Despite unexpected tidal surge, NJ datacenters stay up and running

No matter what plans you make, you never quite know how a storm is going to affect you.  That’s what the 19,000 residents of a few small towns in northern New Jersey found out yesterday when an unexpected tidal surge sent a 5 foot high wall of water through their area after the storm had already passed.

By Midnight yesterday, most people in the towns and IT folk at the two Sunguard Availability Services datacenters in Carlstadt, NJ were done holding their breath. The storm had passed and the town was in fine shape.  But sometime between Midnight and 1:30 AM, Sandy had the last word, with a tidal surge that hit 5 feet of water in less than 30 minutes.

While many residents were flooded out and evacuated by emergency services, Sunguard had no issues with either of their datacenters, and opened their third facility in the area, their Business Continuity center, as a as a shelter for displaced residents and a place for first responders to take a break.

In a somewhat ironic twist, the PR person who sent me this information did so from their personal Gmail account. Apparently their rather well known PR company wasn’t taking advantage of their client's services and had the misfortune of having their corporate email servers in lower Manhattan, where they were knocked out of service by the storm.