Data Centers Affected by Hurricane Sandy

By Sune Christesen, Oct 31 2012

As states on the US East Coast are struggling with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, so are multiple data center operators in the affected areas. We have tried to gather an overview of some of the data centers that are affected by the power outages and flooding below.

• Equinix experienced generator failures multiple times, at their NY9 data center on 111 8th Avenue. Apart from that they have experienced water leaks in New York and Washington data centers, which affected a customer in one of their NY data centers.
• XO Communications also suffered power loss at 111 8th Avenue according to media.
• Cogent had a generator failure at their 33 Whitehall St data center in New York.
• Datagram has a data center in the same building at 33 Whitehall St, that was also knocked offline due to the fuel tanks and electric systems in the basement being under water.
• Atlantic Metro experienced power outages in multiple of their data centers in the area. Including their LGA4 data center on 121 Varick St. in NY and LGA1 data center on 325 Hudson St. in NY.
• Internap lost power to their data center at 75 Broad St. (NY), as a result of the fuel tank and pumps being flooded and causing their generators to run out of fuel.
• Peer 1 also encountered problems at their 75 Broad St. (NY) data center, forcing them to perform controlled shutdown on some of their customers due to temperature problems. Lack of fuel almost forced them to do a complete shutdown, but 30+ customers helping Peer 1 staff haul fuel up to 17th floor in buckets saved them. What a story!
• Zayo Group (zColo) experienced a temperature rise to 100 degrees fahrenheit in their data center at 111 8th Avenue, after being forced to shut down their cooling due to generator problems.
• Telx asked their customers at their 111 8th Avenue data center (NYC2) to shut down equipment that was not essential to conserve fuel for the generators.
• Probably many more, got any info to share? Feel free to drop a comment or write us an e-mail.

Facing natural hazards like Hurricane Sandy, data center operators are normally very well prepared by going through their emergency procedures, making sure their diesel tanks are filled up and by having staff available onsite or nearby. As you can see from the above, not all providers were well enough prepared or were affected by failing equipmentthat did not perform as intended.

While some of these were just hit by bad luck, there are also some serious issues to consider once the dust settles. Fuel tanks and electrical equipment in basement level, that cannot be utilized upon flooding? That seems like a no-go in data center design. Likewise not having diesel enough onsite prior to an expected hurricane of this magnitude? That is just bad preparation.

We wish the best of luck to data center operators and customers, as well as all the other people affected by this tragedy.