The 2003 Blackout
When the lights went out, CNMC Hosting kept our clients up and running
In August 2003, the east coast of North America experienced the biggest and most detrimental loss of power in the industrial age. Outage-related financial losses were estimated at $6 billion USD for the relatively brief duration of the outage. An estimated 50 million people were affected.
So how is it that our firm managed to keep our data center up and running the entire time?
The power to the facility is fed from two local utility grids that are exempt from local brownouts and blackouts even during high usage periods. The same grids feed hospitals in the area. In the case of a major disaster our data center is on the same level as a national hospital trauma center.
All of our UPS battery back up systems are directly connected to both power grids and are designed to carry 200% of the data center power needs. These systems are online and carrying the full capacity of the data center 24 hours a day. In the event of a power failure, there is no transition time to the UPS. This means that your servers continue to function normally, with zero disruption or downtime for your services.
There are currently eighteen diesel generators that provide the backup for our UPS battery system in the event of a prolonged power failure. These generators engage automatically and provide computer grade power. The power is fed to our UPS systems, conditioned and then delivered to your servers. This failover system is completely automated and a full grid disconnect performance test is conducted every year. In addition, the generators are tested and assessed on a monthly basis.
The CNMC data center has a full on-site fuel farm located under the facility capable of generating backup power for seven days. The fuel is stored in double-walled tanks and is constantly refreshed.
The data center is deemed a critical national infrastructure which ensures priority fuel delivery in the event of an emergency from our contracted fuel suppliers. The Canadian Army is responsible for fuel delivery in the event of a national emergency.
The bottom line is that the CNMC Hosting data center was designed with no single point of failure.
The Conclusion
Nobody understands better than CNMC that risk mitigation and disaster planning are key components to any business. Let us utilize our expertise, experience, dedicated staff and premier data center facility to provide your business with uptime peace of mind.