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Tornado Risk Seen For Social Security Data Center
1sockchuck writes "Despite the recent outbreak of powerful tornadoes, the Social Security Administration has decided to engineer its new data center to withstand winds of just 90 miles per hour. Data center experts say mission-critical facilities should be built to withstand winds of 120 to 180 miles per hour to protect against tornado and hurricane risks. It's the latest in a series of challenges for the $800 million project, which will replace a creaky 30-year old facility."
Except, call it the "Dust Cloud"
I'll stop by to collect my part of the $800 million.
Even the new Social Security facilities are gonna blow.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Uh, Monolithic concrete dome anyone? It will surpass 120-180mph winds with ease....
Build a bunker, large version. It isn't fucking difficult, bunkers are thermally efficient, and they can shrug off storms.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Don't they have geographically disperse redundant data centers to avoid an issue like a tornado taking them completely down?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
why not build it under ground or at least put the severs at a lower level or in shipping crates like the MS data centers. Any ways a big storm likely will cut power / data lines and a on site power generator will need to have the fuel to last in less it's natural gas powered.
They should put it in a double-wide and get 140 MPH rating. Seriously, 90 MPH is nothing. That's just a bad thunderstorm. I just can't even envision what sort of construction would not be able to withstand 90 MPH except for possibly an un-anchored camping tent.
Then all you have to worry about are data leaks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
collecting Social Security and Disability will still be as hard to get gold out of Ft. Knox.
Just have Justin Long secure the Woodlawn data center.
For whom? Not everyone lives on a trust fund.
assuming they have backups.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
soooo im sure theyll consider what happens if the power goes out from the tornado or they can't get fresh water..... just kidding. no they wont.
just close the social security administration down and give me my money back.
Sounds like it was designed by the three little pigs
http://www.missilebases.com/properties
Dig the one with 45,000 sq ft. No worry about wind velocity here.
If it's designed to fail, it means someone is going to get repeat business.
There are Federal buildings all over the place. Why not rack up some redundant data centers? All we need now is for some alien to plug a Mac into our single point of failure and type furiously. The entire country will explode in 3d surround sound.
The only obvious explanation to me is that someone wants to prove that they do not believe in any sort of climate change.
Someone should check. Someone somewhere may be a patsy for some industry that is a known producer of greenhouse gas or something...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
the hack takes the shields down still need a bomb or missiles to blow the ship up.
"SSA Moves to Cloud Computing", "SSA Outsources Operations to ", "SSA Decides to go NoSQL", "SSA Goes to HDFS"
Reading "mission critical" and "Social Security Administration" in the same paragraph is depressing. Have we fallen that far under the boot?
Is it built to withstand or prevent anything like another one of these and/or are the offices in it prepared to quickly recover from such an event?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Who cares about the banks, what about the homes actually being destroyed?
Only 30 years old? That's not old for a building. We're talking 1981.
That 90 mph wind is from the politicians, inside the buildings. Of course they'll have better external wind protection.
The risk of the ponzi scheme going to hell is 1000 time's greater than the risk of a tornado.
A 90 mph wind speed (3-second gust wind speed at 33' for Exposure Category C) is the standard design for structures located inland in the US, see the International Building Code (IBC) and ASCE 7 wind maps. There is a lot more to the design for wind than just the wind speed as well, like how important your facility is, how exposed to wind is it, how tall it is, what the shape of the roof is, etc. Tornado design for a facility like that would be a concrete box (due to the projectiles and rapid pressure changes) with no windows and a really heavy door or really heavy grating screens; the wind gust is not too much higher either (I think it is 120-140 mph with additional pressure and several types of projectiles).
Isn't social security going to be bankrupt within 20 years, anyway?
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Or is their plan a disaster?
Specifying the design of a building shouldn't be done in a vacuum (!).
They should estimate how soon that center needs to be back online (to service local centers, I imagine) if it gets taken out, how much it will cost (to them or their clients) if it is not back online on time, how much extra it will cost to harden or duplicate the center, how often they expect a disaster that could take out the center, etc.
And if experts say they should build for 120 - 180 mph winds (given all the needs) and they don't, there's a problem.
Is someone wishing that social security would just go away so it wouldn't have to be paid for anymore (so the money could be funneled to someone else's pockets)? Would a major disaster argue for scrapping a system that could be spun as ineffective?
That might be a political problem, not an IT or architectural or even financial problem.
