Albert Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 If you tried visiting AtariAge between Saturday afternoon and today (Monday) around 2:30pm CST, you may have noticed that you could not reach the site. At 4:55pm CST on Saturday there was an electrical explosion at The Planet's data center in Houston where AtariAge's dedicated server is housed. This explosion and resulting fire damaged a significant portion of the building's electrical infrastructure, and all 9,000 servers hosted at this location went offline. Only last night was The Planet able to start restoring power to servers (fortunately none were damaged, nor was anyone injured), with the AtariAge server getting power and network connectivity restored a bit before 3:00pm today. This is, by far, the longest AtariAge has ever been offline since its launch over seven years ago, and hopefully we'll never have to suffer through such an outage again! Update: Yep, the site was unavailable again for an extended period of time, between about 2:45am early Tuesday morning until 5:30pm. Turns out the temporary backup generator that The Planet was using to power "Phase 1" of their Houston data center developed a fault and the generator could not be repaired. It then took some time for them to get another generator on site and operating. Hopefully we'll be online now without further interruptions of this nature. Other hosting options are now being explored. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red 5 Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 That was the longest few days of my life. Now my job assumes I can be productive. Someone will have to pay for this ! Good to have us back ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 AL, thank you very much. I love this forum! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Glad nobody was hurt. We had a small electrical fire in our server room last summer (but no explosion). Still, because it had been caused by sub-standard wiring, we were down for a month while everything (from the outlets back to the building main panel) was ripped out and re-wired from scratch. The biggest pain though was having to disassemble our servers and blow all of the fire extinguisher dust out of them. That stuff went everywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I don't go to Atari Age but maybe 2 times a week, but I was getting a little stressed out Saturday at the thought I wouldn't be able to get to it ever again! I'm relieved! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 2, 2008 Author Share Posted June 2, 2008 I fully expect some additional downtime as they work on permanently restoring power to this facility and fix all the damage created by this "incident". My understanding of the situation is that they are using generators at the moment to power the first floor of the building ("Phase 1"), which is where the AtariAge server lives, and where most of the damage occurred. Sounds like they plan on switching off the generators this weekend (assuming they can get everything repaired), so I would expect at least a brief period of downtime then, as I'm assuming their UPS infrastructure is presently not connected (although I could be wrong). At any rate, it's nice to be back online..! ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 (edited) Good to see my favourite website back again. BTW: Can it be that the server clock is one day behind? (because of the "yesterday" replies) Edited June 2, 2008 by Thomas Jentzsch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbanes Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Welcome back! I had a feeling you guys used The Planet when I heard of the damage to the the data center. I'm just glad that everything is okay now and that repairs are underway. Lesson learned: Even the best planning isn't always good enough for dealing with the consumption of many megawatts of power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the.golden.ax Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 My wife made fun of me the whole time. She think that I, along with all of you, are addicts of this site. I'M SO GLAD YOUR BACK MAN! I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iwan-iwanowitsch-goratschin Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Good that we are back on air! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari5200 Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I didn't notice until today, but glad to see everything is ok and that nobody got hurt, that's the most important thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpendTooMuchOnAtari Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 It's so nice to be back! That seemed a lot longer than it really was! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8th lutz Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 (edited) I am happy no one got hurt. Electricity can be deadly and that includes electrical explosions. I heard of electrical explosions before due to the I know someone who used be an electrician. The amount of servers down didn't shock me considering the damage an electrical explosion can cause. Hopefully, this doesn't happen again or for a long time. Edited June 2, 2008 by 8th lutz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prodos8 Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I've been bored at work since this happened. Thanks Al for all your efforts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Well done, Scotty! now Warp 8 and fullspeed ahead to next 7 years... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gemeni Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Wow did I miss this site I thought something was wrong with my computer I tried 4 different computers to get atariage no luck! FINNALY ITS BACK ON!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Welcome back everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetset Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 LOL I thought I finally got banned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaxda Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Man, I never realized how much I use this site. Forum checks, looking up rarities, and most importantly, sharing stories of good finds and buys. Had a couple of nice ones this weekend and could not wait to share, but alas! Then this morning the Travi cart showed up and I couldn't post the news. But now I can--Travi will be enjoying the Bay Area for the next few days! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I think those guys had a meth lab going down there hence the explosion. Anyhow I am really glad everything is all right, and now I know what jail feels like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Glad Atariage is back! I can go on with my high score clubs and continue my campaign for Bubsy as Atari mascot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 A thought-long-dead secret society, the Intelliluminati, have claimed responsibility. 'We must follow the one true path of the sixteen directions. SIXTEEN! Much more than your pathetic eight!' (hmm cant attach image... image coming later.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FujiSkunk Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Once upon a time I worked in tech support at the provider that became Houston's division of The Planet (at the time it was RackShack). Thank God I wasn't working there when this hit! Anyway, it's good to see AtariAge back! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Apparently The Video Game Music Archive has the same server, because it was down for two days, also. Well, it's a relief to see that my favorite website in the whole universe, and the reason for my existence, is back up and running. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Iacovelli Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 good to see it's back. you know what would be funny, if the topic title for this was" Explosion take out AtariAGE... film at 11" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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