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365 Main outage causes aftershocks in Web world
Valleywag.com ^ | July 25, 2007 | Owen Thomas

Posted on 07/24/2007 10:55:22 PM PDT by HAL9000

Excerpt -

We've now learned more about the outage at 365 Main's San Francisco datacenter that knocked some of the Web's most popular sites offline. The latest theory: An employee, reportedly drunk, hit the emergency-power-off switch in 365 Main's Colo 4 room. Other sites located in other rooms were unaffected. This isn't the first time 365 Main has suffered an EPO-induced outage; a major one still remembered by customers occurred back in April 2005, and another took place last year. After the jump, a gallery of the carnage caused, and a roundup of reactions.

Some of the affected websites -- most of which are back online -- played it straight with customers, like Craigslist. Others offered the usual pack of lies websites trot out. AdBrite, for example, tried to claim that the outage was due to "scheduled maintenance," and RedEnvelope, the e-commerce gifts site which just today crowed about moving all of its Web operations to 365 Main, said the outage was a systems upgrade. Busted!

~ snip ~


(Excerpt) Read more at valleywag.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Technical; US: California
KEYWORDS: 365main; craigslist; drunk; offline; poweroutage; www
An employee, reportedly drunk, hit the emergency-power-off switch in 365 Main's Colo 4 room.

This reminds me of an incident when a fellow was carrying a ladder out of the computer room and accidentally bumped the Big Red Switch above the door. The Big Red Switch was installed to perform an emergency shutdown on the mainframe in case of a fire. It took a while to recover from that mess.

1 posted on 07/24/2007 10:55:26 PM PDT by HAL9000
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To: HAL9000
365 Main's Colo 4 room

Colo room? I don't need to know
(in real life I know what it means, but in SanFran life, I don't need to know)

A. It's San Francisco. Normal people don't care. Everyone there is infected or soon will be. All the normal people have fled.

B. The link, at valleywag.com? It read like an Andy Dick monologue.

2 posted on 07/24/2007 11:10:36 PM PDT by suffering_fools
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To: HAL9000

> Others offered the usual pack of lies websites trot out.

It’s called “marketing”.


3 posted on 07/24/2007 11:12:04 PM PDT by glorgau
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To: suffering_fools
"Colo" is an abbreviation for Colocation.
4 posted on 07/24/2007 11:12:25 PM PDT by HAL9000
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To: HAL9000

A major West Coast hospital chain had consolidated its dozens of data centers into a single building in Phoenix, putting all its eggs in a very carefully watched basket. The consolidated data center had all kinds of power backups: multiple grids, powerful batteries, diesel generators. One day a technician was maintaining the battery unit when he dropped a wrench, shorting out the batteries and bringing the entire multistate system to a halt for a whole day.


5 posted on 07/24/2007 11:14:27 PM PDT by AZLiberty (President Fred -- I like the sound of it.)
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To: HAL9000
in real life I know what it means

Not to repeat myself, repeat myself...

6 posted on 07/24/2007 11:19:29 PM PDT by suffering_fools
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To: AZLiberty; IowaHawk
Is everything still down? I'm in Southeast Asia and FReerepublic is one of the only sites I can access right now.

Google and Yahoo - Can't access

Can't access many blogs either including my own or Iowahawk

7 posted on 07/24/2007 11:21:03 PM PDT by expatguy (Support - "An American Expat in Southeast Asia")
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To: expatguy

Try Clusty.


8 posted on 07/24/2007 11:35:13 PM PDT by Westlander (Unleash the Neutron Bomb)
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To: HAL9000

I was in that blackout today in SF—I’m on the 8th floor of a 13 story building and when the power went out and the alarms went off I was the 4th person out of the building, from way up on the 8th floor. . .it’s so amazing to me how no one feels any urgency to get out of a building with a fire alarm going—after 9-11 I always think of those crowded stairwells. I really don’t want a building coming down on my head. . .


9 posted on 07/24/2007 11:35:51 PM PDT by olivia3boys
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To: HAL9000

Sounds like one of the perks of the job is the ability to drink on the job.


10 posted on 07/25/2007 12:09:27 AM PDT by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
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To: HAL9000

SixStep (the colo site for LiveJournal) went down, taking LJ with it. I can’t wait to watch the fun as they get it back up...


11 posted on 07/25/2007 12:17:02 AM PDT by B-Chan (Catholic. Monarchist. Texan. Any questions?)
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To: expatguy
FReerepublic is one of the only sites I can access right now.

You don't need anything else :)
12 posted on 07/25/2007 6:31:59 AM PDT by advance_copy (Stand for life, or nothing at all)
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To: HAL9000
Valleywag is retracting the story about the drunk employee -

Drunk editor kills the gossip item you care about

13 posted on 07/26/2007 3:33:23 PM PDT by HAL9000
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To: HAL9000

i see a vision of homer sitting at his console at the power plant.


14 posted on 07/26/2007 3:35:00 PM PDT by thefactor
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To: HAL9000
About 9 year ago, a place I was contracting for decided to have a "take your daughters to work" day. The lead programmer took his little girl into the data center for just a few minutes while he did some stuff. Yup, she hit the BRS (Big Red Switch). Killed the power in the data center. Luckily, she couldn't reach the OBRS (Other Big Red Switch, also known as the Halon switch!)

The servers and batch processors (about 50 windows servers, a few Novell servers, and a VAX cluster, plus at least 100 batch processing PCs.) took about an hour and a half to bring back up!

Mark

15 posted on 07/26/2007 3:41:43 PM PDT by MarkL (Listen, Strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government)
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