Log in

View Full Version : Planet Data Center Explosion, Our Server Goes Down


Jason Dunn
06-02-2008, 03:21 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011131199' target='_blank'>http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011131199</a><br /><br /></div>Wondering why our sites were down for most of the weekend? Just when I thought our significant down-time days were behind us, something crazy happens:<br /><br /><em>&quot;An explosion Saturday evening at a Texas-based, privately held server hosting provider has caused server outages effecting 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers. According to The Planet's website, at about 5 p.m. Saturday electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding their electrical equipment room. No injuries were reported and no servers were damaged or lost. The Houston company, which provides servers for small and medium sized companies, said it has its entire support team working around the clock to get the servers back on line. They estimate they will be up and running by Sunday afternoon.&quot;</em><br /><br />I spent most of my weekend <a href="http://forums.theplanet.com.nyud.net:8080/index.php?showtopic=90185&amp;pid=592269&amp;st=0" target="_blank">checking this forum thread</a> hourly, trying to determine when my server would be brought back online. It didn't happen Sunday afternoon - late Sunday night everything was still down, but this morning when I woke up I was happy to see things were loading again. Big thanks to our server admin volunteer <a href="http://www.jorj.org/" target="_blank">Jorj Bauer</a> for keeping a close watch on all of this and getting us back to live status while I was just waking up (and to Janak, Darius, and Jon for their help). Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

shawnw
06-02-2008, 03:47 PM
Wow, that's crazy! Glad everything's ok and you're back on the air.

Stinger
06-02-2008, 04:36 PM
Wow, yet more bad luck for your servers. Are they built on an ancient native American burial site? ;)

Jason Dunn
06-02-2008, 05:14 PM
Are they built on an ancient native American burial site? ;)

You know, I'm starting to wonder... :eek:

Filip Norrgard
06-02-2008, 06:04 PM
Texas and explosion? :eek: Hmm... are those destructive ants from Houston moving into the demolition industry with some heavy artillery now? :D

Well, good to hear that no-one was hurt. But it's too bad this seems to hit a bunch of website owners just one time too many...

burtcom
06-02-2008, 08:10 PM
I just forwarded this whole story to the server room guy at the state government facility I work for -- we have "only" about 20 servers, and we have a backup diesel generator for the machines and the cooling in case the power goes out.

It's interesting that, despite having a backup power source, the fire marshal might shut you down anyway -- gotta have those remote backup servers/recovery systems, people :)

jerboa
06-03-2008, 02:45 AM
Welcome back! It was weird not to have you around for the weekend!