Hurricane Katrina is wrecking havoc and our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected.
While technical concerns are minicule compared to people's homes and families, reading this Slashdot article reminded me of the fact that I have done business with two different companies that have NOCs in Florida. In both cases I asked my contact, "Do you really think it's a good idea to have a NOC in a place that has so many environmental disasters?" and both times I was assured that this would never, could never, possibly ever be a problem.
In one of those cases involved my (then) own employer. It was a company large enough that I was in a different division and had no real influence on their decisions, and I was probably talking to the wrong person anyway. Alas, this seems to be my week for saying "I told you so."
For all of you that haven't yet built a data center, let me quote from Chapter 17 on building a data center:
Selecting a town and a building is typically out of the hands of the system administration staff. However, if the data center is to serve a worldwide or significant geographic area, and it will be located in an area that is prone to earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, lightning storms, tornados, ice storms or other natural disasters that may cause damage to the data center, or loss of power or communications, you must prepare for these eventualities.
And for those of you that are in Katrina's path, I hope you keep safe and dry!
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