Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Explosion At ThePlanet Datacenter Drops 9,000 Servers

Posted by kdawson on from the could-happen-to-anyone dept.

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.

15 of 431 comments (clear)

  1. 9 Volts of Love by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  2. Kudo to their support team by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... for posting frequent updates to the status of the outage.

    1. Re:Kudo to their support team by SSpade · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's little known mostly because it's not actually true. I think you're confusing theplanet with the world, aka world.std.com.

  3. explosion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:Explosion? by womenwantmefishfearm · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Explosions like this? http://www.metacafe.com/watch/39058/transformer_fire_video/

  4. trying to read it by z_gringo · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    -- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
    1. Re:trying to read it by Lorcas · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

  5. Recovery costs by Scuzzm0nkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    --
    People are like slinkies; useless but fun to watch when you push them down the stairs
  6. This is BAD KARMA!! by Izabael_DaJinn · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Careful What You Wish For....
  7. Helpful Slashdot! by quonsar · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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

    --

    Sacred cows make the best burgers.

  8. Re:More planning could have prevented this by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is often the case that transformers are kept apart from all other components And that appears to have been the case here. Had you read the article, or even the unusually accurate headline, you would know that the 9,000 servers were 'dropped' rather than 'blown apart'. They are still physically with us, they are just dropped from service because they don't have any power because the power supply blew up.

    Further, the 9,000 servers were physically, geographically, isolated enough from the power supply (which is what exploded) to be protected. We know this to be the case because we read the article and headline and understood them and they indicate that the 9,000 servers were not blown up.

    To put it another way, only the power supply was damaged by the explosion, the servers were not. Probably there was no way to isolate the power from its own explosion. The servers, however, we protected.

    So, in summary, the 9,000 servers were not blown up. Only the power.

    The power is off due to the explosion but there servers themselves are A-OK.
    --
    "Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
  9. Re:Server/customer ratio? by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't people who want such redundancy consider putting the other server in another DC?

  10. Re:More planning could have prevented this by ottawanker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    so you're agreeing with me. The servers getting blown up was a huge mistake, one that certainly could have been avoided with a little proper planning. you are a fucking moron

  11. Re:More planning could have prevented this by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
  12. UMM.. USE STATIC PAGE?? by kyoorius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no reason to use the forum software when they've locked the thread and are only using it to disseminate information. A Pentium one running lighttpd serving a static html page would be sufficient to handle the flood of requests.