Could a Category 5 Hurricane Take Down East Coast Data Centers? 214
TheNextCorner writes "With more data moving into the cloud, there is an increasing danger of data loss when one of these cloud computing data centers fails. Hurricanes pose a real threat to infrastructure located in Virginia and North Carolina, where Google, Apple & Facebook have opened large data centers. 'Where would the most damaging hit be? It's debatable, but the most detrimental hit may be in Virginia. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has one of their major centers in Northern Virginia. ... In a study involving millions of people, a third of those surveyed reported visiting a website every day that used Amazon's infrastructure. In 2011, Amazon's S3 cloud stored 762 billion objects. It's possible that Amazon's cloud alone holds an entire 1% of the Internet.' Could a category 5 Hurricane become a problem for these cloud data centers and take down parts the Internet?"
A few bits of information (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally, these data centers are not located along the coastline, but a significant distance inland. Facebook's is west of Charlotte, while Amazon's located west of Washington DC. Of the list, the Amazon one that could... and I mean could be impacted by a hurricane, but there really hasn't been a good strike in the Chesapeake Bay area in a while. They were taken down by the derechos that rolled through last month, and a derecho could happen pretty much anywhere west of the Rockies.
So while the chances of a hurricane taking down one of the datacenters is low, it could happen. It's one reason you don't see data centers built anywhere within 150 miles of the Gulf Coast or in Florida as a whole, the entire region is a target zone for Mother Nature. (Disclaimer: I've lived along the Gulf Coast now for over 30+ years and have been through a Category 5, two Category 4 and a host of other hurricanes over my time.)
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Informative)
Category 5 and F5 are very different beasts.
An F5 tornado is going to level,or at least mostly demolish, most buildings short of a concrete bunker.
A Category 5 hurricane is roughly equivalent to a low end F3 tornado - it will destroy weaker structures like prefab metal buildings and mobile homes, and perhaps de-roof and blow the windows out of more solid foundation-built structures. Still very bad news, but not on quite the same scale. Hurricanes do most the damage from flooding anyway, not the straightline winds.
They already have (Score:5, Informative)
A few years back I belatedly discovered (the hard way) that my web hoster had located its servers in Hurricane Alley. My site was down for over a week as they trucked their server farm to a new location because the local utilities weren't going to be back until God knew when. I've since been paying attention to where things are located, physically, and anything that might be threatening to that area.
Re:A few bits of information (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sure it's been mentioned, but Terremark's Miami datacenter is about 3 blocks from the port (inland from Government Cut and the American Airlines Arena where the Heat play.) They show you DNS root servers when taking the tour. If I have to guess it's also where the major tubes from Latin America enter the country.
Re:Quite a large range of safe... (Score:2, Informative)
North Carolina and Virginia are not at risk from a Category 5 Hurricane. A category 5 hurricane has never made landfall in North Carolina or Virginia, as a category 5 storm. The worst was a Category 2 landfall in 1960 and 2003, and only in North Carolina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes#Landfalls [wikipedia.org]
Re:Priorities (Score:4, Informative)
I've been through both a cat 2 hurricane and a strong F2 tornado, and your description of an F3's damage is not in the least accurate. One commercial building was half gone and huge steel girders twisted like putty. two meter diameter trees uprooted. Roofs impaled by other roofs. A walk-in beer coolers torn from a bar. Buildings built out of concrete blocks destroyed. I left a link to a journal about both experiences further down, if you're interested in a first-hand account of what it's like to be in a hurricane and tornado.
The thing is, being inside a tornado is like being inside a giant blender with sticks and rocks and dead animals and splintered wood and even cars acting as the blender's blades.
An F5? Man, I would NOT want to be in one of those! I don't even want to be in any tornado again.