In like a lion: tornado season
March 2, 2012 by Caleb Tennis · Leave a Comment
Here we are at the beginning of March. This winter has been the most mild I can recall in Indiana history. I didn’t even shovel snow once this season.
On Feb 29th, the high temperature at Data Cave was 66 degrees. That warm spell was kicked off with two lines of thunderstorms that came during a 12 hour period, which created tornado and thunderstorm warnings in Southern Indiana and Northwestern Kentucky.
Three days later, on Fri Mar 2nd, most of Indiana is under a severe weather alert. Northern Kentucky, including Louisville, is a 6/6 on the tornado probability scale. There are reports that a tornado touched down in Southern Indiana near Henryville as well. The red patches on the radar overwhelm everything else.
NOAA Radar from March 2nd
If there’s one thing that’s evident about midwest weather, it’s that the thunderstorms are becoming more and more violent. Today’s line was the first of the year, and a reminder and wakeup call for just how powerful mother nature can be. Storms are predicted again Tuesday of next week. It’s going to be a busy season.
With all of this in mind, it’s the perfect time to be thinking: is your data center prepared? Any halfway decent facility will be prepared for power outages. But is yours protected from lightning strikes? Transient surges? Tornados?
What about your office building? Are your records properly backed up off site? Is that facility far enough away to be safe if something major happens to your primary site?
These are the questions you should be asking, and reasking, at least every year. The beginning of storm season is the perfect time to revisit it.
Let us help you build a solid disaster recovery plan.
Indiana Data Centers
February 8, 2012 by Kara Manon · Leave a Comment
There has been a lot of talk about Indiana lately. For example, Indianapolis just hosted its first Super Bowl, which is absolutely fantastic for a native Hoosier like myself (especially considering the Patriots lost). There was so much praise for our capital city that there might even be hope that we could host another Super Bowl in the future. The massively popular 800-foot zipline in Super Bowl Village is leaving other host cities wondering if they should follow suit. On another sports related note, the Pacers are doing surprisingly well this year. Let’s not forget that Bloomington, Indiana was named one of the 10 Best Cities for Data Centers. How great is that? Considering Data Cave is the closest Tier IV data center to Bloomington, that’s pretty exciting.
On top of everything else, the weather had been unseasonably warm. All-in-all, not a bad time to be living in Indiana.
So, why should you choose a data center in Columbus, Indiana?
First, the Midwest is a logical location for a data center. Land, power, and other associated costs of building or leasing a data center are lower than places like California, New York, New Jersey, etc. When leasing space from a Midwest data center like Data Cave, those savings get passed along to the customer. The Midwest is free of things like Hurricanes, Tsunamis and major earthquakes which is always a plus. Of course, we do have to worry about tornadoes which is why Data Cave was built to withstand 200+ mph winds (EF5 rating). I’m not kidding, if there’s a tornado coming, you can find me and my husband camped out at Data Cave. Typically, it isn’t the wind you have to worry about, it’s what the wind is carrying that can cause damage. Debris would have to go through 2 concrete walls (12″ and 8″ blocks) reinforced with one-inch rebar in order to get through to customer equipment. I’d also like to point out that there are also no windows around our customer suites. Seems logical, right? No one could bust a window to get in and debris can’t fly through easily. Okay, back to the tornado discussion. On this list of the 25 deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history, only one of them went through Indiana and that was in 1925. So, I would say that the chances of a EF4 or EF5 tornado in Indiana are slim. Actually, EF4 rated tornadoes and above account for 1% of all tornadoes and I’ve even seen that percentage as low as .1%.
I’ve shown some benefits of being in the Midwest but what about Columbus, Indiana? Columbus sits outside of Metropolitan areas. This means there is more “buffer acreage”, less people, no shared building space (i.e. strip mall) and it doesn’t affect your connectivity. All of this equates to higher security for your equipment. Data Cave sits on 21 acres on a private drive and gated entrance. You won’t find anyone randomly walking around our building at night or any other time for that matter. However, Data Cave is still within driving distance of Indianapolis, Louisville and Cincinnati. We have clients based in Bloomington, Indianapolis, Louisville, and more. One of our clients is even based in Seattle, Washington and another has locations all over the U.S. that need to be connected.
I’ve been working for Data Cave since September and I can tell you that it doesn’t take long to become impressed with the place. It’s a safe place for your equipment and we know what we’re doing. It also doesn’t take weeks to get things done around here. We have technicians, engineers, programmers who are so knowledgeable that it blows my mind. But seriously, don’t just listen to me, you should see it for yourself.
Call us at 866-514-2283 or fill out our little form and request more info.
A Data Center by Design: Not just another brick in the wall
January 18, 2012 by bczachura · Leave a Comment
Wizard of Oz
I have been fascinated by tornadoes my entire life. Ever since my first exposure to the twister in the Wizard of Oz (don’t laugh it seemed quite real and scary to a seven year old), I have always wanted to see one first hand. You would think that growing up in the Midwest I would have had plenty of opportunities, but the closest I ever got was video from Storm Chasers and the Weather Channel. That changed this last summer when I finally had the chance to see one up close and personal.
It was the middle of the day when the tornado warning sirens went off and my first reaction was to run to the front of our facility, push open the door and ‘check it out”. Maybe not the smartest thing to do, but when you love storms, it’s almost an irresistible impulse (that’s my story and I am sticking to it). Getting the door open was no trivial matter in itself as the front of the storm was packing winds of close to 75 MPH. The light rain coming down was actually moving horizontally, and part of me wanted to run out into the parking lot to see what it was like to walk in those kinds of winds. Now I know some of you are shaking your heads and labeling me as slightly nutty, but I bet at least some of you would have been tempted to do exactly the same thing. Somehow caution prevailed (I think it may have had to do more with the look I could anticipate from my wife when I explained to her how I got soaked rather than any sudden streak of common sense) and I stayed in the doorway.
Low and behold, as I watched about a quarter of a mile away that horizontal rain suddenly started to move in a in a giant slow circle, and I was able to watch the entire process as the overhead cloud started rotating, and the dark funnel slowly descended until it touched the ground. Totally awesome! I am still at a loss as to why it never entered my mind to take a picture or a video.
It was absolutely perfect! Nobody was hurt, and most of the damage was limited to some trees. Now, I have to admit that if I had been in my car or at home this experience would have brought with it a fairly high level of, well…fear. I have a great respect for the power involved in that type of storm and while I want to watch it, I don’t really want to participate in it. But I had the good fortune that day to be at work which is the Data Cave data center, a facility designed and built from the ground up to withstand winds in excess of 
207MPH. If the tornado had decided to make a turn, or had come down right in our front yard all I had to do was take two steps back, let the door close, and I would be protected by rebar reinforced, 12inch thick concrete-filled block walls rated to shrug off an EF5 tornado. Now I realize all that design and construction was implemented to protect our clients IT equipment, but let me tell you if you have to be in the vicinity of a tornado that is the place to do it from.
Next time, I promise to take some pictures.
Storm Photos from May 25, 2011
Data Center Design by Design: Keeping the Roof Over Our Heads
