Surviving Rita: A tale of two data centers

Computerworld - For the second hurricane in a row, New Orleans-based Web hosting vendor and Internet domain name registrar DirectNIC managed to stay up and running overnight as Hurricane Rita pounded the Gulf Coast before coming ashore early this morning.
Sigmund Solares, CEO of Intercosmos Media Group Inc., which owns DirectNIC, rode out Hurricane Rita in New Orleans last night and was busy assessing damage this morning.
Solares said his company, located on the 10th floor of a downtown New Orleans office building, was still dealing with broken windows and other damage left from Katrina, which plowed through the area Aug. 29. During that storm -- and despite massive flooding in much of New Orleans after -- DirectNIC's operations continued uninterrupted because it had an emergency generator and an adequate fuel supply, he said.
DirectNIC has approximately 800 hosted servers.
"We definitely got hurt by Katrina, and we still have a ways to go [to get completely cleaned up], but we remained open the whole time," Solares said.
Even as Rita's strong winds brushed by last night, ripping tin pieces from neighboring structures and hurling them at DirectNIC's building, Solares said he and his four team members were much less worried than when Katrina struck. "It's still windy outside," he said this morning. "It's still gusty. [But] right now, we are feeling much better than at any time during Katrina."
Solares said he got a good night's sleep inside an internal office in the building, where he was able to get away from the howling winds outside. The building continued to have electricity until 7:59 a.m. -- more than four hours after the storm struck near the Louisiana-Texas border. The power went out then, and battery backups kicked on instantaneously, followed by a backup emergency generator, he said. The outage lasted only 11 minutes, however, and the company's servers remained up and running.
Looking outside, Solares said damage to neighboring buildings doesn't look as bad as when Katrina hit. Floodwaters didn't reach his building during the last storm, nor did they do so this time. "With Katrina, when the levees broke, I could see the flooding a half a block away," he said. "I'm looking where there was flooding [before], and I don't see any water there right now."
In other parts of the city, particularly the Ninth Ward, floodwaters cascaded over newly repaired levee walls yesterday, causing more problems in low-lying areas.
During Katrina, and again last night, DirectNIC's employees had to build a makeshift levee of their own. Rainwater began