5 ms·

Stack Exchange (Stack Overflow) barely made it out. We are in the same datacenter but we just finished building out and testing a secondary datacenter in Orego

• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Wow, nice timing there.
• cookiecaper 14y ago
  Just curious, wouldn't it have been wiser to put the failover servers somewhere in the Midwest? It's pretty much as far away from the ocean as one can get, making tsunamis/hurricanes/etc. irrelevant, low earthquake risk, and a shorter flight from NYC. Seems a little inadvisable to place the infrastructure in two coastal areas; I guess it's probably about the local talent pool.
  • logn 14y ago
    The Midwest isn't immune to the effects of hurricanes. We've frequently lost power, sometimes up to a week, when bad hurricanes come through. They just become super storms over the Midwest and take down trees which cut power lines. And snow/ice can often take out power for up to a day. So, I'd think that rather than place something in Ohio and New York, both which can be affected by the same weather pattern within a day or two, different coasts offers better protection.
    • cookiecaper 14y ago
      In raw geographical terms, Ohio only barely counts as "the Midwest"; I think it is included in that region primarily for cultural/economic reasons. What about Kansas City or Omaha? I lived in KC for some years and we'd occasionally get remnants of gulf hurricanes, but they'd just be severe storm systems that would pass through. We rarely lost power, but if we did, it was never for protracted time periods, and generators in data centers should easily be able to deal with power loss from severe storms. Tornadoes are pretty much the least threatening natural disaster out there, as their area of effect is usually small and their duration is usually short, so I think "tornado alley" is actually a fine place for a data center meteorlogically.
  • smackfu 14y ago
    You mean in Tornado Alley?
    • espeed 14y ago
      Tornado Alley runs from northern Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
  • ShawnBird 14y ago
    Yeah, Oregon is known for it's viscous tsunamis and earthquakes. Also if a tropical cyclone hit Oregon it would not be a hurricane, it would be a typhoon. http://www.diffen.com/difference/Hurricane_vs_Typhoon http://www.diffen.com/difference/Hurricane_vs_Typhoon I think the idea of the second data center is that it is far away from the first one.
    • beambot 14y ago
      FYI, according to your link: "The difference between hurricane and typhoon is that tropical cyclones in the west Pacific are called Typhoons and those in the Atlantic and east Pacific Ocean are called Hurricanes." Last I checked, Oregon is in the east Pacific, so the tropical cyclone would (indeed) be called a hurricane, yes?
    • CanSpice 14y ago
      If a tropical cyclone hit Oregon it would probably have started as a hurricane, not a tornado. Typhoons form west of the International Date Line, and they move predominantly west. Typhoons are pretty much guaranteed to never move east across the IDL, because of the prevailing winds. I think you got confused about the "NE Pacific Ocean" thing under the Hurricane column. The NE Pacific Ocean is the part of the Pacific Ocean that Oregon is on. It would technically be an extratropical cyclone, but it would likely have started as a tropical hurricane off the coast of Mexico.
• dkroy 14y ago
  I have been following the podcasts, and when you guys mentioned this failover for the relocation of your servers the impending hurricane didn't even come to mind. That is some amazing timing, it is a good thing you had to change data centers over there in NY. Also, it is a good thing you didn't move your servers over on a bed dolly.
• jpdoctor 14y ago
  > Read more at http://blog.serverfault.com http://blog.serverfault.com Thank you for this discussion!