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Lightning Strike KOs Amazon, Microsoft EuroClouds

Posted by timothy on from the this-basket-of-eggs-is-highly-conductive dept.

1sockchuck writes "A lightning strike has caused power outages at the major cloud computing data hubs for Amazon and Microsoft in Dublin, Ireland. The incident has caused downtime for many sites using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform and Microsoft's BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite)."

4 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cloud fail by HTMLSpinnr · · Score: 4, Informative

    For EC2, it's only distributed if you pay to have your "service" running in more than one availability zone.

    --
    $ man woman *
    -bash: /usr/bin/man: Argument list too long
  2. How shocking! by NicknamesAreStupid · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is not the first time -- http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/11/lightning-strike-triggers-amazon-ec2-outage/ .

  3. Re:at that level the safety's tipped foreing a man by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    Also Surge Protectors can't really take a direct lighting strike.

    But lightning arrestors can. A serious lightning arrestor is a spark gap (sometimes open air, sometimes in an inert gas) to ground, with a very heavy cable or busbar to multiple ground rods, and no sharp turns in the path to ground. This is followed up by an inductor which is a few turns of busbar. This gear is usually placed where power lines or antenna feeds enter a building. MOV-type protection is further downstream.

    Antenna towers are struck by lightning frequently, and the associated radio gear routinely continues to operate. This isn't rocket science. It's big hunks of copper.

    The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, in their publication "The Locomotive" (they've been at this since 1867) has a good article on lightning protection. Hartford Steam Boiler insures not only against boiler explosions, but things like downtime due to lightning strikes. But only after their inspectors (they have 1200) have visited the plant and are satisfied with the equipment.

    A question to ask your "cloud" provider - who handles your business interruption insurance, and do they inspect your faclities?

  4. Re:So Cloud v Cloud.... by SMoynihan · · Score: 4, Informative

    I live in Dublin, and that was some seriously targeted lightning. No sign of storms here, that I saw...