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Con Ed Says NYC Datacenters Should Get Power Saturday
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."
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)
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.
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.
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?
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.