"The Planet" fire takes down thousands of websites

[lost_packet]

I know that MSFN forum is hosted at The Planet Internet Services in Texas. A fire at The Planet's H1 data centre in Houston, Texas on Saturday took out 9,000 servers and thousands of websites.

In messages posted on the Planet's forum, the company blamed a faulty transformer for the explosion and fire. No servers or networking equipment were damaged, but the data centre remains without power, after The Planet shut down all generators "as instructed by the fire department." So the "failsafe" UPS backup failed in this case.

A statement from Douglas J. Erwin, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, on Monday June 2nd:

As previously committed, I would like to provide an update on where we stand following yesterday's explosion in our H1 data center. First, I would like to extend my sincere thanks for your patience during the past 28 hours. We are acutely aware that uptime is critical to your business, and you have my personal commitment that The Planet team will continue to work around the clock to restore your service. As you have read, we have begun receiving some of the equipment required to start repairs. While no customer servers have been damaged or lost, we have new information that damage to our H1 data center is worse than initially expected. Three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed. There is some good news, however. We have found a way to get power to Phase 2 (upstairs, second floor) of the data center and to restore network connectivity...

More information on the restoration at The Planet's network status forum here:

http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185

[Zxian]

Man... this and Universal Studios... fire/explosion damage seems to be more "upfront" lately....