RSSFire in downtown Seattle data center knocks out businesses, online services
By Angela Gunn | Published July 3, 2009, 1:03 PM
A fire that started at around 11:15 PDT Thursday night has taken a wide assortment of Seattle businesses, media outlets, and government services offline. It's believed that a fire in a data center at Fisher Plaza set off the automatic sprinklers, which in turn soaked the generators.
A partial list of affected businesses in Seattle shows the importance of the Fisher vault, which is located near Seattle Center and the Space Needle. (Grey's Anatomy fans will believe it to be the location of Seattle Grace.) The payment service provider Authorize.net was knocked out; that company has set up a Twitter account to keep clients posted as they work their way back online. Adhost.com is also offline, right down to the phone system.
The Port of Seattle's mail systems are down, as are Swedish Hospital's internal IT systems. Mars Hill Church's data center rests with the angels. Pacific Science Center's site is offline, as is geocaching.com. Local TV and radio station KOMO is operating from remote broadcasting facilities (translation: a truck in the parking lot). And some Verizon functions are hosted there, though it's not clear how widely the service has been affected.
As of about 10:00 am local time, tech folk were hearing that service might be restored within 2-4 hours. One beleaguered IT pro, who asked not to be identified, noted that he might have to send trucks down to load up his servers if things don't straighten out by then -- and that some of the affected machines haven't been offline "for years," leading to concern that they might not be able to fire back up again.
To follow progress on the problem or to see if a site or business with which you work might be affected, watch the #fisherfire hashtag on Twitter.
Before pointing fingers lets find out what happened. Based on this report it sounds like it was an electrical fire and it will take some time to restore. But it also sounds like the sprinklers put the generators out of commission. That is what I want to know. Exactly how did that happen?
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|It's the "that will never happen to me" mentality. They should have considered a Clean Agent (Waterless) fire suppression system. Novec-1230 and FM-200 gases are both great alternatives to water. Both are people safe and don't destroy the O-zone like Halon did. Both fully discharge with-in 10 seconds of detection.
Check it out at www.healeyfire.com. M. Plumer (248) 373-7800
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|I was an engineer for a national cable systems' division operations and network service group.
Doesn't anybody think about emergency planning in Seattle? Co-location, hot-standby, remote-share linking.
Who on earth uses water-based fire supression systems in a critical data center? Come on people! Isn't there 24x7 staff? Didn't anybody scramble to save the system?
Nothing like putting all your eggs in one basket!
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|there too busy crammin for the last march of the dumb-a** zombie walk and this is suppose to be geek city more like city of idiots
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|Yessir, we are definitely ready for the next major disaster/terrorist attack/zombie invasion. Honestly.
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|KOMO TV is still not back up and running yet. This morning, we were getting a satellite translator for KATU in Portland, OR for selected ABC shows (i.e. Regis & Kelly).
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|well obviously someone hired the incorrect people.
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|One report states that PopCap's Facebook games were housed exclusively in Fisher Plaza as well. That has to be a huge hit for them - where's the resiliency?
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|I believe, but could not confirm in the time I had, that both PopCap and BigFishGames were heavily affected. I'm hoping to talk to both for a folo -- not too often I get an excuse to talk with the games companies :-) .
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|I'm wondering why they don't have a Disaster Recovery Plan for the important services. You don't put all your eggs in one basket.
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|Those affected probably though (at there own peril it seems) they didn't have to worry about it.
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