Update September 12: Hurricane Irma passed through Tampa without any disruption to our service. Normal operations have now resumed and new server provisions are once again possible.
With Hurricane Irma approaching Florida this weekend, where many of our U.S. based servers are located in our Tampa facility, we would like to assure our customers that every precaution has been made in preparation for the storm.
The facility that houses our servers was built with just this kind of weather event in mind, located 90ft above sea level in a hardened hurricane-resistant windowless bunker. The datacenter has 'critical infrastructure' designation with the Department of Homeland Security and City of Tampa, and as such has dual power connectivity to both the airport and hospital power grids.
In the unlikely event of power loss to those emergency grids, we have redundant UPS and backup diesel generators, with a 600 gallon (2730 litre) belly tank. These are also connected via redundant piping to a 4,000 gallon (18,185 litre) reserve tank, which allows us to power the entire facility for several days before re-fueling is required. All tanks are currently full and we additionally have multiple re-fueling contracts with local and emergency fuel suppliers.
All batteries and capacitors for the UPS system are <2 years old and the entire facility was load tested on generator power for several hours on 2nd September.
Disaster preparedness supplies are fully stocked (batteries, lights, tools, tarps, food, water etc.) and the facility will remain manned 24/7 throughout the storm.
At this time we will not be accepting any new provisions for dedicated servers until the storm passes, though we will be continuing to support any existing servers and equipment should you require our assistance.
The design of the facility and the precautions taken should mean that the storm passes without interruption to service, though clearly we must designate this as an at-risk period.
Customers hosted in our UK facility will remain unaffected and our support teams will continue to be available 24/7 as usual.
We thank you for your understanding during this weather event, don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions whatsoever.