to buy food, I have for a week in my closet and the fridge, but after that...
    With countries it is just the same. Good to hear that the sanctions are gradually making things difficult for Russians.
    Let us keep them active for a year or so.
    • What Iraq teaches the world is once sanctions go on they never come off till the regime is changed, even if the sanctioned regime complies with everything that was demanded initially, the demands just keep increasing - shifting goalposts. So there is no point to changing behavior to get sanctions off. The only logical thing to do is escalate till the sanctions start hurting the west at home. Only when Biden gets voted out and another populist like Trump comes to power there is any hope of getting the sancti
  • "although China has yet to decide how much it's (going to charge) to help Russia"....there, I fixed it for you.

  • Isn't that an act of war? :-)

  • is to introduce a trojan on all domestic nodes. There must be PBs of idle storage on home and office networks. Patriotic Russians could opt for an official application that essentially does the same thing.

  • Russia was in a bad spot four weeks ago to begin with. Now the fecal matter has hit the rotary air impeller.

    One of my best friends launched an IaaS company a year ago. His wife is Russian. IT companies in Russia are imploding as we speak and Russian IT/mind workers have migrated to turkey and are about to spread out into Bulgaria and Cyprus. Thousands of proggers from all over Russia are leaving the sinking ship. This part of Putin's epic f*ckup couldn't have come at a better time for my friends little sta

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