October 31, 2012

  • Update: Xanga's New Jersey Datacenter Is On Emergency Generators

    WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Xanga's datacenter is now back on utility power! So we are no longer dependent on the emergency backup generators... Woohoo!

    The backup generators would have run out of fuel at some point, so it's great to be back on utility power.

    We're not totally out of the woods yet, since our datacenter needs to fix one of its backup generators in case utility power flakes out again. Also, I suppose our datacenter also needs to replace all that diesel fuel they've used up...

    But we're making progress!

    Hooray for electricity!

    Thanks,
    Bob

    ~~~

    Hi Everybody,

    I hope everybody is safe with Hurricane Sandy!

    I wanted to give a quick update on what we know about how the hurricane has affected Xanga...

    Our servers are located in a datacenter in Newark, New Jersey, which was hit especially hard with power losses and flooding.

    The good news is that our servers seem to be OK. They're located on the 8th floor, so they should be safe from flooding.

    There are two bits of bad news.

    The first bit is that our bandwidth provider ran into difficulties from 2am to 10am EST today. So even though Xanga's servers have been online the whole time, you may have run into problems connecting to the site. It's possible that our network provider might run into more problems, but for now, the network seems to be OK, which is great.

    The second bit of bad news is that our datacenter has lost utility power. So Xanga's servers are currently operating on emergency backup generators.

    Hopefully, utility power will be restored before the emergency backup generators lose power!

    There are two risks here. First, our datacenter's backup generators are in the basement of the building, along with the diesel fuel and fuel pumps. So there's a risk of flooding, which would disable the backup generators. At this point, we think this risk is minimal, but you never know...

    Second, the generators may run out of fuel before utility power is restored. This would obviously take our servers offline.

    We'll keep you updated as we learn more!

    In the meantime, stay safe everybody!

    Thanks,
    Bob

Comments (92)

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *