Yow. I wondered why Entrecards and Statcounter were down for so long yesterday. There was a fire at the database center in Houston, Texas! got this in my email this morning:
Greetings,
Unfortunately, there has been an electrical fire at the data center housing Entrecard’s servers. The servers have not been damaged, but the site may be down for as long as 12 hours.
Entrecard is hosted with ThePlanet, and this fire has effected over 9000 websites, as many of the world’s most popualar websites are hosted with ThePlanet. They are working around the clock to get their data center back online, and we are hoping that they get it back online fast.
Thank you for your pateince and understanding with this rare and frustrating problem. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing we can do but wait for The Planet to get their datacenter back online.
Please check back with Entrecard in 12 to 24 hours.
Thanks,
Entrecard Team
I did a search for news, and all I found was this at WordPlop:
The phone number on The Planet’s website leads to an auto recording stating that a transformer caught fire. The fire department has told them to shut down all power, including all generators and backup power. The Planet says no networking gear was harmed, so it sounds like all the servers should be fine unless the smoke got to them.
There is no ETA on when the entire datacenter, which is located in Houston, Texas, will be back up.
UPDATE: The Planet has confirmed that no servers were damaged. The cause of the fire appears to be an explosion that was caused by a short in some electrical equipment. The explosion took out 3 walls in the building. The Planet says some servers will be back up by tomorrow afternoon.
So that’s why your traffic stats are so low, if you’re wondering. LOL.
There’s a news story about it; I found it while searching news. All I can see is this:
The Planet Houston Data Center Goes Up in a Puff of Smoke
NewsBlaze, CA - 7 hours ago
By Alan Gray, NewsBlaze Tonight at 5:45 pm in Houston, Texas, a transformer in The Planet H1 datacenter caught fire. The fire department required them to …
When I click the link, guess what– the website is hosted by The Planet, so it’s unavailable. Statcounter is back up, for the most part, so they are making good progress on getting the sites back up, I think.
My sympathies to all bloggers who have their blogs hosted there. I hope things are up and running for you very soon!
So I can’t drop Entrecards. :( I didn’t know how addicted I was until this, lol! Well, there’s always the exciting world of shopping for a new cell phone repeater or something. :S
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Sunday, 1. June 2008
Thank you for that news. I saw the statement over at Entrecard and at StatCounter, and I’ve noticed that some of my other favorite sites/message boards are down as well. Funny, the internet seems so ethereal when you’re using it, you don’t think about something so mundane as a fire taking it down. Of course, that sounded like a pretty spectacular fire (an explosion that took out three walls? Wow!)
At least last night, if you could find links to ECard sites, you could still drop cards and have them count. (Yes, apparently I’m addicted as well.) It’s some consolation at least that no one can drop cards. ;)
Monday, 2. June 2008
Love your new design! I’m totally addicted to the internet, not just entrecards. LOL
Wow, took out 3 walls! Glad to hear no one was hurt!
Monday, 2. June 2008
Yeah, it’s back again! Happy dropping! :-)
Monday, 2. June 2008
many EC users experienced withdrawal syndrome. :)
Thanks for your message and prayers for my son’s recovery. My family and I are grateful. My son is recovering. :)
Monday, 2. June 2008
I was definately lost without EC. I was surprised by how much I missed it when it was gone.
I didn’t know why my StatCounter wasn’t working. I thought it might be more than a coincidence.
Have a great day!
Kristie
Monday, 2. June 2008
I hadn’t realised until just a few hours ago that Statcounter was affected too. But they can’t have been quite as badly affected as Entrecard because I did seem to have some hits during the day. Not very many compared with normal, mind you.
Tuesday, 3. June 2008
Fortunately, it looks like Entrecard is back up and functioning pretty well now, so it seems that the outage has simply given us a one-day vacation from our dropping routines. For me this was a welcome break because I managed to log in shortly after the site came back online and was able to scoop up some relatively inexpensive advertising deals.