There is a large hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean which is likely to come on-shore in the Eastern United States late tomorrow. Dubbed Sandy, the current track of the hurricane has it making landfall around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. High winds and rain from the hurricane will likely impact two of CloudFlare's data centers: Ashburn, VA and Newark, NJ.
In both locations, the vendors that run the buildings have taken steps to ensure that service is not interrupted. Specifically:
- Backup generators have been tested, fuel tanks are full, levels verified, and backup fuel vendors have been placed on standby in the event of extended power interruption.
- Special arrangements have been made to make sure staff is available on site as necessary to maintain operability standards.
- Hotel rooms near the sites have been secured, cots are in the facilities, MREs, and other emergency supplies, are available should the situation become extreme.
That is comforting, but what is more comforting is that the CloudFlare network is designed to have no single points of failure. If connectivity is lost in any of our data centers -- due to a hurricane, earthquake, or someone just tripping over a power cable -- traffic automatically fails over to the next closest data center.
If your website is hosted in a region that is likely to be impacted by Sandy, signing up for CloudFlare can help ensure that your site stays online. Even if the effects of the hurricane are significant for the region, CloudFlare will continue to serve the static portions of your site via our Always Online feature.
We've been through hurricanes before with Irene about a year ago.
We're keeping a close eye on the hurricane and will post updates to @CloudFlareSys and our System Status page if there is any impact to our Ashburn or Newark facilities. However, you can rest assured that even if there is a regional interruption, it won't impact the availability of CloudFlare's service.