Con Ed Says NYC Datacenters Should Get Power Saturday

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Con Ed Says NYC Datacenters Should Get Power Saturday

Posted by timothy on Friday November 2, 2012 @11:45AM from the long-weekend-for-sysadmins dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "The local utility serving most of the New York City area, Con Edison, reported that it should begin supplying utility power to midtown and lower Manhattan by Saturday evening, returning the island's data centers and citizens to some semblance of normalcy. In the past few days, data center managers have been forced to add fuel logistics to their list of responsibilities, as most Manhattan data centers have been subsisting on generator power. That should come to an end, for the most part, when utility power is restored. In a possibly worrying note, Verizon warned late on Nov. 1 that its services to business customers could be impacted due to lack of fuel."

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New York will re-build. by bejiitas_wrath · 2012-11-02 11:52 · Score: 1

Hopefully the suffering people of this unfortunate city will finally get some help; they seem to going through quite a lot and it is time they got some help to get things back on track. First 9/11 and now this. Have they not suffered enough?

--
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
1. Re:New York will re-build. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-02 12:23 · Score: 2
  
  First 9/11 and now this. Have they not suffered enough?
  Obviously not, because they are going to re-build.
  By far the smartest thing to do would be to re-build somewhere else. Preferably someplace with more altitude. Unless you really don't believe in AGW, in which case, many have beachfront land to sell you.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2. Re:New York will re-build. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 13:00 · Score: 0
  
  Did you spend all your time in the worst possible neighborhoods? I lost my wallet on the subway platform and someone returned it to me. People all over manhattan step aside to let people off the train and quite often give up their seats. I've never experienced this eye contact thing you are talking about -but then again, I don't hang around the corners with drug dealers in Harlem. Locals give directions to tourists a lot. Neighbors walking dogs say hello. Kids trick or treat. It seems normal to me. Then again, my neighbor's kids did just get murdered.
3. Re:New York will re-build. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 13:29 · Score: 0
  
  Did you spend all your time in the worst possible neighborhoods? I lost my wallet on the subway platform and someone returned it to me. People all over manhattan step aside to let people off the train and quite often give up their seats. I've never experienced this eye contact thing you are talking about -but then again, I don't hang around the corners with drug dealers in Harlem.
  I'll go ahead and say what your tiptoeing around. The fear for one's safety and crime and all of that happens in majority-black neighborhoods. Not just NYC. It is true of every american majority-black neighborhood. I cant think of even one exception really.
  
  You can blame that on white racism, poverty, blacks inherent nature, whatever you like. I just knwo where I will never go again, don't really care about why cuz theres nothing I can do about it. I will add - the tired old excuse of poverty does explain property crimes, it does not explain violent gangsta crimes that blacks also commit a lot of.
  
  Please understand i would love it if this was not true. I really would. I dont like worrying about my safety. I dont like that skin color is related to it. But it is just not a good idea to visit any majority black neighborhood anywhere in usa. Dont risk your life just to prove how not-racist you are. You know you are not racist and dont have to prove it to anybody.
4. Re:New York will re-build. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 14:40 · Score: 0
  
  I am a black dude. My dressing style is unsuitable for walking in most of the black neighborhoods. In the rest of New York, despite my dressing style and mannerisms, I am looked on as if it is only a matter of time before I am gonna snatch the lady's purse and run away. New York is fucking crazy.
5. Re:New York will re-build. by Animats · 2012-11-02 19:28 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Obviously not, because they are going to re-build.
  Manhattan barely has to rebuild anything. Building codes are tough there - everything has to be brick, concrete, or steel. Building foundations go down to bedrock. Few Manhattan buildings were damaged by the hurricane. One three-story slum had the front facade collapse; the walls and floors held and no one was injured. One construction crane had its boom broken by the wind, but the safety cables held and it didn't fall. That was about it for Manhattan.
  Yes, there was about a half billion gallons of water in subway, railroad, and road tunnels. Was. The MTA has big pumps. They have pumping trains made from old subway cars which they pushed up to the water with small Diesel locomotives. Half the East River tunnels are already pumped out and some lines under the river are operating. Limited subway service between Manhattan and Brooklyn should resume tomorrow.
  Power never failed for Manhattan above 34th St, and it's back on now for most of lower Manhattan. Even when flooded, underground power lines can be restored rapidly. That will speed up the remaining pumping work. With power back on, New York City's gasoline pipeline is running again, and gas stations are reopening.
  The areas that are severely damaged are single-family residential frame structures in coastal communities. Some of them are totally wiped out. People in the outer boroughs and the Jersey shore are getting cold and hungry. The first supermarket in Far Rockaway reopens at 11 AM Saturday. In Manhattan, as soon as the infrastructure came back up, the city was ready to go. Not so in the 'burbs.
  The idiots who stayed on Fire Island despite a mandatory evacuation order were finally rescued, with great difficulty. The first group of rescuers had to themselves be rescued; they were cut off when water cut all the way across the island. Now the people who built expensive frame houses facing the Atlantic Ocean only a few feet above sea level are whining for Government funding to rebuild.
6. Re:New York will re-build. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 00:48 · Score: 1
  
  I look forward to the inevitable sickness and decay that follows these inundations, not because I like to see people suffer, but because I can remind you of this comment when it comes up.
  By the time this happens again, though I suspect it will be a much shorter time than you think, we will probably both be too busy to slashdot.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 11:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

In the past few days, data center managers have been forced to add fuel logistics to their list of responsibilities, as most Manhattan data centers have been subsisting on generator power.
Any datacenter manager that doesn't already have fuel logistics in their disaster plan is in the wrong line of work. Few inner city datacenters have a week or more of fuel on-site - most have only days of fuel, and they count on fuel contracts from suppliers to keep them running. And the supplier may not be able to honor the contract in a disaster.
Suburban and rural datacenters have the space (and less conflict with fire codes since the fuel is not stored in or near an office building) to keep weeks of fuel on hand. The last datacenter that I colocated in had 2 weeks of fuel on-site, and had another week of fuel in a trailer that can be trucked in from their other facility 60 miles away if the roads are passable. They had a spare generator that can be trucked in from that other facility as well. (and this facility could send fuel and a generator to that facility if needed)
1. Re:Fuel logistics by hguorbray · 2012-11-02 12:00 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  And on the plus side, the IT guys who spent the week bucket brigading now have arms like Hulk....
  
  -I'm just sayin'
2. Re:Fuel logistics by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-11-02 12:13 · Score: 2
  
  Well, given that folks are already drawing firearms in gas lines, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57544187/new-yorker-sean-bailey-accused-of-pulling-gun-in-gas-line/ , part of the plan had better be to contract Mad Max to bring in a tanker of precious juice past The Humungous, Wez, and their pals.
  
