When disaster strikes; Primus Data Centre Melbourne looses power (again)
The Primus Data Centre in 55 King St Melbourne suffered from another power failure yesterday, wiping out an enormous portion of our web-hosting market in Australia for the afternoon. All of my websites were down from about 3.45PM, and only came back online at 8:15PM (EST).
This is only the third power failure experienced this year from Primus. The first and second time it happened, they didn’t really provide much information to customers. I don’t expect this time to be any different.
Some providers, such as Cove, moved out of the facility in response to the lack of information provided on the failure. This time, I think Primus will really loose a massive chunk of their customers. Having such a major data centre go offline so frequently is a real worry.
It’s only when stuff like this happens when you really think about your resilience to these sorts of situations. My first question is this:
Why do most Australian web hosts only use one data centre, and rely on that for everything? It’s scary. I can’t seem to find an Aussie web host which boasts dual data centres replicated with each other. Hey, I can’t even find one with even a basic backup name server off site!
US hosts such as Media Temple have identical hardware in two geographically disperse data centres. And they aren’t the only people – I have seen quite a few overseas providers which do the same thing. Why don’t Aussie hosts do the same thing?
Why have I not hosted my own secondary name server and used an external email server? It’s not that hard to sign up for a free DNS host, and have them replicate my primary DNS server records. It’s also not hard to sign up for an email service which is in the cloud. I have used Gmail for other clients – why not myself? This would mean I don’t loose my emails when my web server goes down.
Why is anyone still with Primus after three power outages in one year? It was bad the first time, worse the second, and a third time is just a complete joke. Now there is talk of them doing work next week on the power, which may bring them offline again! C’mon people – there are plenty of other data centres around. Start shopping around!
And here’s some irony for you: the Dilbert Comic for today!
