Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tornado Risk Seen For Social Security Data Center

Posted by timothy on from the quasi-funded-mandate dept.

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."

9 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Location Redundancy? by bflong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?
    1. Re:Location Redundancy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hey, they need backup's, what can moronic carrier loose on a train otherwise?!

      ENGLISH, motherfucker. DO YOU SPEAK IT?

  2. Trailers by michaelmalak · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Trailers by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Modern building engineering, everything is down to actual location, including surrounding buildings and geography. To say you are designing to 90 miles an hour doesn't mean much and is likely taken out of context. Now days thanks to computers each elevation is designed separately as well as taking into account different loading at different locations on the building, be it the apex the eaves, mid point of the building etc. Now add to this safety factors which is added on top of environmental conditions, based upon use and life of building and are built into the calculations to be used.

      So commentary upon building engineering by a computer expert (definitely a drip under pressure) who knows little to nothing about building design.

      Realistically though any Federal infrastructure should be evenly distributed between states with each state facility acting as backup for adjoining the states and of course fairly distributing the income from Federal spending. The big cost with these facilities is not data storage, but data input and output ie people at keyboards. Replicating the data stored fifty times really doesn't add that much cost. The extra cost of fifty data centres tends to balance out because there are plenty of existing buildings near state capitals that can be fitted out, employees are far more accessible and infrastructure design becomes much simpler (great system redundancy).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  3. Re:2nd independence day by Beelzebud · · Score: 2

    For whom? Not everyone lives on a trust fund.

  4. The should re-purpose old missle bases by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    http://www.missilebases.com/properties

    Dig the one with 45,000 sq ft. No worry about wind velocity here.

  5. Who cares about Tornados... by geekmux · · Score: 2

    ...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.

  6. Do the math by goodmanj · · Score: 2

    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.

  7. Re:Why build a new facility? by QuantumRiff · · Score: 2

    Its like Nuclear Fusion.. Its been 20 years in the future for the last 30 years.

    --

    What are we going to do tonight Brain?