NZ datacentres unmoved by quake

Local datacentre facilities have escaped serious damage after Christchurch was rocked by a magnitude seven earthquake in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Unlike several datacentres in Christchurch, this building was not so lucky in Saturday's earthquake. (Christchurch earthquake image by Gabriel Pollard, CC2.0)

Hosting and datacentre provider Digiweb reported two customers had lost services.

"With the exception of two clients who have suffered a loss of service, all services operated by Digiweb on behalf of our clients have continued to operate without failure. Our building facilities [and] datacentre facilities have suffered no damage. Our offices have suffered minor damage only," Digiweb said on its website.

"Our Christchurch facilities in Canterbury Technology Park and Durham Street remained operable throughout the period of the primary earthquake and subsequent aftershocks."

The company ran diesel generators to operate its datacentre during the power outage, which can sustain the building for 24 hours.

Digiweb said it expects service to continue uninterrupted unless the region experiences "significant aftershocks".

Christchurch-based hosting provider Net24 said today its 2000-square-foot datacentre in the quake-affected area escaped damage.

"While we ran on generator power for approximately five hours, we were fully operational and experienced no downtime. All systems have been thoroughly checked and no faults have been found," the company said on its website.

The Net24 datacentre plays host to 300 virtualised servers in a tier-three rated facility.

The earthquake struck at about 4:35am local time in Christchurch, and measured 7.1 on the Richter scale.

New Zealand's Civil Defence Ministry has warned residents to brace for possible aftershocks, which could measure up to six on the Richter scale over the next week.