NYC Data Centers Struggle To Recover After Sandy 231
Nerval's Lobster writes "Problems in New York's data centers persisted through Wednesday morning, with hosting companies and other facilities racing against time to keep generators humming as water was pumped out of their facility basements. The fight now is to keep those generators fueled while pumps clear the basement areas, allowing the standard backup generators to begin operating. It's also unclear whether the critical elements of infrastructure (power and communications) will both be up and running in time to restore services. The following is a list of some of the data centers and services in the area, and how they're faring."
I'm responsible for a few servers at Peer1, and their efforts are interesting: "Peer1’s operations at 75 Broad are operating on sheer manpower: a bucket brigade. According to a blog post from Fog Creek Software, one of the clients at the building, about 30 customers are lifting buckets (or cans) of diesel fuel up 18 flights of stairs."
Re:Add to that, NYI... (Score:5, Interesting)
NYU's generators were fine, it was their fuel supply that got fouled. Fire regs don't allow them to have thousands of gallons of diesel anywhere but underground holding tanks and those were overcome by seawater. Bellevue lost two of their primary generators due to water in the basement but was still running on another on the 13th floor but they had the same limited fuel problem Peer1 is running into. They considered having the national guard bucket brigade fuel up to the 13th floor but after some analysis it was decided it would be better to transfer folks to other hospitals (I'm not sure how many generators were on the 13th floor but it was probably only a single one and so they were down to a SPOF so better to transfer people in an orderly manner while you still have working facilities than to try it after the generator went down).
Re:Your priorities are NOT all messed up!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever part of the city you can keep operating is good.
Don't criticize what you know nothing about.
Re:Waterproof... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that 'waterproofing' is a short-term guarantee. Water is insidious, it dissolves almost anything (although some things like metals very slowly), and it will eventually creep inside of any 'waterproof' container. That's why there's such a problem designing radioactive dumps like Yucca Mountain -- water would eventually eat its way into the vitrified radioactive cask.
Gas station underground tanks can survive for 10-20 years and still be waterproof. But most of the infrastructure in NYC is a hundred years old. There isn't anything waterproof in that city. Even brand new structures are probably permeable to water, if the designers just never thought it would be an issue.
Re:Your priorities are all messed up!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Fewer people died than the people who didn't die due to not being in a car crash due to not being able to drive to work. So on the life/death front it's a win!
Re:Poor Planning? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since when has Diesel been highly flammable? You can actually use it to put fires out. It takes quite some heat to get it going so really poses less risk than you average stationary cupboard.