Hurricane Sandy

The storm knocked Buzzfeed, HuffPo and Gawker Media sites offline. Apparently they all use a data center that's located in midtown Manhattan. That kind of blows my mind, because midtown Manhattan seems to me like it would be a horrible place to put a data center.
 
Data centers are often built in buildings that are bought as close to the New York Stock Exchange as possible in order to get an advantage with respect to latency through having shorter cable runs. This may not be exactly the case for the above aforementioned websites but this is a valid reason why people pay multiple millions of dollars to put their equipment in Manhattan.
 
Also, for companies that do host in Manhattan and require redundancy for situations like this, they typically host an alternative site or backup right over the bay in NJ.
 
Handruin said:
Data centers are often built in buildings that are bought as close to the New York Stock Exchange as possible in order to get an advantage with respect to latency through having shorter cable runs. This may not be exactly the case for the above aforementioned websites but this is a valid reason why people pay multiple millions of dollars to put their equipment in Manhattan.
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I can see that for trading and reporting firms, but d'ya think that HuffPo gets a competitive sideboob-posting advantage for being there? ;)

Chicago has a giant datacenter operation in the Merchandise Mart (basically the middle of downtown), and that's a little easier to justify since Chicago isn't on an island and has craploads of reasonable logistics options. Most of the datacenters I've visited were located someplace inconspicuous and close to a couple major highways and at least one airport. The one where I have space rented right now is about half of a city block from the fence that surrounds South Bend's airport.
 
Mercutio said:
I can see that for trading and reporting firms, but d'ya think that HuffPo gets a competitive sideboob-posting advantage for being there? ;)

Chicago has a giant datacenter operation in the Merchandise Mart (basically the middle of downtown), and that's a little easier to justify since Chicago isn't on an island and has craploads of reasonable logistics options. Most of the datacenters I've visited were located someplace inconspicuous and close to a couple major highways and at least one airport. The one where I have space rented right now is about half of a city block from the fence that surrounds South Bend's airport.
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No, I don't think it would make sense from an economic standpoint for someone like Gawker or HuffPo to be there. I was mainly addressing your statement of midtown Manhattan being a horrible place for a data center. I agree it doesn't make sense from a survivability/reliability standpoint but since the monetary benefits seem to outweigh the risks, big businesses do put their equipment there.

I remember a customer demo from Goldman Sacks many years back describing their data center location being out in the mid west right dab smack in the valley of tornado alley. They said the land was cheap and they were able to spend the difference in designing a building that was tornado-proof. It was built 3/4 under ground and the entryway part was designed to be blown off or destroyed. The rest was able to handle a direct hit. They created an identical building 10 miles away to mirror the data. The interesting point was that they built their reliability data center in a zone that was toxic with tornadoes. The land must have been cheap!
 
Commonwealth Edison's main data center was (is?) located about 100 feet below ground. The aboveground portion was basically a house-size concrete structure surrounded by cornfield and containing several elevators. Other places I've been have more or less just been warehouse-looking buildings that were surrounded by other warehouse-looking buildings.

One of the nice things about tornadoes is that they're relatively localized, unlike earthquakes or hurricanes. I've been within a quarter mile of a tornado touching down and the only impact I experienced from it was having to rake a bunch of corn out of my yard.
 
I'm getting reports that many personnel in NJ and VA lost power. NJ especially had flooding. Half the people were not on the teleconference this morning. Apparently it takes a while for the insurance people to show up while your house is flooded.
 
LunarMist said:
I'm getting reports that many personnel in NJ and VA lost power. NJ especially had flooding. Half the people were not on the teleconference this morning. Apparently it takes a while for the insurance people to show up while your house is flooded.
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It's also in NY and CT with lots of people without power and coastal flooding and damage. All the things you might expect when lots of wind and rain roll up onto the shore.
 
mubs said:
Be careful with the amount of carbon monoxide it might put out.
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Thanks. Fortunately we didn't lose power, we do have a couple of combined CO/explosive gas detectors in the place in addition to the standard smoke detectors, also poor insulation and lots of drafts.

Hopefully jtr is ok, I know he lives somewhere in Queens or Brooklyn. Clearly massive damage in the coastal regions. He may be wishing he had a car soon with so much of the subway system submerged. If he's still in the taxi meter repair business he may be busy.
 
A friend that lives in NJ (about an hour from the NY state line) says he's been without power since Monday. Expected to be restored next Monday. He and his family are c-o-l-d! They have gas for cooking and hot water; the only saving grace.
 
