September 16, 2008

• Ike: Day 1 (The Bad News)

  The email came on Wednesday. I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what it meant, but it seemed to be saying Hurricane Ike had traveled far enough outside its expected path to require a recalculation of the expected path, and that it was was going to be hitting much closer to Houston than earlier expected.

   

  Since Ike was such a problem over Cuba, and still had some decent strength in it, I felt this was probably something to take seriously, even if it turned out to be wrong.

   

  That’s not a decision I can take lightly, though. Whenever I relocate from a storm, it’s because I’m suspecting a good chance of property damage and extended power and service outages. And that means I have to take my 4 internet servers with me, along with another 5 servers that my clients have placed at my office for “colocation.” It’s a very costly, time consuming, and exhausting proposition, and it irritates some of my clients because they lose access to their servers on the very day they’d like to be tying up last minute loose ends before they head out themselves.

   

  But as unpleasant as it was, my best guess was that this was the best way to go – it’s better to have one planned day of downtime, than to potentially have a week or more of downtime and uncertain availability of services, resources, repairs, etc. Right?

   

  So I called Colo4Dallas, a colocation facility in Dallas that I used the last time I had to do this. They were very gracious and helpful last time, making them my first choice. They didn’t disappoint this time either, but there was a surprise – they seemed to be saying it would take them a day and a half to get a space ready for me. I thought it over, and decided that would be fine. Last time, I traveled 12 hours and then pulled an all-nighter, about 7 hours, getting everything set up on the other end.

   

  Colo4Dallas needed to know by Thursday morning, at the very latest, if I needed the space. I promised them I’d get back to them to let them know.

   

  Then I went online to get us a hotel. The last time we had to relocate because of a hurricane threat, we ended up with my least favorite option, a “luxury” room for over $300 a night. It was an OK hotel, but for that money I’d rather have had several non-luxury hotel rooms. So I went to choice hotels online, and found a hotel near the colocation facility. In my mind, I had visions of a hotel with a pool for the kids to play in, and a laundry room. What hotel doesn’t have a pool or a laundry room, right? And besides, I barely got the last room available at the hotel, one of the few in the “affordable range” with any rooms left at all, anywhere near Colo4Dallas.

   

  At this point I was grateful for the preparations I’d made when Gustav was still on the way in. Specifically, I’d mapped out two off-the-beaten-path routes, one to Dallas, and the other to Bellville. I rarely print any type of documentation to keep on hand, but in this case had printed directions for each route and kept them by the server rack control console.

   

  Around 5pm there was a wonderfully ironic moment: Stephanie came home and found a note on the front door that a “large freight” service had tried (unsuccessfully) to deliver the new 14kw generator I had purchased for my business -- about 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Since I wasn’t expecting the generator anywhere near that early, I hadn't been listening for the doorbell all day and had missed it. I called them and discovered I had two choices: they could deliver it the following day -- at the height of my mad rush to load all the servers, etc. into the van -- or they could send it back, because they would not hold it longer than a week. I opted to have it delivered during the mad rush. The great irony was that it would be arriving in time for the hurricane - but not in time to be actually installed and useful. Lol. Yuck yuck. Snort.

   

  As the day came to a close, more things confirmed the earlier news. People I talked to said they’d heard on the news Ike was probably headed to Houston.  Other expected tracking sources such as News 2 Houston began adjusting their tracks. Everywhere I turned, the news was confirmed. So, I did everything I could to be ready to shut everything down Thursday around noon, pack it in the van, and head out.

   

  One thing I had to do was set up and test a method of getting email into my customers' mail servers during the 6 to 12 hour outage that would be caused while I moved the primary servers to Dallas. It took about an hour and half to get it set up and tested. The downside was that my customers would lose their email spam filtering. The upside was that they would still receive important emails, even while the primary servers were in transit. It worked. I was ready to move the servers.

   

  And then, I couldn’t sleep. A glass of wine. A second glass of wine. No, it wasn’t working, I was obsessing over this stupid storm and whether it was really coming. I tracked it. I rehearsed my relocation plans and alternate plans over and over in my head looking for flaws. I talked with my sister in law about it, who was also up. I tried to distract and bore myself any way I could. I couldn’t sleep until 2am.

  • 11:40 pm
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