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Hurricane Floyd Shuts Red Hat Down Temporarily
I've received notes from a few different places that Red Hat will
be taking down its onsite servers for the duration of the Hurricane
Floyd. The staff is leaving at 3 today and the place will be closed
on Thursday. If Floyd doesn't cause any serious problems the
web and ftp servers (as well as the *@redhat.com
email addresses) will come back up soon by friday. Update: 09/15 01:01 by CT : FTP and WWW are mirrored offsite, and assuming DNS propogates properly service
should continue without problems.
"Substantially all of our communications hardware and our other computer hardware operations related to our Web site are located in Herndon, Virginia. Fire, floods, HURRICANES, tornadoes, earthquakes, power loss, telecommunications failures, break-ins and similar events could damage these systems."
...
"Our insurance policies may not adequately compensate us for any losses that may occur due to failures or interruptions in our systems. WE DO NOT PRESENTLY HAVE ANY SECONDARY "OFF-SITE" SYSTEMS OR A FORMAL DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN."
RedHat SEC filing is he re. (page 13)
Ahh, an investment of time and effort now, could save them time and money later. I'm from Charleston, SC, and I've never seen a company move their computers to a safer place. I'm impressed that Red Hat is thinking ahead so well. I made good money after Hugo setting-up new machines. So many people leave their computers on the floor and/or near a window. The most serious preparation I've seen so far, is placing the computers on desks in case of flooding. Unfortunately, downtown Charleston is only 7 feet!! above sea level. I'm still sitting in my office in Charleston, and my company wasn't thoughtful enough to box up computers. Hell, they weren't even thoughtful enough to close. "Customers are more important than rain...," so says the PWB. I parked my car in the middle of the the second floor of a parking garage near King, and I'm getting a little worried about it now because lots of things are starting to blow around. Well, if the power goes out and our propane-powered generator blows off of the top of the building, then I get to leave (or go hide), because the computers and the phone system won't work.
A friend of mine works tech support at Red Hat, and they spent yesterday shutting down and boxing up desktops and stuff so that if the roof blows off the building, they can relocate the office quickly.
Why is this a possible problem? Apparently, Red Hat's roof is only rated up to sustained winds of 60mph. Considering the last forcast put us at winds of 80+ mph when it hits the Triangle, it might take a little extra time for Red Hat to get things rolling again. I hope they *have* someplace to relocate to.
From a network engineering viewpoint, I am completely enchanted with the idea that we can build networks that will be available to online communities regardless of little inconveniences like category 4 hurricanes.
... :)
It stands as proof of the importance of the work that the geek community is doing that systems are regularly put into place that will withstand natural disasters. If this stuff wasn't important, companies wouldn't go to the lenghts that they do to make sure their web sites are up regardless of natural disasters and rogue backhoes. Here's to internet resiliency (assuming, of course, that the 'NIC doesn't screw up RedHat's zone propagation
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
"Some companies loose their services because of a thunderstorm - it takes a major hurricane to shut down RedHat!"
Comeone RedHat! where's the balls.. At least set
up a webcam for us poor smucks in the northeast
to check this thing out:) J/K
Go home.. board up.. Hope everything stays safe
down there. Can't have my favorite distro and its
staff washed out to sea can we.
Malice95
but hurricanes pack quite a bit more power than even atomic bombs. you gotta love mother nature.
Reuters(tm): "A spokeswoman for Microsoft said that Red Hat's outage is proof that Linux should not be considered stable and reliable. 'Microsoft servers, located on the West Coast, will continue to operate normally throughout the duration of this storm'."
*For the record, this is a hoax and not an actual article*
YDNet, Raleigh NC. - Many analysts expressed continued concerns today over the reliability of the Linux operating system. This operating system has recently made in-roads into the server market with support from major companies such as IBM.
However, it appears that, along with it's lack of multi-processor support and poor performance serving static web pages, the operating system lacks another feature required for the enterprise market: the ability to withstand a category 4 hurricane.
This problem came to light today as Redhat software prepared for Hurricane Floy by shutting down all computers at the Redhat site. This stand in sharp contrast to Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, which is currently being modified to better withstand large storms (see www.windows2000test.com). Analysts agree that Microsoft has more experience experience in recovering from this type of failure than any other enterprise operating system vendor.
Fred Foolish, an MCSE in the Raleigh area, was heard to say "Yeah... Maybe Linux is enough for a small company, but for companies that need to withstand more than a light sprinkle, enterprise class reliability is needed".
Fred Mud at Microsoft agreed. "One of the best features of our high-value proposition product, Microsoft Windows 2000,software is its ability to quickly recover from storms. Microsoft has a lot of experience in the area of post-storm recover " Mud also dismissed the announcement that most redhat.com services would continue, noting that it is generally agreed by enterprise analysts that Linux still needs to work on Enterprise Class features like clustering, saying "It's just impossible I tell you!"
Redhat software was not reached for comment at their Bahamas office in time for this story.
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