Data Centers, IT Staff Brace for Hurricane Earl

Hurricane Earl has developed into a powerful category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 135 miles per hour. Forecasts project that the massive storm will graze the Atlantic Coast, but even an indirect hit from a major hurricane involves substantial wind and rain, and can be disruptive to lives, property and IT operations. Here’s a roundup of coverage of the business continuity issues raised by the approach of Earl:

• Is Your Data Center Ready? - From Information Management magazine: “With Hurricane Earl barreling toward the east coast and Tropical Storm Fiona on its heels, many IT managers are scrambling to review disaster preparedness plans to ensure they can keep systems up and running. While most data centers have well constructed disaster preparedness plans, now is a good time to review the plans to ensure staff and business partners are ready to respond to prevent costly downtime or business disruptions.”
• 7 Disaster Recovery Tips for Government Agencies – From EnterpriseStorageForum.com: “With Hurricane Earl gaining strength off of the Eastern Seaboard, many state and local agencies are investigating what they can do to keep operations up and running during a major disruption such as a hurricane. Here’s a business continuity checklist can help state and local agencies take the first steps to avoid costly downtime, reduce inconvenience to constituents, and prevent disruption of critical services provided by the organization to the public.”
• Hurricane Earl may test IT teleworkers - Insightful piece from Patrick Thibodeau at ComputerWorld: “If Hurricane Earl, now a major hurricane, hits the East Coast of the U.S. later this week, the top concern for IT executives may not be data center outages but loss of Internet access for telecommuting workers.”
• Nasuni Offers “Hurricane Giveaway” – Cloud storage gateway Nasuni has pegged a promotion to the approach of Earl: “We want to help companies plan for disaster during this particularly dangerous season, so from September 1 through November 30, 2010, we’re offering the Filer free to businesses in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Lousiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.”

Major hurricanes also create a storm of traffic for the leading weather sites. See Weather Sites Gird for Hurricane Season for details on how these sites manage their infrastructure and handle peak traffic preparations.

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About Rich Miller

Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.