AAPT confirms flood damage to Brisbane PoP

 

But generators safe above the water line, for now.

AAPT chief executive officer Paul Broad has confirmed that one of the telco's Brisbane points-of-presence suffered the entrance of water during the Queensland floods.

And a second building with co-location facilities was flooded but back-up diesel generators were above the water line and operational, Broad told iTnews.

"Our major customers are on – we haven't lost anyone," he said.

Photos purported to be of one of AAPT's facilities were uploaded to Facebook yesterday.

click to view full size image
Courtesy: Telco Update Facebook page.

The company's Powertel dark-fibre network suffered a big cut in a Sydney to Brisbane link that "came in behind Toowoomba".

Broad said engineers were attempting to resplice and join the link.

Fibre connections to flooded exchanges around Toowoomba were impacted but the rest of the network was operating normally, he said.

Broad praised AAPT's technicians and the telecommunications industry for "swapping traffic and pushing the limits of technology".

"When the chips are down the telecommunications industry does deliver," Broad said.

He confirmed that AAPT was working through a priority list of customers affected by the outages, beginning with emergency services, as reported by iTnews earlier today.

"We had some police disaster recovery centres that we needed to keep alive [first]," he said.

Engineers were focused on keeping important interconnect links to other networks alive.

Broad said they were able to "get into the basements" of flood-affected AAPT facilities to inspect them but customers' administrators would have to wait until it was safe.

He said engineers were anxiously awaiting an expected peak in flood waters at 4pm Queensland time today, although high-tide levels were lower than first thought.

For a complete wrap-up of the operating status of Queensland data centres, click here.

Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.


AAPT confirms flood damage to Brisbane PoP
photo: @Simon_C_Ward via Twitter
"I just hope when the rebuilding starts in Queensland, someone has their heads screwen on right and plans for future disasters instead of plonking everything down where it originally sat. ..."
By Ezy2Confuze
 
 
 
Comments: 2
Res
Jan 14, 2011 10:38 AM
There are three key factors in Data Centre location don not do's, two have been always embedded in me since the 90's,and the third, since 9/11, these were learned from prominent U.S. DC builders, who have got it right, and it should make common sense to even the most novice of DC builders.

Do NOT build or locate a Data Centre (and this applies to companies operating critical equipment "Server Rooms") -

1 - In an are that may be subjected to flooding

2 - In an area known for earth quakes (not so applicable here, but, we all remember what happened to Newcastle)

3 - (since 9/11) In or near any critical infrastructure that may be targeted by terrorists.


So why is it in Brisbane, most (but not all DC's) services are located in total FAIL of No.1.

Had the river level reached their original prediction of 5.5 mtrs, most, including then PIPE building in Creek St would have been isolated from power (incl the SoE directive of no generator activiation).

Lets not kid ourselves, the only thing that saved it was the rain stopped when it did and they urgently wound back the release outflow from the dams, if rain continued for even 12-24 hours more, majority of services in this city would have gone dark, yes there are some DC's not located in that precinct, and none of them had any problems, perhaps now it is time for those responsible for PoP's, to reconsider where they do their business.

Ezy2Confuze
Jan 14, 2011 1:22 PM
I just hope when the rebuilding starts in Queensland, someone has their heads screwen on right and plans for future disasters instead of plonking everything down where it originally sat. Otherwise the next couple of Billion $'s to rebuild is coming out of the pay packets and retirment monies of both parties pay packets.
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