#3 Serverbeach

During a storm a power feed failure lead to the ServerBeach datacentre to switch onto generator power.
Sadly at SB the generators didn’t cover the aircon units, just the servers.
Internal temperatures quickly soared to 60+ degrees in the DC, meaning everything had to be immediately shut down to save the building catching fire.

Time for a design rethink lads ?

#2 Rackspace

Rackspace gets a lot of business out of their ficticious claims of 100% uptime, yet regularly suffer outages (as do all hosts).
In one peculiar incident a truck drove into their transformers, causing everything to switch to generators (like Serverbeach)
The RS back-up generators unfortunately lacked the proper cooling needed to sustain the power creation and so were pulled offline, taking all the websites with them.

The fanatics on the live-chat tried to lie about it, but the news was already public knowledge

#1 DreamHost

No list of DC fvckups could be complete without the multiple outages at DH - and my personal fave of 2007 the datacentre is on fire.
Apparently after a power problem, DH switched to generators which then caught fire. This tends to mean power stops
Servers start to go down, email stops, websites vanish - and not just a few - a serious number of customers found themselves without their hosting in the fire-prone DC, leading to several hundred angry clients posting negative feedback on the DH-Blog

Does no-one in the US actually *TEST* generators ?

1&1 Internet, Inc., the US subsidary of our friends United Internet A.G. announced 24/August/2006 that it will open a new data centre in Lenexa, Kansas City, Kansas, United States, during the 1st quarter 2007.

Specifications
• Approximate cost $11,000,000
• Staff 15
• Size 55,000 sq.ft. facility
• Housing upto 40,000 servers
• Purpose to house the company’s U.S. and Canadian web hosting client base

Currently, 1&1’s US/Canada customers are hosted in two rented data centers in New York and New Jersey, these are expected to close once the Kansas facility is operational.

Andreas Gauger, Chairman, 1&1 Internet…

“Opening another location besides our headquarters in the Philadelphia area underscores the importance of our U.S. business, 1&1 will invest up to $9 million in the Lenexa site this year and several millions more in 2007.”

Kansas City Secretary of Commerce, Howard Fricke…

“We are pleased to welcome 1&1 Internet’s new facility to Kansas, to be chosen by the world’s fastest-growing Web host truly speaks volumes about the business-friendly climate we have created in Kansas.
1&1 Internet will be a great addition to the Kansas business community, and we look to the company to be a leader for years to come.”

According to an article published in the New York Times, 8/June/2006, Google Seeks More Power, yet another new massive datacentre is to be constructed utilising the enormous power-generation capabilities of the Columbia River.

This joins MSN and Yahoo!, who already have building works underway in border towns between southern Washington and northern Oregon, all wanting to take advantage of the cheap electricity provided by the powerful mountain river.

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