Explosion At ThePlanet Datacenter Drops 9,000 Servers

An anonymous reader writes "Customers hosting with ThePlanet, a major Texas hosting provider, are going through some tough times. Yesterday evening at 5:45 pm local time an electrical short caused a fire and explosion in the power room, knocking out walls and taking the entire facility offline. No one was hurt and no servers were damaged. Estimates suggest 9,000 servers are offline, affecting 7,500 customers, with ETAs for repair of at least 24 hours from onset. While they claim redundant power, because of the nature of the problem they had to go completely dark. This goes to show that no matter how much planning you do, Murphy's Law still applies." Here's a Coral CDN link to ThePlanet's forum where staff are posting updates on the outage. At this writing almost 2,400 people are trying to read it.

Comments

9 Volts of Love

[Anonymous Coward]

Electricity is a fickle mistress, one moment she's gently caressing your genitals through gingerly applied electrodes the next she's blowing up your data centers.

Re:9 Volts of Love

[milsoRgen]

I got your 9 Volts of Love right here

explosion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lesson learned: don't store dynamite in the power room.

Re:explosion?

[Gazzonyx]

Lesson learned: don't store dynamite in the power room. But they told me to take it out of the room with the fuel for the generators, the management offices, and HR department...

Re:explosion?

[guruevi]

As always, you should've left it with support, they usually know what to do with it and that's where all the junk ends up anyway.

Re:explosion?

[$0.02]

The did not store dynamite. They used Sony batteries.

trying to read it

[z_gringo]

At this writing almost 2,400 pelople are trying to read it. Posting it on slashdot should help speed it up.

Re:trying to read it

[Lorcas]

Here's a new update from Urvish Vashi: To keep you up-to-date, some idiot posted this forum page on slashdot. Expect some slowdowns and interruptions trying to access this page. ps: **** you slashdot.

Re:trying to read it

[Flamora]

That's not from Urvish, that's from the guys having to maintain the servers we run our forums off of.

Recovery costs

[Scuzzm0nkey]

I wonder what the dollar value of the repairs will run? I'm sure insurance covers this kind of thing, but I'd love to see hard figures like in one of those mastercard commercials: Structural damage: $15000 Melted hardware: $70000 Halon refill: $however much halon costs Real-Life Slashdot effect: Priceless

Re:Recovery costs

[Geak]

Maybe they'll just haul the servers to another datacenter:

Dollys - $500, Truck rentals - $5000, Labour - $10000, Sending internets on trucks - Priceless

Re:Recovery costs

[zippthorne]

We are doing something about that. Now sick days and personal days are pooled into one unit. So your vacations have to compete with your potentially contagious illnesses. Everybody wins!

This is BAD KARMA!!

[Izabael_DaJinn]

Clearly this is bad karma resulting from all their years of human rights violations....especially Tiananmen Square...oh wait--

What does a server room

[iminplaya]

have that can explode like this? All I can think of are all those cheap electrolytic caps. They really do put on quite a show, don't they? Put the transformer up on the roof, ok?

Kevin Hazard?

[Pyrex5000]

I blame Kevin Hazard.

Helpful Slashdot!

[quonsar]

At this writing almost 2,400 people are trying to read it

and as of this posting, make that 152,476.

kaboom

[rarel]

Clearly these Sony batteries had to be replaced one way or another...

The Planet explodes

[Anonymous Coward]

Never thought I'd see that headline.

No servers were damaged

[cptnapalm]

They need to build the building out of what ever they build the servers out of.

It must have been HACKERS

[Eudial]

Because Hackers can turn your computer into a BOMB!

Re:Knocking down three walls...

[ajlitt]

Hopefully an explosion would jostle out the clog that makes their Rails pipes run slowly.

Monty Python

[Sentry21]

electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding their electrical equipment room. But the fourth wall stayed up! And that's what you're getting, son - the strongest data centre in all of Texas!

Re:Kudo to their support team

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure I want to go to a std.com domain, might get infected...

Re:a bit wrong

[billcopc]

Hey hey! I'm a no-name reseller, but I run my own servers, none of this turnkey reseller bullshit. I am root, and I'm goddamned proud of it :)

Printer ignition source

[kmahan]

Last message on the linux console before the explosion:

        lp0 printer on fire!

Re:More planning could have prevented this

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

I wish I had mod points...I think this is the first time I ever wanted to mod those 5 words up.

Re:Kudo to their support team

[c_forq]

Or more likely it sounds like someone who has worked tech support (this is slashdot).

Sadists!

[STFS]

as if they haven't been through enough with the explosion and fire and all... you just had to rub it in and slashdot their forum as well... kudos!

Re:Kudo to their support team

[Fred_A]

Just answer the phone with a recording that has a background of screams, fires, stuff falling down and cracking, electrical buzzing and a few sirens...

"Hello, this is the Planet, our servers are down for the moment but we're working on it, thank you for your comprehension... Oh no, Smith is on fire ! Someone get him !!! *click*"