[HN Gopher] Hurricane Milton's Impact: 70 Florida Cities See 50%...
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Hurricane Milton's Impact: 70 Florida Cities See 50%+ Drop in
Internet Traffic
Author : emot
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-10-10 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| There are several DCs in the Tampa area. How are they?
| https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/florida/tampa/
| teqsun wrote:
| Aren't datacenters usually pretty hardened buildings? I would
| think they're okay but disconnected.
| hotspot_one wrote:
| need to get the electricity from somewhere. Need to feed the
| people who work there.
| phil21 wrote:
| Honestly not really. Some of the older facilities took great
| care on site selection and some hardened building features,
| but modern sites are more based on power grid availability
| and are simply standard amazon distribution warehouse style
| buildings.
|
| The redundancy is in having your data and infrastructure in
| multiple buildings and geographic locations.
|
| This is due to a myriad of reasons but they all boil down to
| cost and practicality. The scale of modern facilities
| typically eclipses anything built 20 years ago by a huge
| margin which further limits site selection.
|
| The days of AT&T long lines are long gone. Simply driving a
| standard SUV through the right wall or two in most facilities
| would be enough to cripple them for a long while, much less
| flooding or a direct hit by hurricane force winds.
|
| Of course there are exceptions.
| rconti wrote:
| Wow. I didn't expect to see so many so close to the water. They
| might be in high-rises though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You could be in the basement of a high-rise though, so that's
| not quite as helpful. My dad was in commercial construction,
| and I got to visit several sites. One in particular had a
| basement with concrete islands dotting the floor. They were
| support for the computer racks to be raised so if the
| sprinklers were to open the racks would be above the flooding
| water. They however would not protect from 12'-15' storm
| surges
| mlyle wrote:
| Getting all the equipment 24 inches off the floor saves you
| from a pretty big fraction of events. You can often
| _mostly_ protect against fairly severe events with sump
| pumps and flood barriers, but some water almost always gets
| in. If nothing important is on the ground you 'll often
| still be OK.
| dylan604 wrote:
| For a datacenter that does not exist on a coastline
| susceptible to hurricanes, you might have a point.
| However, we're specifically discussing a cluster of
| datacenters near Tampa which just missed a direct hit
| from a very powerful hurricane that had a forecast of a
| storm surge of 12'-15'. The thing to remember about storm
| surge is the predicted height does not include the height
| of wind driven waves on top of that surge. So unless your
| data center racks are on the 3rd floor, you are screwed
| mlyle wrote:
| Yes, I am not saying that you can withstand any event.
|
| I have seen >3' of water next to a building with
| infrastructure in the ground level that were fine,
| though. Seepage barriers and sump pumps and elevating
| things a little bit can do more than you'd think.
|
| It's also worth noting that however high the storm surge
| is -- your infrastructure is probably at least a little
| above sea level.
| sitkack wrote:
| Anything of value should be above the first floor.
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/heal
| t...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They raise the floor not just to keep the racks above any
| water but also the air handlers typically blow chilled air
| under the floor to be delivered via perforated floor tiles
| to the "cold aisles" this saves having to run ductwork for
| cooling. Also they can run power, networking, and chilled
| water for any systems needing it, under the floor.
| motrm wrote:
| I really wanted to reply here with a link to something I recall
| reading from back when Katrina happened, but I can't find it.
|
| If I remember correctly it was someone called Usurper or The
| Usurper and they chronicled their journey at the time looking
| after a DC during Katrina. It may not have been a whole DC,
| possibly it was a business and their (smaller set of) servers,
| but my memory fails me.
|
| Unfortunately I can't remember what medium it was written on -
| a blog of some sort? Heck, it could even have been on the
| Something Awful forums given the year.
|
| I remember stories of struggling to find fresh sources of gas
| for the generator and all the fun involved in getting it from A
| to B.
|
| Anyone else remember that? I'd love to have another read of it
| now, and I think some of you might too. It'll offer a bit of
| insight of what's to come this year too.
| juliansimioni wrote:
| Yes, that was the interdictor blog!
|
| https://interdictor.livejournal.com/2005/08/27/
| motrm wrote:
| Interdictor! That's the one!
|
| Looks like the posts start at
| https://interdictor.livejournal.com/?skip=340 and newer
| ones can be found via the 'Next 10' link at the lower
| right.
|
| Thanks Julian!
| juliansimioni wrote:
| There's also the infamous bucket brigade from Hurricane
| Sandy. There was a Stack Overflow podcast about it but it
| looks like it disappears, here's a read though:
|
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/reliving-
| sand...
| gottorf wrote:
| I used to be a customer of Hivelocity with dedicated servers in
| their Tampa facilities. Top notch operation, never had an
| issue. Supposedly they remained unscathed through Milton:
| https://www.hivelocity.net/blog/hurricane-milton-service-not...
| staplung wrote:
| It's tempting to interpret this as a proxy for over-all damage
| but it's perhaps a bit unwise to do so. Alternative possibilities
| are that internet related infra (power lines, cell towers, roof-
| mounted dishes, etc.) was disproportionally damaged or that
| cities in the projected path saw a lot of evacuations. Of course
| all of these things could be true at the same time. It's an
| interesting way to try to assess damage in any case because it's
| automagically collected; you don't need to wait for people on the
| ground to report damage. So here's hoping that a) those affected
| can get back on their feet quickly and b) there's some follow-up
| to see how useful this data was as a proxy for assitance needs.
| mlyle wrote:
| There's probably better figures. Internet providers themselves
| probably know what subscribers dropped at what times, so you'd
| be able to distinguish from evacuations and have a good signal
| as to whether it happened from power outages or key pieces of
| their infrastructure failing.
|
| It would be really neat to figure out the cooperation necessary
| to effectively use it. Rapid damage assessment has a ton of
| value even if the data is somewhat unreliable.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Evacuations are, unfortunately, often accompanied by tweets.
| As early as 2012 or 2014 a team I was on was able to localize
| the epicenter of an earthquake by examining the Twitter fire
| hose, half an hour before the earthquake was announced on any
| of the major news networks.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| we try not to use our phones - if the power goes out, you can't
| charge again for how long? You never know.
|
| another problem are power flickers. a short flicker resets
| modems and routers. so you read a book or talk rather than
| waste battery
| dotancohen wrote:
| > so you read a book or talk rather than waste battery
|
| OK, I'm convinced. Next hurricane I'm traveling to Florida
| with the kids!
| dotancohen wrote:
| Many science fiction works begin with the premise "we've lost
| contact with the colony". It's a clear signal that something is
| amiss.
|
| LV426
| lysace wrote:
| Almost on topic: I have this vague memory of some very
| interesting blog posts of a datacenter sysadmin who bravely dealt
| with hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, in 2005.
|
| Anyone know what I'm talking about?
| rookie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdictor_(blog)
| lysace wrote:
| Yes! Thanks. (Unfortunately the wayback machine is down...)
|
| Nevermind: The actual livejournal posts are still up.
|
| Start here: https://interdictor.livejournal.com/2005/08/27/
|
| Then just move forward day by day.
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(page generated 2024-10-10 23:00 UTC)