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by pkos98 445 days ago
Having worked as Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft Germany/Azure, let me tell you:

Nope this gap can not be closed by any US company alone due to the Us Patriot Act - which forces any US company (including e.g. a German subsidiary) to allow access to all data for national security purposes.
1 comments
fer 445 days ago
Having worked at AWS, no, it's a separate partition under a separate legal entity, and the EU framework is specifically designed to counter Patriot Act, CLOUD Act and the like. It's gonna be similar to AWS China, and potentially more restrictive in some senses. That leaving aside regions we're not allowed to talk about.
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confiq 445 days ago
> Having worked at AWS

This should be disclaimer at your first message when you compared AWS with UPCloud.

TBH, I would not trust AWS with countering the Patriot Act.

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fer 445 days ago
> This should be disclaimer at your first message when you compared AWS with UPCloud.

Fair, my bad. Still obviously misleading.

1. DB instances "starting at $144", I have a $63 in my basket at the moment, and also Aurora Serverless charges on resources used and can be potentially cheaper depending on the workload.

2. "$82.8 /mo" for a 2 core 8GB server is actually just under 50.

3. European DC locations: 8 for both. Unsure what UpCloud means for them here[0], they look like actual, individual DCs, but AWS has 8 European regions. Each region has normally 3 AZs which are physically separate DCs (which can be in proximity or not) and can be composed of multiple DCs each. Plus there are localzones depending from certain regions, each with at least one DC (and there are 11 of those). So the AWS number is certainly over 30 if we compare apples to apples.

The rest I don't have time to dive in, or are just opinions (certifications needed for proficiency? really?)

>TBH, I would not trust AWS with countering the Patriot Act.

AWS China wouldn't have happened if they didn't offer enough safeguards. Complying with Patriot Act will guarantee enormous fines for AWS in the EU, so I'm sure legal and finance did their homework for AWS not to end up between a rock and a hard place.

[0] https://upcloud.com/data-centers

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confiq 444 days ago
> AWS China wouldn't have happened if they didn't offer enough safeguards.

AWS China vs. AWS EU: Data centers in China are managed by Chinese companies, whereas DCs in the EU are managed by USA companies.

From a regulatory perspective, it's two different worlds. The Patriot Act can happen in the EU, not in China.

This is why GDPR does allow that EU user data is transferred to non-EU countries, but not to the USA.[0]

Furthermore, a discernible trend has emerged, attributable to the inadequacies in privacy regulations and suboptimal Trump geopolitical strategies with the EU, the EU is actively seeking better cloud services [1].

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/third-countries/

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/trump-us-cloud-services-europe/

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