  --
  Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
3. Re:Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 12:17 · Score: 2
  
  Well, given that folks are already drawing firearms in gas lines, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57544187/new-yorker-sean-bailey-accused-of-pulling-gun-in-gas-line/ , part of the plan had better be to contract Mad Max to bring in a tanker of precious juice past The Humungous, Wez, and their pals.
  Well the good news is that few drivers in the USA can use the diesel that's needed to feed datacenter generators in their cars, so hopefully the trucks will get through.
4. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:22 · Score: 0
  
  The last datacenter that I colocated in had 2 weeks of fuel on-site, and had another week of fuel in a trailer that can be trucked in from their other facility 60 miles away if the roads are passable.
  How often do they rotate/burn through that supply?
  As has been mentioned in a few articles that I've read, diesel fuel doesn't last forever, and so if you tried to use it after it's been sitting too long you may have problems. Hopefully as part of regular maintenance / testing they burn through it of the course of a year and replenish it with fresh stuff.
5. Re:Fuel logistics by Culture20 · 2012-11-02 12:26 · Score: 1
  
  Only because they have Hulk Hands TM on their desks.
6. Re:Fuel logistics by TheGratefulNet · 2012-11-02 12:32 · Score: 1
  
  "two cars enter; one car leaves!"
  
  --
  
  --
  "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
7. Re:Fuel logistics by girlintraining · 2012-11-02 12:36 · Score: 3
  
  Any datacenter manager that doesn't already have fuel logistics in their disaster plan is in the wrong line of work.
  I don't think any data center manager had a line item in the disaster recovery plan that included having all transportation access cut to the entire island due to flooding of the tunnel and closure of the bridges, for over a week. Everyone is having a problem getting fuel into the city; even mission-critical services like emergency services, hospitals, and telecommunications facilities.
  As to your comment that "suburban and rural datacenters have the space", sure... but where's the fiber optic cable hookups and the telecommunications infrastructure located? I'll give you a hint: Not in a barn. Those data centers are located downtown because that's where everything else is. Not only that, but most of the data centers on the island are there because that's where Wall St. is, and milliseconds matter when it comes to high volume trading and financial transactions. Commercial real estate is at a premium in New York. Actually, all real estate is, leading to the old joke that when a New Yorker hears someone has died, the first question they ask is, "Is their apartment for rent?"
  I think it's more likely to assume you've made an error in your reasoning, writing opinions from the comfort of an armchair, than people being paid over six figures who's job depends on balancing everything out exactly and to the nearest penny an hour.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
8. Re:Fuel logistics by Darth_brooks · 2012-11-02 12:37 · Score: 1
  
  My understanding is the Diesel stores far better than gasoline due to the lack of ethanol (which plays absolute hell on rubber fuel lines in home generators) and other additives. It still doesn't last forever, but it does better than gasoline.
  Overall, natural gas is the preferred solution out here in the midwest. You don't have to store it on site if you're in a reasonably urban area (But you can, just install a pig out back), gasoline powered generators run on it with minimal modifications, and the earth tends not to quaketh so much round here so ruptured lines aren't an issue.
  
  --
  There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
9. Re:Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 12:40 · Score: 2
  
  The last datacenter that I colocated in had 2 weeks of fuel on-site, and had another week of fuel in a trailer that can be trucked in from their other facility 60 miles away if the roads are passable.
  How often do they rotate/burn through that supply?
  As has been mentioned in a few articles that I've read, diesel fuel doesn't last forever, and so if you tried to use it after it's been sitting too long you may have problems. Hopefully as part of regular maintenance / testing they burn through it of the course of a year and replenish it with fresh stuff.
  I don't remember the details on their rotation schedule, but I imagine that having their own fuel trailers made it easier to swap out fuel with some other site that needed it. Maybe they sold 9 month old fuel to an industrial site at a discount.
  I do remember that they had their generator vendor bring in a load bank large enough to let them do full-load testing every month. And once a quarter they did a live cutover from utility power to generator. This seemed a little risky at first, but it makes sense - would you rather find out during a disaster that some component of the emergency power system wasn't working because it was not adequately tested, or would you rather find out when the generator vendor and electricians are standing by and utility power is available to fail back from the generator.
  That facility weathered several power outages without a glitch, but the longest I can remember was around 48 hours.
10. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:42 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  True, but you can't legally use the fuel that's meant for the data center in your truck to get it there. We did that after Hugo hit the SC coast in Sept 1989 and got caught. The generator fuel has dye in it that will stain the fuel filter. It took nearly six months and several tens of thousands in legal fees to get our truck back. Meanwhile, the servers in our data center in Goose Creek, SC ran out of fuel and nearly put the company out of business. There were dozens of other trucks that got caught at the weight stations over the next few years that also used fuel not meant for use on the road that were also fined and/or confiscated. My father-in-law owns a towing company so they got a lot of towing and storage business from that. Don't underestimate the US government's desire to screw over the little guy and their desire to put companies out of business.
11. Re:Fuel logistics by girlintraining · 2012-11-02 13:02 · Score: 3
  
  Diesel fuel lasts about a year if kept dry, around 68F, and in a sealed container. It can be prolonged with additives but this is not usually done because they can clog the fuel filter. Typically a data center keeps 2--5 days of fuel on site in an urban area; Not due to the cost of the fuel (which is a pitance) but the cost of storage, which requires commercial real estate. In most metropolitan areas, that price is $40-200 per square foot. Do the math.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
12. Re:Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 13:07 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Any datacenter manager that doesn't already have fuel logistics in their disaster plan is in the wrong line of work.
  I don't think any data center manager had a line item in the disaster recovery plan that included having all transportation access cut to the entire island due to flooding of the tunnel and closure of the bridges, for over a week. Everyone is having a problem getting fuel into the city; even mission-critical services like emergency services, hospitals, and telecommunications facilities.
  What kind of disaster plan is it that doesn't account for a likely disaster? I can guarantee that every sizable datacenter had exactly this scenario in the DR plans. You don't run a $10M facility in a coastal city on an island without including flooding in your DR plan. This was a 100 year event, so it was definitely on everyone's horizon. Having it in the plan doesn't mean that you have a good solution - living in SF means Earthquakes are a big part of our DR plans, but we have no expectation that our facility will survive a 7.5 earthquake intact, or even that our employees will be motivated to come to work when they are worried about their own survival.
  
  As to your comment that "suburban and rural datacenters have the space", sure... but where's the fiber optic cable hookups and the telecommunications infrastructure located? I'll give you a hint: Not in a barn. Those data centers are located downtown because that's where everything else is.
  Just follow the train lines to find out where the major telecommunication lines are -- I have access to more carriers down on the Peninsula outside of San Francisco than I do downtown. You may be surprised at how much bandwidth runs through Colorado and even Missouri.
  
  Not only that, but most of the data centers on the island are there because that's where Wall St. is, and milliseconds matter when it comes to high volume trading and financial transactions.
  Sure, latency is a reason to be close to NYC, but I don't think any of the exchanges even have datacenters in the city anymore,they are all across the river. I know NASDAQ has a backup facility in Virginia.
  
  Commercial real estate is at a premium in New York. Actually, all real estate is, leading to the old joke that when a New Yorker hears someone has died, the first question they ask is, "Is their apartment for rent?"
  I'm not sure what your point is? Datacenters have to be built in the city because that's where the carriers are, but commercial real estate is expensive so don't build your datacenter in the city?
  
