{"id":1689,"date":"2017-09-06T16:21:42","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T21:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/?p=1689"},"modified":"2018-06-25T13:27:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T18:27:14","slug":"hurricane-irma-data-center-outages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/2017\/09\/hurricane-irma-data-center-outages\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricanes Remind Us of the Difficulty Preventing Outages"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some data centers can withstand a <\/span>direct missile strike<\/span><\/a>. But most are not so resilient.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In fact, <\/span>50%<\/span><\/a> of companies have had servers go down due to a natural disaster between 2005 and 2015. the frequency of such events? Almost once every other year!<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>This is a major issue for companies and one that amounts to lost revenue and reputation. <\/span>But why aren’t all data centers able to withstand natural disasters, and what can you do to keep your servers online<\/span><\/span>?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Harvey and Irma are Perfect Examples of Natural Disasters Which May Disrupt Services<\/span><\/h2>\n
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The last major hurricane, Sandy, took out major data centers in New York. Now, with a <\/span>wetter, warmer climate<\/span><\/a> in store for the future, storms are going to become a regular occurrence. We got the first taste of that this year with Hurricane Harvey.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Harvey dropped unprecedented levels of rain on Texas. This caused many data centers to fear and prepare for the worst: flooding. Flooding is one of the biggest potential threats to data centers. <\/span>The ability to take down generators, damage servers, and more makes it a difficult problem for data centers<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Most data centers in Houston were lucky enough to emerge from Harvey unscathed, but that doesn’t mean the storm was not a threat<\/span><\/span>! Many data centers prepared for the worst with stockpiles of food, water, cots, and more. <\/span>Some even utilized washing machines and showers for staff and customers to stay on site for extended periods<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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These preparations helped but wouldn’t have mattered if flood waters caused major damage. Most data centers <\/span>were positioned<\/span><\/span> in areas not as affected by flooding. This is why many were able to stay online, even in the face of the disaster.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But only days later, another very powerful storm <\/span>is headed<\/span><\/span> towards America’s coasts.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Hurricane Irma, currently a category 5, is a hurricane so strong it may leave Puerto Rico without power for months<\/span><\/span>. One can only imagine the type of damage that could do to a data center. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The storm has the ability to rip roofing straight off of buildings and destroy everything inside<\/span><\/span>. A storm like this could take out data centers across the east coast depending on its pathway. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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So it begs the question: If a storm like Irma rips through your data center, what can you do to prevent your server from going offline<\/span><\/span>?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

How to Protect Your Server Against Natural Disasters<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Currently, most data centers run on a fault tolerant network, use backup generators, and more<\/span><\/span>. This still may not be enough though! A large storm (or other natural disasters) can still take these data centers offline.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Protecting your server from natural disasters is doable, but requires specific planning on your part<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For starters, you need to ensure your server host’s data center is built to withstand natural disasters<\/span><\/span>. <\/span>It’s impossible to withstand all natural disasters, but a good deal of fault tolerance and redundancy will go a long way<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Still, this won’t stop you from extreme circumstances. To do that, you’ll have to go with a Geo-redundant cloud hosting setup. <\/span>This setup makes use of two or more clouds in separate cities to <\/span><\/span>drastically<\/span><\/span> reduce the amount of possible downtime<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We’ll spare you the boring <\/span><\/span>details<\/span><\/a>, but this is the only way to ensure your servers are safe from natural disasters right now<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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ServerPronto<\/a> offers fewer outages and more uptime.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some data centers can withstand a direct missile strike. But most are not so resilient. \u00c2\u00a0 In fact, 50% of companies have had servers go down due to a natural disaster between 2005 and 2015. the frequency of such events? Almost once every other year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[123,17,112,240,22,18],"class_list":["post-1689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","category-dedicated-server-best-practices","tag-cloud","tag-dedicated-server","tag-hosting","tag-outages","tag-server","tag-web-hosting","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1689"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2228,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions\/2228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serverpronto.com\/spu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}