Rackspace, known for its 100% uptime guarantee, had problems last night when servers in their Dallas data center had to be taken offline for a couple of hours.
The reason for the outage was a car accident where a truck drove into a power transformer, which exploded. This caused a major power disruption.
When Rackspace’s backup power kicked in, two chillers failed to start. To prevent overheating, Rackspace took a number of servers offline, including servers for 37signals, GigaOM, WebmasterWorld and LaughingSquid.
Om Malik, editor of GigaOM, one of the affected sites, made the following observation:
Everything seems to be back to normal, but it leaves me with one simple observation: our Internet infrastructure despite all the talk is fragile as a fine porcelain cup on the roof of a car zipping across a pot-holed goat track. A single truck driver can take out sites like 37Signals out in a snap.
In other words: Murphy’s Law in action.
Read more about the outage:
TechCrunch, GigaOM, Data Center Knowledge, Valleywag, 37signals