  I think it's more likely to assume you've made an error in your reasoning, writing opinions from the comfort of an armchair, than people being paid over six figures who's job depends on balancing everything out exactly and to the nearest penny an hour.
  You're obviously not in NYC if you think "over six figures" means someone is highly paid. Part of my job is planning our IT DR strategy. Fortunately, our Facilities dept is in charge of the generator so I don't need to worry about fuel contracts or keeping it running, but I do need to make sure our data is safe no matter what happens to the building and that we can continue to operate as a business. The only "disaster" that we plan on riding out on the building generator is a localized power outage when we know we'll be able to get fuel once our 3 - 5 days of fuel runs out. If there's a widespread power outage or disaster, our plan is to transition to the remote site since we know we may not be able to keep the generator fueled.
13. Re:Fuel logistics by dgatwood · 2012-11-02 13:08 · Score: 1
  
  Ruptured lines may not be a big issue, but as a disaster preparedness scheme, relying on natural gas might not be a good idea unless you store it yourself. Natural gas is pumped to you, and in many cases, the compressor stations are powered by electricity, which means that if power goes down, so does your natural gas supply. In those areas, using natural gas for your backup power is basically equivalent to having no backup power at all, localized power outages notwithstanding.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
14. Re:Fuel logistics by demonlapin · 2012-11-02 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  If your disaster recovery plan for a business based on an island doesn't consider that all transportation may be cut, you're not doing a very good job. Otherwise, you're right.
15. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 13:24 · Score: 0
  
  My understanding is the Diesel stores far better than gasoline due to the lack of ethanol (which plays absolute hell on rubber fuel lines in home generators) and other additives. It still doesn't last forever, but it does better than gasoline.
  The ethanol isn't the problem, at least not in regards the difference between diesel and gasoline. Gasoline is simply more volatile than diesel fuels. I know people want to blame adding ethanol for everything that's wrong in the world, but in this case, no, it doesn't matter to the storage tanks.
  As far as your generator goes, you should NEVER store fuel in it. PERIOD. This is true for any small engine, or any engine at all, really. It's better to run it out, and leave it clean, otherwise you get residues. Nasty ones. Though Natural Gas is better than most.
16. Re:Fuel logistics by Gordonjcp · 2012-11-02 13:26 · Score: 1
  
  Diesel just doesn't go off at all. It will last indefinitely as long as you don't let it soak up water - and even then the dewatering bowl in the fuel filter will sort that out. Also, conventional diesel engines (ie. not common-rail) will run on anything oily that's thin enough to go through the injectors - diesel, paraffin, veg oil, hydraulic oil, brake fluid, just about anything.
17. Re:Fuel logistics by girlintraining · 2012-11-02 13:27 · Score: 0
  
  What kind of disaster plan is it that doesn't account for a likely disaster? I can guarantee that...
  There were 47 storms to hit New York last century. Of those, only the storms of 1936, 1944, 1954, 1971, 1976, and 1996. Of those, the only storm which caused the New York subway system to flood and caused significant damage to Manhattan was in 1971. So a couple times a century is not a likely disaster -- most of these storms do not result in the level of devastation seen here.
  
  Just follow the train lines to find out where the major telecommunication lines are -- I have access to more carriers down on the Peninsula outside of San Francisco than I do downtown. You may be surprised at how much bandwidth runs through Colorado and even Missouri.
  I'm well aware that bandwidth runs through rural areas, but planting a data center in a place conveniently located on top of one that also bisects a town large enough to host said data center is somewhat rare. When Google announced it needed a data center, only a dozen small towns in the whole country met the requirements. So it's not as common as you think.
  
  Sure, latency is a reason to be close to NYC, but I don't think any of the exchanges even have datacenters in the city anymore,they are all across the river. I know NASDAQ has a backup facility in Virginia.
  I seem to recall there were two of them located in the Twin Towers. You know, until the day they were exploded. So don't "think" me anything -- either know, or keep quiet.
  
  I'm not sure what your point is? Datacenters have to be built in the city because that's where the carriers are, but commercial real estate is expensive so don't build your datacenter in the city?
  Where do you plan on locating the several thousand gallons of diesel fuel needed to run a 2 or 4MW data center for over a week, in downtown Manhattan? It's expensive enough just finding space for the servers.
  
  You're obviously not in NYC if you think "over six figures" means someone is highly paid. Part of my job is planning our IT DR strategy. Fortunately, our Facilities dept is in charge of the generator so I don't need to worry about fuel contracts or keeping it running, but I do need to make sure our data is safe no matter what happens to the building and that we can continue to operate as a business.
  
  I didn't say it was highly paid, I was just suggesting they were probably being paid more than you. And given some of the comments I've read in your previous post, it's clear to me that whatever disaster recovery plans you are involved with or in charge of is nowhere near the scale of the data centers under discussion.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
18. Re:Fuel logistics by Algae_94 · 2012-11-02 14:09 · Score: 1
  
  What kind of disaster plan is it that doesn't account for a likely disaster? I can guarantee that...
  There were 47 storms to hit New York last century. Of those, only the storms of 1936, 1944, 1954, 1971, 1976, and 1996. Of those, the only storm which caused the New York subway system to flood and caused significant damage to Manhattan was in 1971. So a couple times a century is not a likely disaster -- most of these storms do not result in the level of devastation seen here.
  a couple of times a century is definitely a likely disaster. Would you not plan for an event with a 2% chance of occuring every year?
19. Re:Fuel logistics by girlintraining · 2012-11-02 14:21 · Score: 0
  
  a couple of times a century is definitely a likely disaster. Would you not plan for an event with a 2% chance of occuring every year?
  Not if it cost me $86 million a year, and my total operating budget was $200 million.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
20. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 14:43 · Score: 0
  
  Ruptured lines may not be a big issue, but as a disaster preparedness scheme, relying on natural gas might not be a good idea unless you store it yourself. Natural gas is pumped to you, and in many cases, the compressor stations are powered by electricity, which means that if power goes down, so does your natural gas supply. In those areas, using natural gas for your backup power is basically equivalent to having no backup power at all, localized power outages notwithstanding.
  Yeah. If only the natural gas company could have generators that run on ... natural gas. Man wouldn't that be an idea?!
  
  But no, they'd never ever do that.
21. Re:Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 15:08 · Score: 1
  
  a couple of times a century is definitely a likely disaster. Would you not plan for an event with a 2% chance of occuring every year?
  Not if it cost me $86 million a year, and my total operating budget was $200 million.
  Where does $86M come from? The $83M number you gave in an earlier thread was based on faulty math and the true number is closer to $400K:
  http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3224821&cid=41849463
  But since billion dollar fiber links are being laid to cut latency by milliseconds primarily for algorithmic trading, if you really need a datacenter in NYC, $83M/year could be worth it.
22. Re:Fuel logistics by kriston · 2012-11-02 15:36 · Score: 1
  
  That old joke about asking for a dead person's apartment was about the absurd situation called rent control. It wasn't about real estate being at a premium.
  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control
  
  --
  Kriston
23. Re:Fuel logistics by kriston · 2012-11-02 15:42 · Score: 2
  
  The community of Great Falls, VA, experienced an odd situation during Hurricanes Irene, Isabel, and the 2012 Derecho. The local natural gas utility was unable to provide the bottle pressure required to maintain service in these areas due to the widespread installation of residential generators running on natural gas fuel.
  I don't live in Great Falls but I have a propane-powered generator only because of the lack of natural gas service. One thing that's nice about propane is that it is so stable that its storage life is virtually unlimited.
  
