Data centers ride out Baja earthquake

The 7.2 magnitude earthquake that shook Mexico and southern California caused a fair share of damage in some areas, but it was no sweat for data centers in the Silicon Valley.

As buildings rocked and picture frames toppled, servers were safe thanks to the seismic isolation technology used in many facilities. The video above shows it in action.

Data centers are some of the safest places to be during a disaster. Although they are just as vulnerable as any building to flooding or chemical spills, these facilities are built to handle the worst-case scenarios. So long as network providers remain operational, there’s no reason why a natural disaster should cause server downtime.

.HT domain still operational after earthquake

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti earlier this week has killed 50,000 people and destroyed much of the capital. Currently, access to the nation is mainly limited to the few relief planes that can get in. Amid this tragedy there is at least some hope for Haiti, as its DNS seems to have made it through the disaster in one piece.

Here is what we know, according to ICANN:

• The administrators of the .HT ccTLD survived unharmed.
• Haiti’s IT infrastructure is heavily damaged, but the domain system is still working for most.
• Work is underway to reroute the country’s Internet traffic through the Dominican Republic.

A working telecommunications system is vital to relief crews in a natural disaster. If the domain system and other important communication links had been destroyed, thousands of additional lives would probably have been lost.

Photo | Flickr

Flood ravages Vodafone data center

This isn’t the first data center flood covered here at Internetblog, but most certainly the worst. In the video above, you can watch as several feet of water rush into Vodafone’s Istanbul data center and destroy thousands of pounds worth of server hardware and data.

Immediately after the flood, Vodafone subscribers experienced technical difficulties that lasted 24-48 hours, but no outages were reported. Large tech companies almost always have a system in place where if one data center goes out, the computing load is automatically rerouted to another facility. Needless to say, hopefully the company kept good backups.

Flight447.com registered two years before plane crash

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 created a new page in history when it crashed off the coast of Brazil on its way to Paris. Eager to cash in on public interest, domainers flocked to register any domain bearing the flight’s name. Many were surprised to find out, however, that flight447.com was unavailable, registered since 2007.

The owner is Kari Bian, an Iranian film producer residing in the United States whose unfortunate registration choice has led some to speculate that he was somehow involved with the crash. “I have nothing to do with this and I feel very bad for this flight,” he said.

Bian has yet to be investigated or questioned by authorities regarding the accident. He owns a number of other airline flight domains, and has no intention of selling flight447.com.

Source | EFE

Photo | Flickr

HP blows up data center

In what is a blatant advertisement for its products, HP makes a cool demonstration of its failover server technology by blowing up a data center.

The technology demonstrated in the video is used by more than a few companies, including Google. Essentially what happens is when a data center goes down, the load is immediately transferred to another data center so that, to the outsider user, it seems as though nothing ever happened.

Most companies can’t afford this sort of system, but thankfully, data centers don’t go down very often.

Data Center's Worst Nightmare Comes True

I hope whoever owns this data center (likely a telecom provider) has good flood insurance. Considering the cost of equipment, time it takes to set up and configure several dozen servers, and most importantly, all the data these machines store, wouldn’t you think the owner of all this stuff would have enough sense to put it somewhere less prone to flooding?

A data center is easy to keep safe if built properly. Believe it or not, web hosts in New Orleans were able to stay in operation after Hurricane Katrina flooded most of the city in 2005. Placing servers above ground goes a long ways towards keeping them dry. I guess some people have to learn things the hard way.