At my place we use electricity for everything; heatpump, water heater, oven, everything. I plan on adding solar, but the thought of disasters makes me want to add some local capacity of some kind. Of course, they don't happen here often, and it is never that cold, but still....
 
DD,

Our reliance and dependence on power is so extreme: think lights, internet, computers, washing machines, etc. etc. You can have disasters in your area: earthquakes. I would urge you to go ahead with some local capacity, especially with the little one on the way.
 
Sounds like managing a bank of batteries would be a huge PITA, but I don't know enough about a battery setup that large to know what kind of maintenance is involved. I'd just be too lazy to bother and just use less electricity. How much run time are you looking for? Is this just for nighttime use or extended outages due to unforeseen situations? Too bad California doesn't subscribe to SREC. You could easily break even in a few short years of selling back credits based on your MW generation.
 
There are ways to sell back electricity to the grid and at least break even. This is the way most solar systems (including the one I envisioned for us) would work. Of course, in case of emergency that shuts down power, having a local store would be nice. I'm just not sure whether it is worth the cost/maintenance/complexity to do. Power in my city hasn't been out for longer than an hour since 1989 (earthquake) when it was out for 5 days. Less than an hour doesn't bother me, and I could never have enough local capacity to make it even 3 days.

I can't imagine it is worth it at this point.
 
Batteries are hugely expensive, I'd pass. But a camp stove for cooking and a propane heater, sure.
 
Natural Gas whole house generator. I would like to get one someday. They aren't that expensive. Wife's uncle has one, it kicks on before you know the power is out and life goes on without a blip.
 
Clocker said:
Natural Gas whole house generator. I would like to get one someday. They aren't that expensive. Wife's uncle has one, it kicks on before you know the power is out and life goes on without a blip.
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A coworker of mine did exactly this. It sits outside in its own shed. I remember it being somewhat costly somewhere near $10K for the setup but that could be due to the size or generating capatiy of the unit. He said there are also maintenance contract requirements for these things also. It's a great tool to have and I like the idea of a natural gas generator as opposed to a diesel or petrol. I still like the idea of solar (or wind) as it moves away from dependencies on a supplier.
 
It all depends what you're trying to protect against. Any sort of massive wide scale calamity is likely to eliminate the endless supply of natural gas flowing to your house also.
 
Handruin said:
A coworker of mine did exactly this. It sits outside in its own shed. I remember it being somewhat costly somewhere near $10K for the setup but that could be due to the size or generating capatiy of the unit. He said there are also maintenance contract requirements for these things also. It's a great tool to have and I like the idea of a natural gas generator as opposed to a diesel or petrol. I still like the idea of solar (or wind) as it moves away from dependencies on a supplier.
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A Generac 14KW system runs about $3,500. Install would be about $1,000 on the high side (local contractor) if you want the system that automatically switches over to the generator when your power goes out. It's not rocket science to install one of these but I would probably have a Pro do it. For me this could run my whole house including A/C if I wanted it to. Service contracts are optional but all they really do is change the oil periodically. The system runs a self test like once a week so any problems can be found pretty quickly if they creep up.

Really though, I have had maybe 2-3 outages for about 2 hours of total downtime since the big blackout in 2003. So I'm not too serious about getting one near term.
 
ddrueding said:
At the moment merely entertaining the idea. But the next house I build will likely be completely off grid due to location.
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500 gallon LPG tank? Diesel/gas generator can be a pain to keep filled during an extended outage. Plus that will cover your stove/oven, hot water, clothes dryer and heat.
 
A 500 gallon tank (which has an effective capacity of approx 400 gallons) can run a 16kW generator, which uses 2.5 gallons of propane per hour at full load, for a little over 6 days. Half load at 1.6 gallons per hour will extend that considerably. A 1000 gallon tank with 800 effective gallons is another option for longer runtimes. I'm not suggesting this for a prime power setup, but for backup generation you don't have to worry about fuel degradation like you do with petrol/diesel. Downside is if you live on a seasonal road and the propane truck can't resupply you during the winter etc. In California with some solar panels and a battery bank you could just use the generator for battery top up during cloudy days/nights when demand is greater than available battery capacity.

Edit: gen runtimes not taking into account other utilisation like heat. Cooking and even gas hot water don't use much, forced air heat is a big consumer. Wood/pellet/coal stove would be best in an off grid situation.
 
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