  --
  Kriston
24. Re:Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 15:50 · Score: 1
  
  I'm well aware that bandwidth runs through rural areas, but planting a data center in a place conveniently located on top of one that also bisects a town large enough to host said data center is somewhat rare. When Google announced it needed a data center, only a dozen small towns in the whole country met the requirements. So it's not as common as you think.
  Sounds like there are at least a dozen.
  
  Sure, latency is a reason to be close to NYC, but I don't think any of the exchanges even have datacenters in the city anymore,they are all across the river. I know NASDAQ has a backup facility in Virginia.
  I seem to recall there were two of them located in the Twin Towers. You know, until the day they were exploded. So don't "think" me anything -- either know, or keep quiet.
  So you're spouting 10 year old information for a datacenter that you already know doesn't exist and you're calling me uninformed?
  http://www.tradersmagazine.com/news/nyse-levitt-wrong-about-backup-readiness-110474-1.html
  No U.S. exchanges actually operate in lower Manhattan any longer, even though the New York Stock Exchange maintains a trading floor at 11 Wall Street.
  The data centers that house their operations are all across the Hudson River, in Carteret (Nasdaq), Mahwah (NYSE), Secaucus (Direct Edge) and Weehawken (BATS), N.J.
  
  I'm not sure what your point is? Datacenters have to be built in the city because that's where the carriers are, but commercial real estate is expensive so don't build your datacenter in the city?
  Where do you plan on locating the several thousand gallons of diesel fuel needed to run a 2 or 4MW data center for over a week, in downtown Manhattan? It's expensive enough just finding space for the servers.
  In the basement, where datacenters in NY typically locate their fuel? As I pointed out in your earlier message, a week's worth of fuel for your 2MW generator would consume around 300 sq feet of 10 foot high tank space - or about the space of 2 parking spaces in the parking garage.
  
  You're obviously not in NYC if you think "over six figures" means someone is highly paid. Part of my job is planning our IT DR strategy. Fortunately, our Facilities dept is in charge of the generator so I don't need to worry about fuel contracts or keeping it running, but I do need to make sure our data is safe no matter what happens to the building and that we can continue to operate as a business.
  I didn't say it was highly paid, I was just suggesting they were probably being paid more than you.
  No doubt - a datacenter manager for a large facility in NYC makes more money than me, but I'm not sure why that's relevant.
  
  And given some of the comments I've read in your previous post, it's clear to me that whatever disaster recovery plans you are involved with or in charge of is nowhere near the scale of the data centers under discussion.
  Actually, my datacenter (well, 3 of them in 3 different buildings next to each other) is surprisingly close to the size of what you're talking about - a modern datacenter with 2MW of generating capacity may only be 10,000 sq feet, which is not terribly large these days. However, It's not very dense, we have a lot of sparsely populated cabinets of non-computer gear, our total power consumption not including cooling is around 100KVA.
25. Re:Fuel logistics by kriston · 2012-11-02 15:57 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The government is not "screw[ing] over the little guy" as you so eloquently put it. The non-road diesel fuel is dyed specifically because that fuel's tariff does not carry road tax. Road tax pays for the roads. This is what the situation is really about. So many violators were using non-road fuel that they had to take steps.
  All licensed truck drivers implicitly understand that you do not put non-road/farm fuel into a road vehicle if you intend to keep that vehicle in revenue service. It's intuitively obvious to everyone, but it's too bad your drivers were either ignorant of the law or chose not to follow it.
  
  --
  Kriston
26. Re:Fuel logistics by girlintraining · 2012-11-02 16:03 · Score: 0
  
  The $83 million a year would be the cost to rent 1 floor of a 1 square block sized skyscraper. One assumes the electricity would be the other major operating cost, so I fudged an extra $3 mil into the equation. But even $400k against an operating budget of $200mil represents a .2% increase in operating cost to protect against something that has a 1 in 50 chance of occuring. The profit margin of the 25 largest businesses in America is about 8.3%. It's likely our margins would be lower, but even at 8.3%, that's still a loss of 2.5% in profits. I understand boards of directors can get a good roasting for missing their earnings forcast by that much by the shareholders.
  Disaster recovery isn't free, and protecting against all threats isn't practical for everyone, in every situation. That kind of mentality was popular during the dot com boom -- everybody wanted multiple redundant data centers on SONET fiber rings, nightly incremental backups to an offsite location and everything hot swap. You know what happened? Most of those businesses failed! The ones that succeeded made do with less, until they could build up to the point where some of those elements could be put into production.
  I'm not a pie-in-the-sky engineer like a lot of people here on slashdot. I'm a down to earth engineer, who understands that a lot of times management isn't going to give me all the tools I need to do my job. Every company I've worked for or consulted with has had something significant in their IT infrastructure missing, whether it was uninterruptible power supplies in the server room, or keeping all the encryption keys on a single server with only two harddrives mirrored and no other backup, the fact is nobody is prepared for all contingencies. Nobody. Even the people you'd think would have their act together have overlooked something, somewhere. That's just the nature of this industry.
  So regardless of where you think the cost versus benefit lines cross the reality is each business is going to plot it differently, and they'll have good reasons for doing so. A lot of the data centers listed in the article simply aren't mission-critical. Their customers' looked at them and said "Hey, if I can save $5 a month to locate it here instead of the other guys that spent the extra cash for a better recovery plan, I'm going for it!"
  That's how businesses operate. All I was trying to do with those numbers was explain the logic behind why these businesses made that choice from an engineering perspective, I never intended the numbers to be solid, and even indicated as much in my comment by saying these are ballpark figures. As in, I didn't check my work. As in, I just mashed some numbers together to see how bad the problem really was. And while you're right that I got the amount of square footage wrong, as it was later pointed out in that thread -- most skyscrapers aren't built to support the weight of 300k gallons of diesel fuel on a single floor, and that's where these data centers are located. So even if cost wasn't an issue, structural design would be.
  In the end, my only point was: There must be a rational explanation for why they aren't storing weeks' of fuel in these buildings, because I cannot believe that hundreds of millions of dollars would be going into these data centers' operating budget and they'd just forget to spec out the space for the fuel.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
27. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 16:13 · Score: 0
  
  "over six figures" -- wouldn't that be $1e6 or greater? Assuming USD, $1e6 is highly paid anywhere on earth...
28. Re:Fuel logistics by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-11-02 16:50 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, God forbid the rules should be relaxed during a disaster. No, the law is the law for a reason, and if anything enforcement should be stepped up after a big storm.
  
