ssshhh, don't say anything about trans-Atlantic circuits being down

I've heard from a few that some trans-Atlantic circuits are down.  With power outages and flooding from Sandy, some data centers are reported out, but what doesn't get much news is the trans-Atlantic circuits.

GigaOm's Barb Darrow has a post on this topic.

Superstorm Sandy wreaks havoc on internet infrastructure

• BY Barb Darrow
• 1 Comment

Data center sites and colocation centers in and around New York City are struggling to stay online with varying degrees of success. And there are reports of intermittent issues with undersea cables crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

photo: Flickr / NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Updated: Hurricane Sandy continued to take a toll on internet infrastructure in New York City and beyond on Tuesday.

• There were sporadic issues with undersea cable Atlantic Crossing-2 (or AC-2), sources said. These cables are the main data lifeline between continents.

Here is a close up of one company's trans-Atlantic connections at risk.

Making Money in Cloud, Nov 6, 2012 Roundtable Webinar

I was looking at the GigaOm Pro Roundtable Webinar and saw an interesting talk that sounded good to attend.

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Cloudonomics: Making the cloud pay DATE: November 6, 2012 TIME: 10 a.m. PDT In this webinar we will discuss how the core characteristics of the cloud – such as on-demand resources, usage-based charging and geographic dispersion – translate into business value; revenue growth, cost and risk reduction, and improved customer experience. Topics include: Economic and strategic perspective of computing as a utility Public versus private cloud economics and where conventional wisdom err How cloud technology and ecosystems will evolve over the next decade   Hear from Joe Weinman, the founder of ‘cloudonomics’ and take part in a Q&A with Joe on the topic

Within a few more seconds, I realized, oh yeh.  I am on the panel.  :-)  I'll be on the call for sure.

	Paul Miller Founder, The Cloud of Data
	Jo Maitland Research Director, Cloud, GigaOM Pro
	Dave Ohara GigaOM Pro Analyst and Founder, GreenM3
	Joe Weinman COO, Telx

Sandy takes out some sites - Gawker, HuffPo

GigaOm's Barb Darrow posts on a few sites knocked out by Con Ed turning off the power in lower manhattan.

Not everyone’s data centers were ready for Hurricane Sandy. Several major media sites —Buzzfeed, Gawker, Huffington Post — took major hits early Monday evening Eastern Time. The problems were all attributed to massive storm, which made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J., at around 8 p.m. local time.

Update: Many of these sites were impacted when Con Ed shut off power to lower Manhattan.

Gawker

• ✔

@Gawker

Gawker is temporarily down because the 57th Street Crane just flooded our servers with sea foam, or something. Back with you shortly.

29 Oct 12

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Huffington Post

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@HuffingtonPost

Due to #Sandy we're experiencing technical difficulties and are working to be back up as soon as possible.

29 Oct 12

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We'll see how many other sites join this list.

Which East Coast Data Center will run out of diesel fuel first?

The East Coast Data Centers are ready for Hurricane Sandy. 

With Sandy on horizon, East Coast data centers on high alert

Providers test generators, staff up facilities, ensure fuel deliveries

29 October 2012 by Yevgeniy Sverdlik - DatacenterDynamics

 

   

 

 

 

 

Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy by the US NOAA

Data center operators on the US East Coast are bracing for Hurricane Sandy’s landfall, expected by meteorologists on Monday evening.

Providers with substantial data center presence in the region, including Equinix, Savvis, Telx and Sungard Availability Services, have taken the basic steps to make sure their facilities are prepared to keep operational through prolonged power outages.

The basic steps all data center providers that have responded to our inquiries have taken are testing back-up generators, making sure onsite fuel-storage tanks are full, getting in touch with fuel vendors to ensure in-time deliveries in case fuel stored at the data center sites runs out.

The President has declared Emergency situations in 9 states.

The President's action authorizes FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all counties in the State of New Jersey.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.  Emergency protective measures, limited to direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding. 

For those who have run data centers through Federal Emergency conditions they know that a contract with a fuel vendor is not worth much when the Federal gov't has established control of critical resources to address the emergency.

Elizabeth Turner has been named as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal response operations in the affected area. 

FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Depending on how bad the power outages are, how refineries are impacted, diesel fuel could be extremely scarce.   And, a data center could run out of fuel even if it has multiple contracts with fuel vendors.

There is a way to get fuel during a FEMA managed event as a smart data center guy asked this question over a year ago, and we talked about how to solve this problem.  I found a guy who has been in the fuel business for years supplying airlines and remote power plants with petroleum fuel, and he has been thinking for who you could make sure you get fuel.  

BTW, one of the easier ways to get fuel during a disaster is to have your facility be defined as critical infrastructure by gov't agencies.  But, that also brings a huge amount of oversight and regulation.

Wired's Steven Levy tells the Google Hamina Story - mines, views of Russia, sizzling water, swirling blood & batman

Wired's Steven Levy has an insider story of Google's Hamina data center.  It is entertaining.  Here are a few parts that caught my eye that I wouldn't put in a story, but I am not Steven Levy.

And as with most of Google data centers, the company’s secrecy fomented loony speculation about what those geeks were up to. In this case a rumor sprung up that Google had planted mines in the sea to keep away fishermen.

...

But the signature feature of the Hamina center arose from its coastal setting on the Gulf of Finland.This allows Google to claim, on a very clear day: “I can see Russia from my data center!” The border is only 40 miles away.

...

The pipes are color-coded: Blue represents cool water, and orange is hot. Both sea water pipes and those carrying hot water from The Floor go into giant heat exchangers whereupon the chilly seawater heats up and the sizzling data center water cools down. (Another connection to the sea is a thick fiber cable that Google submerged to connect the Hamina center to the rest of Europe.)

...

The space is a vast industrial ruin, big and high enough to entertain a reasonable amusement park. It has its own misty microclimate, the dust sometimes stirred by dive-bombing birds. Basically, it’s the kind of place where the early Batman might wind up fighting an all-star squad of marquee villains.

…

The highlight of the Hamina tour is tracking the journey of the seawater, the swirling blood of this data center.

I've gone to Finland and the custom of following a hot sauna with a dip in cold water is a tradition at the Hamina data center.

When Google bought the site, the sauna remained, and in keeping with its egalitarian ethic, the company opened this once-exclusive perk to all employees. Local Googlers accustomed to the true Finnish regimen are welcome to dash out of the hot steam room for a dunk into the same chilly seawater that cools Hamina’s servers.