Tonight, tornado sirens were blaring all across Chicago. Hail, wind, and rain was sent beating across windows and weather forecasters braced themselves for a rough night.
Even though the storm hit shortly after the end of rush hour, Chicagoans still had to deal with traffic nightmares, as two Chicago-area expressways were shutdown for a short period of time. The Eisenhower Expressway was closed for nearly two hours in both directions because of flooding and both directions of the Stevenson Expressway were still closed at the writing of this blog entry. According to WMAQ-TV, over 100,000 customers were left without power as a result of the storm. Thankfully, ReadyWire.com was not among the thousands left without power.
Even though some Chicagoland area data centers encountered power outages as a result of the major storm, according to Panopta uptime reports, ReadyWire’s network remained rock steady.
ReadyWire and our data center partners take up-time seriously. Millions of dollars has been invested in redundant gear from generators all the way down to network switches. All of the datacenters that ReadyWire leases space in feature dual-city grid power feeds, meaning power does not come from one source. Should power supplied by the electric company go out, battery backups will automatically take over by providing the necessary juice until on-site diesel generators can be switched on to power the facility.
Should you have any questions regarding how ReadyWire and our data center partners are prepared for contingencies, please do not hesitate to email us.