  --
  Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
29. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 17:44 · Score: 0
  
  Exactly. My father used to drive a tanker truck, and he ran out of fuel several times and had to pay to have fuel delivered even though he was carrying thousands of gallons of diesel. He drove mainly on I-90 between Souix Falls, SD to Spokane, WA so it was a long way between stations, and they were often closed because of the weather. He knew it was better to leave the truck unprotected rather than take the risk of getting caught at the next weigh station. Insurance will cover a stolen truck, but it won't cover the fines. I used to worry about him having to walk several miles on the side of the road to get to a phone. Of course this was before CBs and car phones became popular.
30. Re:Fuel logistics by davester666 · 2012-11-02 18:03 · Score: 1
  
  "Yeah, God forbid the rules should be relaxed during a disaster. No, the law is the law for a reason, and if anything enforcement should be stepped up during a big storm."
  FTFY.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
31. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 18:09 · Score: 0
  
  People who vote for big government get everything that comes with it... like dyes added to products for no reason other than to enable government to control you (by regulating how you use things and by taxing things with complex lobbyist-influenced tax codes).
  The people of New York and New Jersey are currently reaping the "benefits" of all they voted for:
  Roving looters who cannot be stopped by the disarmed citizens
  Lack of fuel (nobody has their own reserves. Most would not bother but there are plenty of people and businesses who would if they were not going to be taxed-and-regulated to death for trying)
  Lack of sufficient private help (Americans used to have a huge number of private charitable orgs and "mutual aid" orgs that average people used to join that rushed in to help after disasters, but now nobody bothers because they've been taught to pay taxes and then count on government)
  Hopefully this very sad event will finally hammer into peoples' heads what Katrina should have (but apparently failed to) ... that in the end, when the going gets tough, you are responsible for being prepared for disasters and taking care of your family first, your neighbors next, and the larger community if you can; no government jerk from a far-away city will care as much as you do. Politicians and bureaucrats will always pose for the cameras and pretend to help before they will dirty their own hands to lift a bit of debris, or carry an injured child, or give food or a blanket to an elderly person. If the people and businesses of NY and NJ were not burdened by crazy regulations and threats of lawsuits they'd probably get things back up and running on their own twice as fast as they are going to (locals would commit acts of common sense on behalf of themselves and their neighbors). This nation was built by self reliant people and strong communities and it's time we all got back to that idea and left the federal government do only what it must like operate a military, have diplomats, and keep the states from fighting eachother.
32. Re:Fuel logistics by dgatwood · 2012-11-02 18:54 · Score: 2
  
  Many compressor stations do run on gas, but not all.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
33. Re:Fuel logistics by hawguy · 2012-11-02 19:02 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  People who vote for big government get everything that comes with it... like dyes added to products for no reason other than to enable government to control you (by regulating how you use things and by taxing things with complex lobbyist-influenced tax codes).
  The Fuel tax is one of the more fair taxes - it taxes you (roughly) based on your usage of the resource it's supposed to be paying for. The thing I like least about fuel taxes is that they are not high enough to pay for road maintenance.
  
  Roving looters who cannot be stopped by the disarmed citizens
  If very citizen had a gun, then those packs of roving looters would be well armed, so there would be wild-west style shootouts in the street between the good guys and the bad guys. But in a disaster, the lines are blurred and it's not always clear who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. Is the guy walking down the street with a few bottles of water for his elderly mother a good guy or a bad guy when he refuses to share it with the young mother and child begging for it. What if the mother had a gun and took the water by force? Or what if the man had a gun and shot the mother when she tried to take the water by force?
  
  Lack of fuel (nobody has their own reserves. Most would not bother but there are plenty of people and businesses who would if they were not going to be taxed-and-regulated to death for trying)
  People are bemoaning the lack of fresh water and food. Both are legal to stockpile both by citizens and private businesses, yet there seem to be few businesses willing to stock up on thousands of bottles of water just in case disaster strikes. Why do you think they'd be more likely to stock up on a perishable and expensive to store fuel?
  
  Lack of sufficient private help (Americans used to have a huge number of private charitable orgs and "mutual aid" orgs that average people used to join that rushed in to help after disasters, but now nobody bothers because they've been taught to pay taxes and then count on government)
  The Red Cross and other private, charitable organizations always offer disaster relief. But some disasters require more manpower, machinery, legal law enforcement powers, or weapons than can be reasonably mustered by an organization funded by donations, so that's where the US government can step in. How many $10M helicopters and $100M heavy lift aircraft do you think the Red Cross should own and maintain in order to shuttle people and supplies to a disaster zone?
  
  Hopefully this very sad event will finally hammer into peoples' heads what Katrina should have (but apparently failed to) ... that in the end, when the going gets tough, you are responsible for being prepared for disasters and taking care of your family first, your neighbors next, and the larger community if you can; no government jerk from a far-away city will care as much as you do.
  That's definitely true and a good lesson to be learned from any disaster - be prepared to be on your own for 3 - 7 days. But few city dwellers can provide enough food, water, heat, medications (some need refrigeration), and sanitation (with water and possibly sewage not working in a big highrise) to stick it out for more than week or so in a disaster.
  
  If the people and businesses of NY and NJ were not burdened by crazy regulations and threats of lawsuits they'd probably get things back up and runninga on their own twice as fast as they are going to (locals would commit acts of common sense on behalf of themselves and their neighbors).
  Not all regulations are driven by government greed or thirst for power, many regulations are safety based. If you try to fill the back f your pickup with twenty 5 gallon buckets of fuel and try to sell it to the highest bidder on the streets, you're (hopefully) going to get stopped on the street. Likewise, if you set up your own s
34. Re:Fuel logistics by Cyberax · 2012-11-02 20:57 · Score: 1
  
  Besides, natural gas systems can be used with propane instead of NG. So it's easy to install a backup propane tank and use it if NG becomes unavailable during a disaster.
35. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-03 00:05 · Score: 0
  
  most have only days of fuel, and they count on fuel contracts from suppliers to keep them running.
  Actually due to space & fire regulation requirements, it's more like only 24 hours.
36. Re:Fuel logistics by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 00:34 · Score: 1
  
  Lack of fuel (nobody has their own reserves. Most would not bother but there are plenty of people and businesses who would if they were not going to be taxed-and-regulated to death for trying)
  if you are actually complaining that people are regulated when they want to store large quantities of fuel in the middle of a city, you're a tool.
  
  Hopefully this very sad event will finally hammer into peoples' heads what Katrina should have (but apparently failed to)
  
  It won't, because what they should learn isn't just your government won't save you, but also move the fuck away from the coasts. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the stock market needs to be located in a city with a port any more. All it needs is a good airport. Put it in fucking Colorado or something.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
37. Re:Fuel logistics by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 00:37 · Score: 1
  
  My understanding is the Diesel stores far better than gasoline due to the lack of ethanol
  Nope. It's because Gasoline breaks down into other compounds rapidly, in just a few months in fact. Both can be stabilized, but diesel lasts longer. Diesel will actually grow mold, so you need a stabilizer for gasohol, but a biocide for diesel.
  
  ethanol (which plays absolute hell on rubber fuel lines in home generators)
  Yes, that was regularly a problem with older gensets. Except, not the one I've got, an ancient Generac H2250. It has a Briggs and Stratton engine that sits directly atop the fuel tank, with a plastic pickup foot. It doesn't actually have any fuel lines aside from that. Brilliant. It's got PCV, too, so it should be easy to convert it to propane, but it's too small to bother with probably. It wouldn't even run the well pump.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
38. Re:Fuel logistics by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 00:44 · Score: 2
  
