Hurricane Rita has reached category 5 status and is currently heading towards the Houston Data Centre that houses both Sydenham Town servers. It is expected to arrive in the early hours of Saturday.
The DC is hunkered down. Generators have been tested and upstream providers checked out. We hope there will be no problem but that depends on every provider doing their job and no unexpected events.
If we lose the Houston servers we will switch the domains to our local UK servers. However your PC or ISP settings may still route requests to Houston. If so - you can go directly to our emergency page at: http://v2.brainsys.co.uk for the latest information.
Hurricane to hit Sydenham?
The latest information is that Houston will endure hurricane conditions from about midnight tonight for the next 20 hours - the period of maximum risk. The eye is due to go ashore around 1pm Saturday BST but there is a 100 miles of storm in front of the eye and another 100 behind - moving at 10mph.
I have been watching Houston TV (http://www.khou.com) and opinions differ as to whether the eye will continue on its current track which would be a direct hit or take an expected turn eastwards which would put the city on the less severe side of the storm. The good news is that in the last 36 hours the hurricane has weakened from 175 to 135mph winds and pressure is still rising.
The Data Centre Manager & crew who are camped out in the DC proudly declared they are taking their constitutional right to be armed and use them on any looter. It is a different country....
I have been watching Houston TV (http://www.khou.com) and opinions differ as to whether the eye will continue on its current track which would be a direct hit or take an expected turn eastwards which would put the city on the less severe side of the storm. The good news is that in the last 36 hours the hurricane has weakened from 175 to 135mph winds and pressure is still rising.
The Data Centre Manager & crew who are camped out in the DC proudly declared they are taking their constitutional right to be armed and use them on any looter. It is a different country....
UPDATE
Things are OK at the Data Centre ATM. The Hurricane moved away and moderated at the last moment so conditions are blusterly and wet. Less than they have experienced before.
Mains power is still on but because of fluctuations the DC decided to move to backup generators at 2am this morning. These consume a tankerful of fuel a day! As all power goes through a huge bank of UPS batteries they can easily switch their power source without disturbing the servers.
A webcam of their car park from the DC for true anoraks can be found here: http://www.ev1.net/stats/ritacam1.html
The major threat has moved out to Monday & Tuesday when, if the storm stalls in front of an existing pressure zone, it will dump huge quantities of water somewhere which could disrupt communications. Those tankers do need to get through.
Things are OK at the Data Centre ATM. The Hurricane moved away and moderated at the last moment so conditions are blusterly and wet. Less than they have experienced before.
Mains power is still on but because of fluctuations the DC decided to move to backup generators at 2am this morning. These consume a tankerful of fuel a day! As all power goes through a huge bank of UPS batteries they can easily switch their power source without disturbing the servers.
A webcam of their car park from the DC for true anoraks can be found here: http://www.ev1.net/stats/ritacam1.html
The major threat has moved out to Monday & Tuesday when, if the storm stalls in front of an existing pressure zone, it will dump huge quantities of water somewhere which could disrupt communications. Those tankers do need to get through.