8/13/04 Service Notice - Hurricane

[admin]

As many of you are aware, there is a hurricane bearing down on Central Florida today, and although Vortech is not expected to be in the direct path of the eye, we are under a hurricane warning and expect to receive some pretty severe weather. In the interest of insuring that the staff is not needlessly placed in harm's way, please be aware that the staff will be unavailable [By Phone] between 2pm and 2am Eastern Standard Time today. We will continue to have technicians monitoring the systems and responding to tickets, around the clock, as usual.

[Curt]

Just batten down the hatches and take care of yourselves. Best wishes folks!

[nelsonke]

Hope you have a diesel back up and have checked the diesel. I just saw that they have upgraded the Hurricane to category 4, and that Disney has shut down. Florida is in our prayers.

[maytricks]

Good luck, based on what they are saying up here, you guys are in for it. Best of luck, hopefully everyone gets through it without injury or property loss.

[Vixen]

The office does not have generators, which is one of the reasons we decided to close the office this afternoon until this all blows over. The other reason is we obviously don't want of the staff in danger.

The datacenter does have backup generators and is on the same power grid as a major hospital (located behind the data center) and the power company is located in front of the data center. So, we are as covered as we can be on that end.

[Curt]

I have to commend you guys on location choice then.

[TonyK]

Just take care of yourselves, I wish you all the best.
Good Luck
Tony

[Carly]

Just an update on the support staff, I'm still up where I am, but it looks like I might lose power soon. So if you submit trouble tickets, it may be awhile before they are answered.

Orlando has lost power already, and I'm a little NE of the office/data center, so it appears I'm the last tech online Don't worry, I'm in a room w/out windows and only a few feet away from our inner area bathroom where I have a mini-shelter setup.

We'll let you know when we're back. Anyone in the area, be safe!

[atlantic2]

Good luck guys!!!

Anyone interested in listening to live news coverage in Orlando can visit:

http://www.wmfe.org/907/listen_live.asp

WMFE - TV

[atlantic2]

While listening to WMFE they said they were on backup power and that's when they went dead, so I guess the power is now gone.... Or either their hosting company is one.

[dpyers]

Looking at the super doppler at http://a.www.orlandoweather.com/index.html it appears the eye is right over Orlando now so they're about halh way through it. Very cool being in the eye - quite a site. It's getting in there and getting out again that's not so cool.

[bigdave]

Orlando took a big hit tonight. Damage includes flooding, loss of power, trees down, but our servers are up. At this time we are not sure when we will be back in the office but please keep checking for more updates.

Thanks,

bigdave
via uplink in chi-town // Nextel... Done!

We're back!!

Well, kind of......

All systems are stable at this time. It appears that all of the staff lost power about 9pm last night (E.S.T.), with mine coming back about 5am this morning. At this time, most of our staff is still without power, but I am monitoring systems and tickets. When I came back online this morning, after an 8 hour outage, we had only (1) client server down - NT30, and partial services down on NT5.

That is an incredible testiment to the staff and what Brad & Craig have built here!!

If you have an urgent issue, please submit a ticket, as phone services are still unavailable at this time. The office is still without power, so we are unable to resume normal support services currently. We will keep you posted as we know more.

My Local Neighborhood:
http://johnkornhiser.com/Personal/hurr_charley04/

[craigdunlop]

Thanks for the update John, what were the wind speeds where you are? Do you have a bottle of whiskey to keep you company in the dark? :-)

Yes if Matrix survive this ol' storm it is testimant to their hardiness.

Is / was there an emergancy procedure should the DOC take a rough hit?

Stay Safe!

[Curt]

Thanks for sharing your pics John. Looks like your area held up relatively well aside from some downed trees (which unfortunately took out a few cars). I hope the rest of the Vortech staff was as lucky. The fact that you immediately started checking into how your employer held up once you regained power shows your dedication, and I'm sure everyone here appreciates it. Look me up if, god forbid, you ever end up unemployed in the Toronto area.

As for hosting, I'm really impressed how well things held up. Obviously things didn't go perfectly, but out of the dozens of servers you guys have, only a couple went down during a category 4 hurricane, and that is simply amazing to me. Of course, I guess things are all relative, because I live in an area where a brush fire can cause a power outage to 63 million people. (that was one year ago today, by the way)

Best wishes to everyone who was or still is in the storm's way. I hope you're all safe and damage is minimal. Take care...