Will Diesel shortages be the next unwelcome event after Sandy?

There are hundreds of diesel generators running to make-up for the power outages after Sandy.

FEMA has deployed hundreds of diesel generators in addition to the existing ones in place.

"Power generation tends to drive all the response and recovery activities," said FEMA chief Craig Fugate on Tuesday, adding that his agency had deployed hundreds of generators around the East Coast before the storm.

The EPA has issued a waiver for low sulfur diesel.

NEW YORK | Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:57pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday granted New Jersey a temporary waiver on Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) requirements to help counter a shortfall in fuel supplies in parts of the state following Hurricane Sandy.

The waiver allows for the sale of diesel fuel that exceeds standards of 15 parts per million of sulfur under limited conditions effective immediately, according to a letter from EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to Governor Chris Christie.

The EPA letter is here.

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Green Data Center Blog is on diesel generators with manual fuel delivery, up to 4hrs before someone needs to hike up the stairs

Squarespace is the Blog hosting service I use for the Green Data Center Blog.  

Squarespace is in Peer1 facility which is without utility power, and a flooded basement where the diesel fuel is stored.

Yesterday I received this e-mail.

Dear Customer,

I have some unfortunate news to share. Our primary data center, Peer1, in Lower Manhattan lost power yesterday at about 4:30PM local time. At that time, we smoothly made the transition to generator power and took comfort over the fact that we had enough fuel to last three to four days. (Peer1 stayed online during the last 3 major natural disasters in the area, including a blackout that lasted for days.)

At 8:30PM yesterday, we received reports that the lobby in the data center's building was beginning to take on water. By 10:30PM, as is sadly the case in most of Lower Manhattan, Peer1's basement had experienced serious flooding. At 5AM, we learned our data center's fuel pumps and fuel tanks were completely flooded and unable to deliver any more fuel. At 8AM, they reported that the generators would be able to run for a maximum of four more hours.

Luckily, Peer 1 did not go down as expected.  What did they do?  They are hand carrying the fuel to the diesel generator on the 17th floor.  Here is the complete thread with updates.

Update [12:40pm ET]

Good news and bad news.

We were able to give the crew 90 minutes off because the tank is full. That’s about 4 hours of power given daytime usage. We’ll start back up at 1:30. Our awesome teammates are hoofing lunch over the Brooklyn Bridge for us. As we’ve said before, this situation is untenable. We can’t keep manpower going 24/7 for days.

They are trying to pump the fuel, but are finding out how hard a pump has to work to pump up to the 17th floor.

The building’s first attempt at an alternative method for pumping fuel to the 18th floor has failed, as the fuel pump wasn’t powerful enough. They believe they have sourced an alternate pump, but given the situation in New York City right now, we’re in a wait-and-see posture. Fuel- and water-pumps are in short supply.

Here is the flooded basement where the fuel was supposed to be pumped from.

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Here are more photos they have shared.

ssshhh, don't say anything about trans-Atlantic circuits being down

I've heard from a few that some trans-Atlantic circuits are down.  With power outages and flooding from Sandy, some data centers are reported out, but what doesn't get much news is the trans-Atlantic circuits.

GigaOm's Barb Darrow has a post on this topic.

Superstorm Sandy wreaks havoc on internet infrastructure

Data center sites and colocation centers in and around New York City are struggling to stay online with varying degrees of success. And there are reports of intermittent issues with undersea cables crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

Hurricane Sandyphoto: Flickr / NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Updated: Hurricane Sandy continued to take a toll on internet infrastructure in New York City and beyond on Tuesday.

  • There were sporadic issues with undersea cable Atlantic Crossing-2 (or AC-2), sources said. These cables are the main data lifeline between continents.

Here is a close up of one company's trans-Atlantic connections at risk.

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Making Money in Cloud, Nov 6, 2012 Roundtable Webinar

I was looking at the GigaOm Pro Roundtable Webinar and saw an interesting talk that sounded good to attend.

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
Cloudonomics: Making the cloud pay

DATE: November 6, 2012
TIME: 10 a.m. PDT



In this webinar we will discuss how the core characteristics of the cloud – such as on-demand resources, usage-based charging and geographic dispersion – translate into business value; revenue growth, cost and risk reduction, and improved customer experience.

Topics include:
  • Economic and strategic perspective of computing as a utility
  • Public versus private cloud economics and where conventional wisdom err
  • How cloud technology and ecosystems will evolve over the next decade
     
  • Hear from Joe Weinman, the founder of ‘cloudonomics’ and take part in a Q&A with Joe on the topic

Within a few more seconds, I realized, oh yeh.  I am on the panel.  :-)  I'll be on the call for sure.

Paul Miller
Founder, The Cloud of Data
Jo Maitland
Research Director, Cloud, GigaOM Pro
Dave Ohara
GigaOM Pro Analyst and Founder, GreenM3
Joe Weinman
COO, Telx

Sandy takes out some sites - Gawker, HuffPo

GigaOm's Barb Darrow posts on a few sites knocked out by Con Ed turning off the power in lower manhattan.

Not everyone’s data centers were ready for Hurricane Sandy. Several major media sites —Buzzfeed, Gawker, Huffington Post — took major hits early Monday evening Eastern Time. The problems were all attributed to massive storm, which made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J., at around 8 p.m. local time.

Update: Many of these sites were impacted when Con Ed shut off power to lower Manhattan.

We'll see how many other sites join this list.