Natural Disasters at Data Centers

Besides threats such as power loss and hazards such as physical security breaches, data centers are vulnerable to environmental disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and blizzards. In deciding a place for a data center, companies overlook the possible dangers and elect the data center locations where the firms' offices reside.

 

• Hurricanes - While hurricanes can churn out enormously forceful winds and rain causing flooding, hurricanes can also generate high waves and destructive storm surges as well as causing tornadoes. Most of the eastern border of the United States, from Maine all the way down to Texas, is susceptible to hurricanes. The issue for data centers is primarily with Category 3 or bigger hurricanes (constant winds of 111mph higher). Although data center buildings are generally able to withstand the strong wind and rain, major hurricanes tear down power lines and risk the protection and accessibility of the personnel responsible for the continuous operations of the facility. Data centers in New Orleans were able to operate for days on backup generators after Hurricane Katrina until the fuel supply ran out. Additionally, the personnel on hand were limited to only volunteer workers.

 

• Tornadoes - Unlike hurricanes, which usually target a wide area, tornadoes are localized, ferociously destructive storms characterized by an observable condensation cone. Extremely destructive tornadoes are capable of reaching wind speeds higher than 300mph covering dozens of miles. Since tornadoes are concentrated, the probabilities are that a data center will never encounter a twister. Just a handful of data centers have been damaged by tornadoes, and these tornadoes were triggered by hurricanes. Most data centers, especially ones in “Tornado Alley” located in the Midwestern United States, are built to handle wind speeds higher than 200mph.

 

• Earthquakes - An earthquake is caused by an abrupt release of energy in the earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The vibration caused by the trembling can occasionally trigger landslides, avalanches, floods, fires and tsunamis. Taking into account the sizeable 

amount of data centers in California, data center facilities have numerous technologies around to guard facilities and IT equipment from damage. Nonetheless, earthquakes come with no early warning signs and lead to other possible disasters such as fires, flooding, avalanches and tsunamis while cutting off vital components such as water and power supply.

 

• Blizzards/Snow Storms - Blizzards are snow storms combined with strong winds. They can create dangerous conditions and last for several days in severe situations. The low temperature can cause pipes to freeze and potentially burst. Snow accumulation on rooftops is capable of causing the top roof to collapse. These severe weather conditions can cause HVAC units to malfunction, leading to overheating in data centers if servers aren’t powered off.