  You're both just wrong. Diesel starts to spoil after about six months without a stabilizer; with one you could keep it a maximum of about two years without significant degradation. But you'll need to keep it sealed, because water in fuel is a very bad thing. The water will react with the fuel and create acids if left over time, which won't be removed by the water separator when there even is one in the system, which isn't the case with many diesels, e.g. my 1982 300SD. And more notably, diesel will grow mold, so for any kind of fuel storage, it is always standard to add a biocide to the fuel. Finally, most conventional diesels are bad at running on anything other than diesel fuel. Getting the fuel into the injection pump at the correct viscosity (as that can actually affect operation) and getting the fuel to the injector at the correct viscosity are both difficult. Running veg results in varnishing that must be removed by running biodiesel. Most fuels need to be adjusted to have not just similar viscosity but also similar cetane, or most engines won't run them correctly. Some vehicles (notably older GM IDIs) even have a fuel quality sensor and if you feed them too-dark a fuel they refuse to run.
  If you don't have a classic, indirectly-injected diesel with a non-rotary pump (e.g. the bosch inline design) then you should stay the hell away from any altfuels but biodiesel or well-filtered WMO thinned with RUG, which will work well in the International IDI. A sufficient filtering regimen is difficult, though. If you have a TDI, you probably can get away with B100 with a lubricity additive like Diesel Kleen, they have a bio-specific blend. But they are well known to crap on altfuels given sufficient time. The sad thing is that it seems like everything is cool right up until the expensive repair work.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
39. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-03 02:27 · Score: 0
  
  Not sure what your car motor has to do with a megawatt genset?
40. Re:Fuel logistics by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 03:05 · Score: 1
  
  Diesel just doesn't go off at all. It will last indefinitely as long as you don't let it soak up water - and even then the dewatering bowl in the fuel filter will sort that out. Also, conventional diesel engines (ie. not common-rail) will run on anything oily that's thin enough to go through the injectors - diesel, paraffin, veg oil, hydraulic oil, brake fluid, just about anything.
  (I respond with a description of various types of engines and whether they will run on these other fuels or not)
  
  Not sure what your car motor has to do with a megawatt genset?
  That's because you're stupid, and you weren't following the discussion.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
41. Re:Fuel logistics by Gordonjcp · 2012-11-03 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, they'll run just fine. If you've got that much water in your tank, chuck a gallon of meths in to dry it up - it won't get rid of the water but dissolving alcohol in it will help spread it around.
  Oh, and crucially, they'll run a hell of a lot better than they do on no fuel at all.
42. Re:Fuel logistics by sycodon · 2012-11-03 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  If very citizen had a gun, then those packs of roving looters would be well armed, so there would be wild-west style shootouts in the street between the good guys and the bad guys.
  Those roving packs of looters are well armed.
  And the old Wild West Shootout meme is so old and tired, you mama stopped using it when she was a kid.
  
  --
  When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
43. Re:Fuel logistics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-03 12:56 · Score: 0
  
  ... the IT guys who spent the week bucket brigading now have both arms like Hulk....
Speaks truth.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:00 · Score: 0

Seriously. What a depressing, crowded, corrupt, smelly shithole full of drugs, crime, and rude motherfuckers who think incidental eye contact is advanced aggression. Then there's the cost of living. And god help you if you try to drive there. Oh and if anything ever happens to disrupt the food supply, a city that size is the last goddamned place you wanna be.

Amen, brother. Some might even go so far as to argue divine cleansing.
1. Re:Speaks truth.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 13:09 · Score: 0
  
  Seriously. What a depressing, crowded, corrupt, smelly shithole full of drugs, crime, and rude motherfuckers who think incidental eye contact is advanced aggression. Then there's the cost of living. And god help you if you try to drive there. Oh and if anything ever happens to disrupt the food supply, a city that size is the last goddamned place you wanna be.
  Amen, brother. Some might even go so far as to argue divine cleansing.
  Why do you think Seaside heights (Home of Jersey Shore the show) was mostly destroyed?
Great News by ohnocitizen · 2012-11-02 12:01 · Score: 2

Power to mid and lower Manhattan means a lot of people who have been without power will finally have it (and all the modern conveniences like refrigeration we rely so heavily on). It also means subway service between Manhattan and Brooklyn will come back sooner, which will be huge.
1. Re:Great News by Chalnoth · 2012-11-02 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  Power is back on now for midtown, at least. I'm not sure how far south power was turned on.
2. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 18:17 · Score: 0
  
  I'm back!!!!!!!!!
  Since my power just came back on and I live in mid Manhattan let me assure you the refrigerator was my last concern, it was cold enough in my apartment to keep the beer drinkable!
  Looking forward to taking a shit shower and shave. Never mind not having to walk the Empire State buildings height in stares a day to get drinking water.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by CastrTroy · 2012-11-02 12:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Depends what's running in the datacenter. Banks, grocery stores, public utilities, repair contractors all need datacenters to get their jobs done. Also, many people work in data centers, or have jobs which rely on the datacenters being up. For them, the datacenter does feed their family

--

Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by hawguy · 2012-11-02 12:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Dozens are dead, billions of dollars of property destroyed and businesses decimated, millions still in darkness and cold, and you are talking about data centers??
Data centers cannot feed my family or heat my cold, flooded house.
Where is your decency sir? It's a long week and weekend for the millions affected and the first responders. The glibness of this post is shocking and disgusting.
This is Slashdot, there are plenty of other sites that cover human misery and suffering, this site is for geek news, and geeks care about datacenters.
Datacenters can't feed your family or heat your cold, flooded house (unless you live next to a datacenter that recovers waste heat for residential heating), but the datacenter can help your utility get power back online, it can help your local merchant process credit card transactions and use their POS system so you can buy replacement goods, it can let you post your family's status so your mom can stop worrying about you, it can help your bank conduct online transactions efficiently to let you receive your insurance money, and of course, you're using multiple datacenters right now to read and post to Slashdot.
If you think datacenters are unimportant, try going a week without using any good or service that wasn't produced or delivered to you without the aid of datacenters.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by oodaloop · 2012-11-02 12:06 · Score: 1

As little as I like agreeing with ACs, this was my exact thought upon reading TFS. I know this is News For Nerds, but let's not pretend getting data centers back up is more important than rebuilding an area that's been severely decimated (and not in the Roman 10% way).

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:08 · Score: 0

"Data centers cannot feed my family or heat my cold, flooded house."
No, datacenters certainly don't feed *your* family.
On the other hand, it is datacenters what feed those living in the most expensive flats around Central Park or those with magnificent sigths to the bay, those that fly in helicopters above your head and that don't have any problem about their heating.
So, you see, everybody tells about the party as it goes for them.
"Where is your decency sir?"
Where was you decency a fortnight ago? Do you think current statu quo doesn't predate Sandy?
"The glibness of this post is shocking and disgusting."
It is your naivety or cinism -I don't know for sure, that I find shocking and disgusting.
One day, a REAL rain is will come... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:10 · Score: 0

and wash the scum off the streets.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:11 · Score: 0

Stop being such a drama queen. Getting *everything* back up and running, including data centers, is crucial to getting NY back up and running. And on this site, the data centers will of course get a little more attention than in non-IT media.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by hawguy · 2012-11-02 12:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

As little as I like agreeing with ACs, this was my exact thought upon reading TFS. I know this is News For Nerds, but let's not pretend getting data centers back up is more important than rebuilding an area that's been severely decimated (and not in the Roman 10% way).
Take a look at this:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&sclient=psy-ab&q=+new+york+city+recovery+hurricane+sandy&oq=+new+york+city+recovery+hurricane+sandy
Over 200,000 articles and 3600 news sources covering NYC's recovery efforts. Surely there's enough space left on the Internet for a News for Nerds site to cover news for nerds?
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:14 · Score: 0

As little as I like agreeing with ACs, ...
You are very intelligent, insightful, a delightful human being and a good looking person!
...
So, you must really hate yourself now.
...
Yes, I am a cruel heartless bastard.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 12:17 · Score: 1

With 70+ hours to prepare.... The dead get no sympathy unless they were very old. Or very young.
All the regular folks who died...
WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH YOU! GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY! MOTHER NATURE DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT HUMANS! SO YOU GET OUT OF HER WAY!
Yeah i know its cold and heartless... But at some point you gotta draw the line... And i draw it at able bodied people getting killed by a completely avoidable natural disaster..
fuckin morons... darwin approves.
Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by HerculesMO · 2012-11-02 12:19 · Score: 2

And in the brilliance of the building engineers, the generator is in the basement.
Which is now filled with 13 feet of water.
It's going to be fun cleaning up.

