H1 Data Center Offline - Status Updates Available Here Options

[uvashi]

To keep you up-to-date, here is the latest information about the outage in our H1 data center.

We expect to be able to provide initial power to parts of the H1 data center beginning at 5:00 p.m. CDT. At that time, we will begin testing and validating network and power systems, turning on air-conditioning systems and monitoring environmental conditions. We expect this testing to last approximately four hours.

Following this testing, we will begin to power-on customer servers in phases. These are approximate times, and as we know more, we will keep you apprised of the situation.

We will update you again around 2:30 p.m. this afternoon.



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Urvish Vashi
Director, Product Management
The Planet

[uvashi]

The networking teams are ensuring connectivity to bring ServerCommand back online. Please expect another update on ServerCommand shortly. We are seeing fewer DNS issues as the new addresses continue to propagate.

Our primary focus is to hit our 5:00pm CDT initial power test and all necessary staff are onsite and are working diligently to hit this deadline. Additional staff and spare server hardware is being delivered in on site in preparation for bringing customer servers online pending a successful power test.



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Urvish Vashi
Director, Product Management
The Planet

[uvashi]

We are continuing to pursue plans as noted in our last message, and we have no additional updates at this time. At 4:30, we will plan to issue another message.



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Urvish Vashi
Director, Product Management
The Planet

[uvashi]

As you may have already noticed, our forum servers continue to lag due to very heavy load. This is in part to due to the fact that our outage is now being carried on several sites (including Slashdot). Even though we added servers to our forums last night, we are looking at alternatives at this time to provide simple status updates quickly.

We are still working on getting all management systems up, but Legacy EV1 domain customers can access a backup management panel hosted by Tucows at https://manage.opensrs.net. There are some limitations to these backup systems, changes may be restricted if the domain is locked, and use may be intermittent until the servers hosting the main domain management systems in H1 are back online.

We have no other update at this time regarding our planned power test at 5:00pm.

Regards,



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Urvish Vashi
Director, Product Management
The Planet

[uvashi]

We continue to pursue our plans to provide initial power to our H1 data center this evening. It will take several hours to assure power can be safely restored to the facility. Based on how the initial work goes, we will have more information to provide you in the upcoming hours. We will post another update by 7:30 pm tonight.

In the meantime, we have further rerouted both old and new IP addresses for our name servers previously housed in H1. This means that the servers can start resolving IP addresses on both their former and new addresses, and this will alleviate the issues we have been seeing with propagation delay from this address change.

As always, please continue to monitor this thread or contact our support teams if you have any questions.




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Urvish Vashi
Director, Product Management
The Planet

[Kevin Hazard]

We continue to work to restore power to the data center and bring all affected customer servers online.

Currently, ServerCommand is back online.

https://www.servercommand.net

[Kevin Hazard]

As previously committed, I would like to provide an update on where we stand following yesterday's explosion in our H1 data center. First, I would like to extend my sincere thanks for your patience during the past 28 hours. We are acutely aware that uptime is critical to your business, and you have my personal commitment that The Planet team will continue to work around the clock to restore your service.

As you have read, we have begun receiving some of the equipment required to start repairs. While no customer servers have been damaged or lost, we have new information that damage to our H1 data center is worse than initially expected. Three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed.

There is some good news, however. We have found a way to get power to Phase 2 (upstairs, second floor) of the data center and to restore network connectivity. We will be powering up the air conditioning system and other necessary equipment within the next few hours. Once these systems are tested, we will begin bringing the 6,000 servers online. It will take four to five hours to get them all running.

We have brought in additional support from Dallas to have more hands and eyes on site to help with any servers that may experience problems. The call center has also brought in double staff to handle the increase in tickets we're expecting. Hopefully by sunrise tomorrow Phase 2 will be well on its way to full production.

