I watched a DataCenter get hit by a Hurricane … and recover

I don’t often re-post vendor marketing content – but since they let me be a small part of simulating a hurricane/flood of a datacenter …

Symantec rented out a 6-story hurricane (100mph) simulator in South Carolina … and then flooded a working datacenter server-stack with 35,000 gallons of water:

Most folks know me as a 23-year backup dude, but high-availability and BC/DR have always been part of my world too: from Netware SFTIII to Microsoft WolfPack (clusters).  So, when Symantec wanted to test their availability solution and invited me behind-the-scenes, I jumped on a plane.  Like you, I have read about or even repeated second-hand stories about major weather impacts to IT datacenters, but this was a chance to see one up close.  Admittedly, I was hoping that servers would explode, instead of just short out from the water, but it was still fun.

At 0:32, Symantec is explaining to me what should happen during the crisis.

At 2:07, I confirmed that their multi-tiered application failed over seamlessly to a different datacenter.

Here is their Behind The Scenes video from http://symantec.com/businesscontinuity:

EMBED-2 (not yet avail)

My perspectives are from 3:33-4:44. 

Symantec, thanks for letting me be a small part of a very cool day.

Thanks for watching.

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