Hurricane Threatens U.S. Internet Data Centers

[Updated] International media is reporting that Hurricane Sandy may affect data centers on the U.S. East Coast, and “damage to these server centers could potentially spark outages that would affect nearly everyone using the web.”

The UK’s Express reports: “Massive companies like Google, Apple and Amazon host their servers in specialist ‘farms’ – at least six of which are based in areas right in the path of the ‘Frankenstorm’.

“There are also key cloud service providers in Virginia, Delaware, District of Columbia, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York at risk.”

Hurricane Sandy’s winds are about 1,000 miles in diameter, photo courtesy of NASA:

The NY Daily News reports: “The unprecedented storm has already left thousands without power in Virginia, the home of data centers that keep popular sites like Amazon, Google, Netflix and Apple up and running.

“Damage to these server centers could potentially spark outages that would affect nearly everyone using the Web, given that Amazon’s cloud powers over one percent of the Internet, according to Mashable.

“Companies are working to keep the centers functional – but this wouldn’t be the first time nasty weather has taken down Amazon’s cloud hosting service.

“Amazon suffered a large outage back in July after a thunderstorm hit its data center in northern Virginia. Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram all suffered from the storm.”

Forbes reports that: “In Frankenstorm’s path lies a critical data center of AWS in North Virginia.”  This data center hosts major international websites including Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram, as well as countless other websites including Bernews.

With the lack of large scale hosting infrastructure in Bermuda, it is likely that other local websites are also hosted in data centers on the East Coast.

Update Oct 30, 11am: Hurricane Sandy took down major international websites including Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Gawker, Gizmodo and more.

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