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Curious: Why might data centers need earthquake warnings, and how might they prepare if given a few minutes or seconds of heads up?
by puzzledobserver 3y ago
Curious: Why might data centers need earthquake warnings, and how might they prepare if given a few minutes or seconds of heads up?
- dietrichepp 3y agoI can think of some ideas: parking the heads on hard drives is one. Magnetic hard drives are sensitive to vibration. You can shout at hard drives and measure the effects (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4). One of the worst-case scenarios is a head crash. A head crash will damage the media and may result in data loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash My guess is that earthquakes powerful enough to cause a head crash are powerful enough for widespread destruction anyway, but I’m no expert. I did some quick searches for hard drives damaged by earthquake, and the only results I got were scenarios where the hard drives or the whole rack got knocked over by the earthquake and hit the floor.
- nwiswell 3y agoSome other thoughts: - Personnel-level warning to immediately rerack servers, close racks, and get off ladders and away from fall hazards - Proactively spin up generators to reduce failover in the more-likely event of a power disruption - Potentially temporarily shut off very large circulation fans so that blades don't collide with the housings - Potentially stop and carefully restart cooling water loops, in case there's a rupture in the system somewhere
- dietrichepp 3y agoPersonally, I’d rather have the generators off when the earthquake hits!
- dredmorbius 2y agoGood list. Add to this: initiate failover or zone transfer of distributed servers / services to other DCs outside the likely impacted area.