Not everyone lives on a trust fund.
Doesn't matter. It's going to be insolvent in 25 years. As a matter of fact, the whole US Government will be underwater by then barring real reform of SS and Medicare/Medicaid.
This building getting hit by a twister is the least of anyone's worries.
The opposite of progress is congress
...Congress has done far more damage to that particular administration than any natural disaster ever could.
As far as I'm concerned, don't even bother replacing the old building. It won't need to exist much longer at this rate of insanity within the political realm.
Let's just hope they built the National Data Backup Center in Woodlawn, MD to better specifications.
This question got me curious, so I did a little homework. What are the odds of a building in Maryland being struck by a tornado during its lifetime?
Found an AMAZING website: The Tornado History Project, which has statistics for all recorded tornadoes in the U.S., integrated with Google Maps and with a spreadsheet export function. So I grabbed the stats for every historical tornado in Maryland, used the site's track width and length data to find out the area of land affected by each one, and added them all up. The usual caveats about rounding error, reporting bias, etc. apply.
The result: about 43 square km of Maryland has been hit by tornados in the last 60 years. The area of Maryland is 32,000 km^2, so the odds of a random patch of land in Maryland being hit by a tornado are roughly 1 in 750.
Is this risk high enough to be worth redesigning the building for? I guess it depends on the consequences of loss. It's not a negligible risk, but if the data is backed up elsewhere, I wouldn't worry about it myself. I can think of plenty of other buildings in the area whose loss would be more of a concern.
This question got me curious, so I did a little homework. What are the odds of a building in Maryland being struck by a tornado during its lifetime?
Found an AMAZING website: The Tornado History Project, which has statistics for all recorded tornadoes in the U.S., integrated with Google Maps and with a spreadsheet export function. So I grabbed the stats for every historical tornado in Maryland, used the site's track width and length data to find out the area of land affected by each one, and added them all up. The usual caveats about rounding error, reporting bias, etc. apply.
The result: about 43 square km of Maryland has been hit by tornados in the last 60 years. The area of Maryland is 32,000 km^2, so the odds of a random patch of land in Maryland being hit by a tornado over a 60-year period are roughly 1 in 750. (60 years happens to be roughly the useful life of your average building.)
Is this risk high enough to be worth redesigning the building for? I guess it depends on the consequences of loss. It's not a negligible risk, but if the data is backed up elsewhere, I wouldn't worry about it myself. I can think of plenty of other buildings in the area whose loss would be more of a concern.
Back in 1995 or so I did a project in the PA data center replacing Token Ring (!) with Ethernet cabling, along with some other stuff. The building was essentially 3 stories of brick. It was in an area that wouldn't be prone to tornadoes, being amidst several hills and mountains, but hurricane Agnes did quite a job on the area back in '72. While do that project, I got to deal with some of the facilities people, and let's just say that I was a bit underwhelmed by them.
So I'm not surprised that 1) They'll screw up the new facility, and 2) It costs so much.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
SSA management has TEPCO retreads or TEPCO tryouts ? This sounds like the ultimate "my dog ate my homework" excuse preparation for when Social Security gets broke enough.
I've personally witnessed all of the types of destructive
http://www.windlegends.org/windnames.htm
winds. Front row to over a dozen hurricanes, all the way
up to 5. Seen a handful of twisters and waterspouts...
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/psr/general/history/
... and I've seen many haboobs and the winds that
are associated with it. If you aren't planning on high
speed straight-line winds, you're just too stupid to be
in the business of planning.
"Peak wind gusts of up to 115 mph were measured at the Deer Valley Airport, and the storm caused over 160 million dollars of damage over several west valley cities, including Buckeye. The measured speed of 115 mph set the all time peak gust record record for Phoenix, as well as for the entire state of Arizona!
It should be noted that macroburst winds, unlike tornadic winds, are STRAIGHT-LINE winds - they do not contain strong rotation such as would be observed with the passing of a tornado. These strong winds descend from the lower levels of a thunderstorm, then hit the ground and spread outwards, moving in a straight line."
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
When it gets hit and knocked down then they have an excuse as to why SS has no money. And that'd obviously be better than the excuse they tried to use about WTC building 7 (deleting the ongoing investigation into the "trillion dollar bet" (google it and read the transcript) proof of reason for 9/11.. that is until its found out about HAARP weather wars...
At the rate the sky is falling, we'll never have to worry about any of this.