Let me next address Phase 1 (first floor) of the data center and the affected 3,000 servers. The news is not as good, and we were not as lucky. The damage there was far more extensive, and we have a bigger challenge that will require a two-step process. For the first step, we have designed a temporary method that we believe will bring power back to those servers sometime tomorrow evening, but the solution will be temporary. We will use a generator to supply power through next weekend when the necessary gear will be delivered to permanently restore normal utility power and our battery backup system. During the upcoming week, we will be working with those customers to resolve issues.

We know this may not be a satisfactory solution for you and your business but at this time, it is the best we can do.

We understand that you will be due service credits based on our Service Level Agreement. We will proactively begin providing those following the restoration of service, which is our number priority, so please bear with us until this has been completed.

I recognize that this is not all good news. I can only assure you we will continue to utilize every means possible to fully restore service.

I plan to have an audio update tomorrow evening.

Until then,

Douglas J. Erwin
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

To centralize communication for easy access, you can check http://service-update.theplanet.com/ for additional updates.

[Tomy Durden]

If you're using Orbit, go to your hardware description(https://orbit.theplanet.com/nav_hardware/a3_server_details.htm?hw_id=) page and look for the following:

Hardware Object's Upstream Connection:aj31b.01.dllstx6 (10.6.201.94) Port: FastEthernet0/11

(switch).(phase).(data center)
switch: aj31b
phase: 01
data center: dllstx6

[Kevin Hazard]

After the fire marshall inspected the H1 location, we were given the green light to bring power back to the facility. The generators have been turned on, and we are receiving power on the second floor. The generator power restoration is the first step in the full restoration of service to the data center.

From here, we will begin the process of cooling the DC floor, which could take a few hours. As soon as the power integrity is confirmed and the DC floor is ready for operation, we will be restoring power and checking server hardware on a rack-by-rack basis.

[Kevin Hazard]

Following the restoration of power to the second floor of the data center, we've cooled the data center floor and are now in the process of systematically restoring power to racks.

We've got a full staff in the data center to power up racks in sections and verify that the server hardware starts up successfully. This process may take a few hours to restore service to all customer servers on the second floor.

[Kevin Hazard]

We are continuing the process of turning on and verifying hardware integrity of customer servers on the second floor of H1.

Our network operations team is currently working on the ev1servers.net nameservers to ensure that they are online, are routed to correctly, and propogate as quickly as possible.

Servercommand is currently online and accessible.

[Kevin Hazard]

As we continue to restore power to customer servers on the second floor, several customers have reported intermittent losses of connectivity. This connectivity loss is due to the balancing of network gear in the data center and is unrelated to power.

[Kevin Hazard]

Our network engineers have been working on the ev1servers.net nameservers. Currently, the nameservers are visible to the majority of the Internet, and we hope to have complete visibility very soon.

[Kevin Hazard]

We've made significant progress in restoring customer servers on the second floor (phase 2) of H1. The data center staff is still in the process of verifying that servers booted appropriately and are troubleshooting any that have not yet come online.

Per Doug's earlier message, we are still on target to restore service to the first floor (phase 1) by this evening.

[Kevin Hazard]

Our network engineers and Unix IS teams are working to restore service to the following H1 resolvers: 207.218.192.38 and 207.218.192.39

[Kevin Hazard]

With the start of another official workday (though a large number of people on the team have been working through the night), we are poised for a significant amount of work on both phases of our H1 data center. We have a full team of people on site working to ensure our targets are met to restore power to H1, Phase 1 (first floor).

[Brooke-Sales]

We now have 90% of servers located on the second floor of H1 online. Support technicians are on location to manually bring the remaining 10% online.

[Brooke-Sales]

Our network engineers are currently working on the resolvers. ETA for resolution is unknown at this time.

[Brooke-Sales]

We now have offsite resolvers our customers are welcome to use.

NTT x.ns.verio.net 129.250.35.250

NTT y.ns.verio.net 129.250.35.251

[Brooke-Sales]

Onsite technicians are currently working to restore service to the remaining 10% of Phase 2 upstairs servers. The Phase 1 downstairs servers are expected to start coming online late this evening.