--
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
1. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 13:50 · Score: 0
  
  Attribute it to the brilliance of NYC building code. They strictly prohibit fuel tanks above ground level in high-rises, and there are physics issues involved in getting fuel from the basement up to the generator, so most of the time the genset is also in the basement.
2. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by kriston · 2012-11-02 15:51 · Score: 1
  
  Even Sirius Satellite Radio decommissioned their midtown satellite uplink facility the moment they acquired the Vernon, NJ uplink facility in the northern exurbs.
  
  --
  Kriston
3. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 00:45 · Score: 1
  
  They strictly prohibit fuel tanks above ground level in high-rises, and there are physics issues involved in getting fuel from the basement up to the generator
  Physics issues like what, the people who install the systems not being able to pull their head out of their ass and install a pump?
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
4. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by hawguy · 2012-11-03 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  They strictly prohibit fuel tanks above ground level in high-rises, and there are physics issues involved in getting fuel from the basement up to the generator
  Physics issues like what, the people who install the systems not being able to pull their head out of their ass and install a pump?
  What are you talking about? They have pumps, that's how they get the fuel to the generator.
  But they are electrically powered (from generator).
  But when your fuel tank, pump, and electrical panel are all underwater, it's hard to make the pumps work.It doesn't even have to be fully underwater - when seawater rushes in from outside and cascades over your panel leaving a foot of water on the floor, no electrician is going to touch it until you can pump out the water.
  If you're suggesting that they install a hand pump for backup, you're ignoring the physics - it would be extremely hard (if not impossible) for a human to pump 80 gallons/hour of 100psi fuel up to the 20th floor. And even if they could, it's possible that no one was willing to go into the flooded and possibly electrically live basement.
5. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  If you're suggesting that they install a hand pump for backup
  I propose a battery bank to run the pump. Works for cars. Cha cha cha
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
6. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by hawguy · 2012-11-03 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  If you're suggesting that they install a hand pump for backup
  I propose a battery bank to run the pump. Works for cars. Cha cha cha
  If lack of power was the problem, yours would be a good solution, but they had power to run the pumps from the generator upstairs. The electrical distribution system and possibly the intake vents for the diesel tank were under water (some of it was salt water). Do batteries magically solve that problem?
  Every facility has disasters they weren't designed to ride out, and when your fuel supply is in the basement, a flooded basement is one of them.
7. Re:Our datacenter is in lower Manhattan.. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  If lack of power was the problem, yours would be a good solution, but they had power to run the pumps from the generator upstairs. The electrical distribution system and possibly the intake vents for the diesel tank were under water (some of it was salt water). Do batteries magically solve that problem?
  No, proper planning by someone who is not a dumbfuck solves that problem. The fuel is stored in the basement. The vent line runs to the second floor; so does the fuel line, because that's where the generator should be located. The electrical distribution goes there, and anything running through the basement is sealed, this is because:
  
  Every facility has disasters they weren't designed to ride out, and when your fuel supply is in the basement, a flooded basement is one of them.
  And when you are on a flood plain, and you don't plan to ride out a flooded basement, you are a stupid fuck.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Get Some Priorities! by TheGratefulNet · 2012-11-02 12:33 · Score: 1

If you think datacenters are unimportant, try going a week without using any good or service that wasn't produced or delivered to you without the aid of datacenters.
"I tried rebooting. that didn't work. yes, I tried that, too. look, isn't there anyone else there I can speak with?"

--

--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Dice, get better authors by girlintraining · 2012-11-02 12:42 · Score: 3

You guys recently bought slashdot, and let me say, the first few "sponsored links" have been a real disappointment. TFA has a picture that's a screenshot of the ConEd website, and poorly cropped. The information is almost 10 hours out of date at time of posting, and most of the article consists of direct quotes from articles previously submitted to slashdot! Where's the originality? Where's the reporting on why this matters? Journalism includes an analysis of the facts, not just a compilation of them.

--
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. Re:Dice, get better authors by koan · 2012-11-02 14:20 · Score: 1
  
  You should submit a story.
  
  --
  "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
2. Re:Dice, get better authors by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 16:18 · Score: 0
  
  As they say in the comments on facebook related stories, you get what you paid for because you are the product being sold....
Not yet by SpaceLifeForm · 2012-11-02 13:32 · Score: 1

Having power there maybe in 36 hours would lead to the subway maybe running Wednesday at best. You need power to pump the water out and time to clean and repair.

--
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
1. Re:Not yet by ohnocitizen · 2012-11-02 14:51 · Score: 1
  
  According to MTA officials, some brooklyn-manhattan service will shortly follow power restoration. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/limited-mta-subway-service-continues-friday-article-1.1195659
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 13:53 · Score: 0

Actually, data centers can heat your cold, flooded house.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by MrNaz · 2012-11-02 13:54 · Score: 2

While I agree with you on your overall sentiments, your general tone is offensive. Many who died may have prepared, but the means to do more may have been out of their capacity. What would you do to prepare for a storm? Board the windows? Brace the doors? Put everything sharp in a closed, low height cupboard? How would that help if Sandy dropped a few cars on your house, levelling it? And even if you did survive that, remember, the biggest killer in natural disasters is the disease and sepsis that follows.
Off your high horse, buddy.

--
I hate printers.
Laugh by koan · 2012-11-02 14:18 · Score: 1

And that, in a nut shell is why, you don't really want to use "The Cloud".
Keep your data within reach.

--
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
1. Re:Laugh by hawguy · 2012-11-02 14:50 · Score: 1
  
  And that, in a nut shell is why, you don't really want to use "The Cloud".
  Keep your data within reach.
  if you live in NY and keep your data in reach, it's likely that you would have been affected by this storm.
  If you kept it at 2 different cloud providers (or 2 physically separated regions of the same cloud provider), you would have been fine.
  The cloud is as safe as you want it to be, but don't assume that storing data in a single cloud provider's facility is any safer than storing it at your own facility unless you're paying to have your data replicated somewhere else.
2. Re:Laugh by ThatsMyNick · 2012-11-02 14:50 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, this why you want to use the cloud and it's redundancy. If you are using a cloud without redundancy, you doing it wrong.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 14:26 · Score: 0

As little as I like agreeing with ACs, this was my exact thought upon reading TFS. I know this is News For Nerds, but let's not pretend getting data centers back up is more important than rebuilding an area that's been severely decimated (and not in the Roman 10% way).
Take a look at this:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&sclient=psy-ab&q=+new+york+city+recovery+hurricane+sandy&oq=+new+york+city+recovery+hurricane+sandy
Over 200,000 articles and 3600 news sources covering NYC's recovery efforts. Surely there's enough space left on the Internet for a News for Nerds site to cover news for nerds?
No they all have to be exactly the same, with teh same priorities, just different logos on each story.

