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back to article Hong Kong's data centres stay high and dry amid Typhoon Usagi

When Typhoon Usagi rattled into Hong Kong last week, complete with winds over gale force 8, the city state’s data-centre managers had nothing to fear. Typhoons are a regular part of Hong Kong life and local bit barns are designed appropriately, El Reg was told. Nevertheless, we were was curious to find out exactly how …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Usagi missed us

    Hi,

    Usagi missed HK by about 75 miles and hit Shanwei, although where it hit was bad, HK escaped and enjoyed a bit of a lie-in on Monday. T8 was lowered around 9:45 am HKT.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/22/us-asia-typhoon-idUSBRE98K02120130922

    Now if you're talking weather, May's "Black Rain" was cool:

    http://www.hko.gov.hk/press/D4/2013/pre20130522e.htm

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  2. jake Silver badge

    Whatever.

    Data-centers should never be built in flood-plains.

    Regardless of where the water is coming from.

    It ain't exactly rocket science ...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whatever.

      "It ain't exactly rocket science ..."

      Up to a point, but it's a lot more complex than "don't build on floodplans". Not being on a flood plain can still leave you exposed to freak rainfall events (eg rivers bursting their banks, drainage failure, landslides etc), and in addition to the integrity of the shed itself against rain, hail, high winds, high and low temperatures, it needs to have connecting infrastructure that is similarly robust or has adequate levels of redundancy.

      Getting it right involves a lot of people, a lot of hard work, good civils, good M&E, and good IT architecture, all pulling together and well project managed. Which aren't that far from what you'd need to run a rocket science programme.

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  3. Wanda Lust

    Du.l

    Dual is used in the context of two, duel in the context of a conflict.

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  4. dark1here

    If the wind speeds were only Force 8, 40 knots, then a bit barn in a barn would have been quite enough to prevent any outage

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      "If the wind speeds were only Force 8, 40 knots, then a bit barn in a barn would have been quite enough to prevent any outage"

      Beaufort scale refers to mean wind speed, not the peaks. At force 8 you could easily have gusts of twice the mean, and so the gusts could be around 80 knots, so over 90 mph. If you're after resilience then you'd design for a hundred of two hundred year event (and then maybe add a bit more just in case).

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why name them?

    In Japanese, Usagi is Rabbit. Why call a typhoon "rabbit"?

    In Japan, and a number of other nations in that area, use numbering conventions rather than names. So, in Japan, "Usagi" is #19. I believe the alternative used by the JMA is 1319 with the first two numbers denoting the year. As of today, there are 3 tropical cyclones in the Pacific labelled #1321 (Wutip), #1322 (Sepat) and #1323 (Fitow). Personally, I prefer numbers, but that's just me.

    http://www.jma.go.jp/en/typh/

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why name them?

      Next: Typhoon "Hentai"

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now if only HK DCs and connectivity combined are actually more affordable so that local companies can actually co-locate without spending 4x-20x more than their peers in the US/EU for the same specification.

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