[Update, Saturday afternoon: Bing Travel is now back online.]
Many of the Web sites knocked offline Friday due to the Fisher Plaza data center fire were back up as of early this morning. However, Bing Travel -- the high-profile online travel site of Microsoft -- remained down as of 8:10 a.m. Bing Travel, formerly Farecast, says in a message on the Web site that they are "hard at work to restore service." In the meantime, it is passing consumers on to its travel partner, Orbitz.
We've asked the company to comment this morning, and will update the post when we hear back. But it is perplexing that other sites -- including AllRecipes.com, Big Fish Games, Authorize.net and others that were knocked out Friday -- are back up while Microsoft's travel site remains offline.
On Friday morning, Bing Travel posted a message on the site saying they expected service to return by 5 p.m. that day. However, it is now more than 30 hours since the fire and the travel site still is not operational.
We've been unable to connect with officials at Fisher Plaza. However, AdHost -- a large hosting provider whose clients include Tully's, Boeing, Redfin (see earlier post on how Redfin restored service after the outage) and others -- posted a message on its Web site at 10:59 p.m. Friday indicating that building engineers were still trying to restore power to the facility. (Go here for TechFlash's full coverage of the Fisher Plaza data center fire).
AdHost, whose phone system has been knocked offline, said at the time that it was working through issues and planned to have engineers on site to support clients.
Unfortunately, as with any large outage, there are many contingencies that are discovered only through the restoration process. As such, the restoration time line has been increased several times during the course of the event.
At this point we are antcipating to be restored in /- 2 hours. The process of bypassing the affected electrical components is almost complete and we are hoping that the turn up will go smoothly. We will either update you with any modifications to the time line or, hopefully, advise you once power has been restored to Adhost East data center.
By 3 a.m. Saturday morning, AdHost posted a message on its blog saying that Fisher Plaza East was running on temporary back-up power and that they had begun to power-on servers.
Internap, another large co-location company which operates in Fisher Plaza East, also noted in an email to clients that Fisher Plaza East was "operating normally" on back-up power as of this morning. The company wrote:
As previous notifications have outlined the facility is currently being powered by mobile generators while the facility power infrastructure is being examined further to determine what the correct course of repair should be.
Fisher does not anticipate any further interruptions in power at this time, and as previously noted the Fisher engineering staff and various vendor representatives will be on site at SEF throughout the day to closely monitor the current situation. Internap Facility engineers will also be monitoring the situation closely and are available to assist customers as needed.
Meanwhile, here's a press release that AdHost released in 2007 about the reliability of the Fisher Plaza Data Center. Note, the data center impacted in the recent fire was an adjacent facility, the East facility. Still, this release raises serious questions about what went wrong at Fisher Plaza.
Earthquakes, Natural Disasters Can't Shake Seattle Data Center
New Green Design also is Environmentally Sensitive, Offers Cost Savings
SEATTLE—
“We know it’s critical that our customers’ business servers be up and running, no matter what,” said Will Riffle, Adhost President and CEO. “We can’t afford to have an earthquake damage our facility…or for the power to go out. So we designed a fail-safe facility that would keep business servers humming along—even during a catastrophe.”
The new data center, dubbed Adhost West, was built using top-notch technology and a meticulous design. It’s adjacent to the data center Adhost opened three years ago. Both are housed in Seattle’s high-tech fortress Fisher Plaza, a Northwest telecommunications hub that’s also home to other safety-sensitive companies including KOMO 4 Television, Fisher Radio, AT&T, AboveNet, Time Warner Telecom, MCI, Verizon and more.
Built to meet or exceed N 1 standards for all of its critical systems —Fisher Plaza can withstand earthquakes, severe windstorms, power outages and other calamities. Adhost’s servers are housed in secure buildings that exceed California seismic zone four standards —the toughest in the nation and the same for new hospitals and police stations. With round-the-clock monitoring by in-house technical support staff, some of the region’s biggest businesses have servers colocated at Adhost that chug along hour after hour, day after day, 24x7.
But Adhost’s data center isn’t just secure, it’s also environmentally sensitive. Adhost is cutting energy costs and consumption with louvers that wrap around the outside of the facility. These louvers exchange air with the outside when it’s cold enough, reducing Adhost’s consumption of electricity for data center cooling in chilly Seattle.
“We had a chance to build smarter—and greener—and we took advantage of that,” Riffle said.
Adhost’s new data center also features jumbo-sized 42-inch deep cabinets that accommodate today’s cutting-edge servers. At the same time that servers are being built to run faster and consequently hotter, Adhost’s greener design is helping reduce energy costs and the power needed to cool them.
Take a tour of Adhost’s new data center by contacting Adhost Sales at 206-404-9000 or sales@adhost.com
.ADHOST WEST FEATURES
- 100 tons of N 1 cooling utilizing environmentally friendly external air exchange
- 450 KVA N 1 at full build-out with a common bus for true UPS fail-over
- Perimeter and interior card key access system with 24x7x365 security monitoring
- Seismically braced cabinets with lockable front and back doors for added security
- Pressurized floor with up-flow air system
- Building redundant core network
Both data centers deliver 24-hour surveillance of visitors by security guards and cameras. All of Fisher Plaza is connected to eight multi-megawatt generators that can run at full capacity for weeks with emergency refueling. Plus there are two emergency wells, which can supply water to cooling towers if city water is unavailable. For a full list of our current data center features, visit our Data Center Specifications.
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