People like him are not broad minded. They are small-minded, tunnelvision types. So, everything being the same with no important differences is the only sense of proportion (lack thereof) people like GP possess. For them nothing else will do.

This shit is really popular. Maybe somecelebrities act that way and now everybody else has to emulate them. Sheep need, actually demand, their shepherd. Whatever. It's destroying the heart and soul of anything that ever meant anything.

You understand that or you don't.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by onyxruby · 2012-11-02 14:28 · Score: 2

Datacenters can't feed your family or heat your cold, flooded house

I would really have to argue that as data centers are often what drive the engines of commerce. The modern engines of commerce that send out deliveries of food, keep the heat running, operate the financial system that allows commerce and every other thing that our modern society depends on are completely dependent upon data centers.
The only question is whether or not the data center that needs the electricity happens to be the one that drives one of the particular above functions. Even if it isn't, you can rest assured that those functions are wholly dependent on a data center /somewhere/.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 14:37 · Score: 0

Many who died may have prepared
Ah HAHAHAHAHAHA! Ha ha ha ha ha. HAH! HAHAHAHA! Damn man, that's a good one.

You are obviously ignorant of the subject. I am not personally insulting you. I just see that you are making false statements indicating that you are unfamiliar with the subject of survival. You would be surprised how little it takes and most of it is (ought to be) common sense. People who do everything right and still get killed by some freakishly unlikely event, well, that does happen but it's exceedingly rare. You might as well play the state lottery, you will get better odds.

Yeah, there are extraordinarily unlucky people who definitely don't represent the majority of those who plan ahead and prepare. That sure as hell does NOT mean that everyone who died in this storm made every effort to prepare. Ohhh, no, not by a long shot. If they did that the death toll would have been much lower. No, just stop. Stop with this "nobody ever makes a bad decision and nobody is ever at fault so all my fuckups and failings in my own life are not my fault too and i like that part so i gotta embrace the whole thing and defend it" nonsense. You're a one-trick pony and It's beneath you.

People who don't prepare are taking a huge and completely avoidable risk that people who do prepare (and fucking bother to put the slightest time into learning and reading about how to do that properly) are not taking. That is: THEIR FUCKING FAULT. It's not a blame game unless you're a dipshit drama queen, and a lot of people are. It's a "oh I see where they failed and I don't want to do the same thing - didn't work out too well for them". Isn't that so goddamned simple?!
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Zakabog · 2012-11-02 15:05 · Score: 1

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but this post really hits home so I just have to respond.
During the week I'm a network engineer for a large phone system vendor in Manhattan that has hundreds of big customers relying on those data centers to be up. During this weekend I'm at my families house on Staten Island so I can volunteer and help hurricane victims and their families (which includes members of my family.) So this is news that actually matters to me.
So please, fuck off and die in a fire.
Why have data centers in Manhattan, anyway? by kriston · 2012-11-02 15:34 · Score: 1

While shopping around for data center resources I was always amused by the data centers being offered on the island of Manhattan. Given the speed of light and the vast abundance of local meet-me rooms and extreme bandwidth on and off the island itself, coupled with the massive off-site capabilities established shortly after 9/11, why would I ever want to tolerate the risk and excessively high cost of a data center in Manhattan?
Especially after 9/11, the idea just seemed silly. But then I listen to DI.FM and they're one of those services that has been severely affected by Sandy for having a data center in Manhattan.

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Kriston
1. Re:Why have data centers in Manhattan, anyway? by Jawnn · 2012-11-02 16:25 · Score: 1
  
  Oh to have mod points for this sage observation. I know, I know. My office is about 22 miles from data center where our stuff lives, and it's a PITA when we have to do hands on, so I can sympathize with the desire to have the hardware close by, but at some point, you have to look at the reality. A dense urban environment is tough to serve; with electricity, fuel, food, whatever, after a disaster like this. Placing critical resources in the middle of that is tempting fate. Sure, they got away with if for 50 years or so. For some, it was worth the risk. After all, if your stuff really is that critical, you have it geographically dispersed, right? Right?
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 15:56 · Score: 0

> And even if you did survive that, remember, the biggest killer in natural disasters is the disease and sepsis that follows.
This isn't the sweating sickness of 1548. No one in NYC is going to die from sepsis or typhoid or dysentery. The biggest killer in natural disasters today are drowning because you didn't evacuate, and stuff falling on you, because you didn't evacuate.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by sycodon · 2012-11-02 16:26 · Score: 1

"Con Ed Says NYC Datacenters Should Get Power Saturday"
That's good! Now people can jump on the internet and...oh...wait...

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When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
NOOO!!!! Gawker will get screwed up again! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-02 17:35 · Score: 0

No! Keep the datacenters dead!
Gawker right now is running an "emergency site" - it's finally got a usable layout, it's fast and readable. It's, well, useful.
Bring back those datacenters and it means Gawker is going to go back to the craptacular unreadable unnavigatable and sluggish site that it was before the storm.
Even after the plant explosion during Sandra? by Tastecicles · 2012-11-02 19:21 · Score: 1

You know, this one"?

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Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Cyberax · 2012-11-02 20:42 · Score: 1

Get the hell out of hurricane flooding zone. That is THE BEST way to prepare, and it worked 100% - no people who were evacuated died in the hurricane. And most of the dead people are those who decided to stay even though it was known they're gonna get flooded. Some of them even failed to do trivial things to prepare (like buying canned food and bottled water).

Yesterday a saw a video of a woman on Staten Island who stayed in the evacuation zone demanding the trucks with food and water to get there ASAP because she hasn't eaten anything but a slice of pizza in 48-hours. Sometimes I simply lose capability for words.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 00:50 · Score: 1

I have sympathy for renters who live in NYC. They probably cannot afford to leave. Everyone else can, and if they don't, they're dumb. Intelligence and good/evilness are the criteria upon which I judge people; you know any better ones?

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Get Some Priorities! by PlusFiveTroll · 2012-11-03 01:59 · Score: 1

A lot of people have died from falling trees or downed power lines a long way from the coast, so what you say isn't true. Now getting the hell out of flood zones is the best way to survive as you say. You must run from the water, it will kill you.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-03 12:59 · Score: 0

Good/evilness is subjective, and intellect is something many people are simply born without. It's not a choice in many cases, and in those that are, intellect according to you will largely be dependent upon them making decisions according to your point of view.
Nothing like a good dose of self-righteousness to turn you into a total asshole, asshole.
Re:Get Some Priorities! by drinkypoo · 2012-11-03 14:01 · Score: 1

Nothing like a good dose of self-righteousness to turn you into a total asshole, asshole.
Great, now we can be sanctimonious together. You sure taught me a lesson.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Get Some Priorities! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-03 16:44 · Score: 0

Calling an asshole an asshole isn't sanctimony, except from the point of view of the asshole in question.