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Bing Travel knocked out in Seattle data center fire

Sam Symons   on 04 July 2009 - 06:53 · 22 comments & 6052 views

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A fire in Seattle has severed the power supply to a group of servers, which included Microsoft's Bing Travel section, according to a report by Tech Flash. Not only was that part of Bing knocked out, but also Authorize.net and various other sites, as a transformer was blown at the Fisher Plaza data center, where the servers were running.

A message has been posted on the AdHost site, stating the following:

"Beginning at approximately 11:18 PM on July 2nd and continuing through the present time Fisher Plaza experienced a significant power event that required all power systems including street power, UPS, and Generator power to be completely shut down in Plaza East.
The event is ongoing and, at this point, we do not have a ETA for service restoration. Please note that Adhost's Plaza West facility is not affected by this event. The Adhost phone system is not operational as a result of this event, but we are fully staffed and responding to emails sent to support@adhost.com.
Until further notice this will be the only conduit for communicating with Adhost. Please be patient with any requests sent into the Support email. We will process all requests as quickly as we can and we promise to answer every query.
If you have specific needs for assistance for powering up your devices, please send email to Support with specific instructions. We will do our best to accommodate your requirements. We apologize for the nature and extent of this event and are doing everything possible to restore service as quickly as possible.
"

Bing Travel also added, "A fire occurred at Fisher Plaza in downtown Seattle just after midnight on Friday morning. The blown transformer knocked out power to the entire building, which is home to the Bing Travel servers. We're hard at work to restore service following this unexpected event." If you're interested about the rest of the websites that were affected, please visit Kyle Mulka's blog, where you'll find a list of them all and whether they're up or down. Bing Travel is expected to be up shortly, so be alert if you need to use the service.

Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 22 additional comments
#1 metheweirdo on 04 Jul 2009 - 07:22
well that sucks
i know its not their fault or anything, but down time is bad for buisness
#2 ekw on 04 Jul 2009 - 07:31
i guess bing travel did not generate enough users for them to see it fit to have more than one server location!
#3 Thunderbuck on 04 Jul 2009 - 10:41
I wonder if that's the same fire that knocked out CapCom's games on Facebook?
(1 reply) #4 LynxMukka on 04 Jul 2009 - 12:22
Removed

Last edited by shockz on 04 Jul 2009 - 18:53
#4.1 LynxMukka on 04 Jul 2009 - 19:07
Thanks for removing a harmless comment. =)
(4 replies) #5 carmatic on 04 Jul 2009 - 12:50
umm.... even my home computer had an UPS .... i thought having one was standard practice in a data center?
#5.1 Farchord on 04 Jul 2009 - 12:54
"Beginning at approximately 11:18 PM on July 2nd and continuing through the present time Fisher Plaza experienced a significant power event that required all power systems
including street power, UPS, and Generator power to be completely shut down in Plaza East.
#5.2 TechGuyPA on 04 Jul 2009 - 12:56
Farchord said,
"Beginning at approximately 11:18 PM on July 2nd and continuing through the present time Fisher Plaza experienced a significant power event that required all power systems
including street power, UPS, and Generator power to be completely shut down in Plaza East.



Carmatic,
Please.....do you even know what a UPS is? They has a limited time they can run. I dont care how big your data center is, if your outage is of an extended nature and I would say this is then no UPS is going to keep you running.
#5.3 GreyWolfSC on 04 Jul 2009 - 14:22
fire (n) The evolution of light and heat in the combustion of bodies; combustion; state of ignition.

UPS systems do not work when under combustion.
#5.4 Airlink on 04 Jul 2009 - 15:08
UPS systems work great. Except when they're on fire.
(1 reply) #6 Grex on 04 Jul 2009 - 13:18
Doesn't anybody do DR these days.
#6.1 Zuwadza on 06 Jul 2009 - 00:50
By DR you mean Disaster Recovery. The fire is a disaster, the recovery part of DR is happening right now. It's the Business Continuity part that they (all the sites that went off line) did not have in place at the time of the fire. People do DR and BC, but there is a cost associated with it.
(2 replies) #7 Charles Keledjian on 04 Jul 2009 - 15:01
Well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest in huge UPSs and Power Generator if because of a nearby fire the fire department had you shut them down. I suppose the reason is to prevent firemen to electrocute themselves by touching water that might be in contact with electricity. It amazes me that after millions of years, fire continues to be such an effective destructor.
#7.1 +Kirkburn on 04 Jul 2009 - 15:04
Charles Keledjian said,
It amazes me that after millions of years, fire continues to be such an effective destructor.

You do realise how silly that sentence was, right?
#7.2 GreyWolfSC on 04 Jul 2009 - 15:24
Generators are usually internal combustion and have fuel. Fire and fuel don't go together well when you don't want the fire. UPSes are batteries and explode when set on fire.
(3 replies) #8 cykosis on 04 Jul 2009 - 15:01
"The arson.google.com team would like to extend their deepest sympathies to the Bing team"
#8.1 bob_c_b on 05 Jul 2009 - 03:11
cykosis said,
"The arson.google.com team would like to extend their deepest sympathies to the Bing team"


LOL, yes, I'm sure Google is losing sleep over another MS "me too" product.
#8.2 epple on 07 Jul 2009 - 00:03
bob_c_b said,
LOL, yes, I'm sure Google is losing sleep over another MS "me too" product.

That's the most "me too" comment I've seen on this site.
#8.3 lordcanti86 on 08 Jul 2009 - 02:56
Google Arson says they're not responsible, though!
#9 Hak Foo on 04 Jul 2009 - 16:59
IMO, the much bigger news was the Authorize outage-- thousands of individual e-commerce sites were stuck.
#10 Chris on 04 Jul 2009 - 19:47
Bing travel is now back online !
#11 tele-fragd on 06 Jul 2009 - 08:37
Did the firewall backfire? :p

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