New York Data Centers Battle Floods, Utility Outages 186
miller60 writes "At least three data center buildings in lower Manhattan are struggling with power problems amid widespread flooding and utility outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. Flooded basements at two sites took out diesel fuel pumps, leaving them unable to refuel generators on higher levels. One of these was Datagram, which knocked out Buzzfeed and the Gawker network of sites. At 111 8th Avenue, some tenants lost power when Equinix briefly experienced generator problems."
The NY Times has a running list of Sandy-related problems, including 5,700 more flight cancellations, 6 million people without power, rising water levels at a nuclear plant, official disaster declarations from President Obama, and a death toll of 38. On the upside, and despite the high water levels, the Nuclear Energy Institute was quick to point out that all 34 nuclear facilities in Sandy's path made it through without problems.
Re:Where are the mid-American datacenters (Score:5, Informative)
> Why aren't there more datacenters in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, etc.?
There are, you just dont hear about them as often because they generally dont have anything newsworthy to report about them.
Re:Where are the mid-American datacenters (Score:4, Informative)
There are a few datacenters in Omaha, Nebraska, but they're either lights-out carrier-grade (Level3) or Fortune 500 warm-site backup grade. (CoSentry). They're also ungodly expensive because they're the only players in a 250 mile radius.
Kansas City, MO has a good selection of datacenters for non-mission-critical systems, but most of the "data fortress" type places are built and run by the business that needs them.
This is all completely ignoring the issue of latency, though - when you're doing financial transactions there's no better seat in the house than the heart of Wall Street. Every millisecond counts, I've been told.
Re:No big deal. It was a cat1 storm (Score:4, Informative)
No 'might' about it.
Death rate of NYC is around 1,000/week. or 140 per day.
Re:Where are the mid-American datacenters (Score:5, Informative)
5 microseconds per kilometer tends to be a pretty good approximation, depending on the transport gear.
Things like FEC, EFEC, dispersion compensation modules (non-bragg grating type), frequent OEO regens can add up and make it worse.
That would give you a ballpark of 11ms for a 1450 mile circuit.
Re:Where are the mid-American datacenters (Score:4, Informative)
I work for a daatcenter in Kansas. I can tell you first hand that there are a lot of datacenters around here (Kansas City metro). If you aren't doing high speed trading, then you have no reason to not have a datacenter out here. Power is cheaper, space is cheaper, cost of living is cheaper, you don't have to worry about hurricanes or snow, most DCs are tornado proof, and connectivity here is WAY better than people know (and growing faster than any other area in the country). If latency is your primary concern though, then close to the source is your only option.
Re:Look at the bright side (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the traders try to get as close to the old Western Union Building at 60 Hudson St. as possible. If not inside it, in a building adjacent to it. That's the central network hub for the financial district.
From my VPS provider (Score:3, Informative)
All Linux VPS located in New York City, NY VPS are currently offline. They are located in Internap's LGA6 facility in 111 8th Avenue.
Please be advised that Internap's LGA11 facility is experiencing significant flooding in the sub-basement of the 75 Broad Street building as a result of Hurricane Sandy. The flooding has submerged and destroyed the site's diesel pumps and is preventing fuel from being pumped to the generators on the mezzanine level.
Thankfully, our NYC server nodes are not directly located in LGA11's facility, but rather LGA6. The cause of this temporary outage is that LGA6 routes certain parts of the network's backbones through LGA11 which is currently offline as explained above. URPad's downtown NYC facility, located at 111 8th Avenue, is currently experiencing a network-only outage. The datacenter is not located in the storm surge zone, and is not suffering from any flooding. All URPad hardware and assets are safe and remain powered on. Engineers are aware of the network outage and all efforts will be made to restore network connectivity as soon as possible.
Internap & URPad will continue to work hard to assess the situation and our recovery plans, and will communicate those plans as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding during this crisis. Please trust that we are doing everything we can to bring your services back online as soon as possible.