As we noted in our previous article, there have been no reports of major data center outages after the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan last week.
Unfortunately, more recent news highlight that damage to the submarine telecommunications cables are probably worse than first believed, with two segments of a trans-Pacific network out of service and at least two other cables damaged.
According to research firm Telegeography, as reported by GigaOm, the following cables have been suffering outages or damages due to the earthquake:
Stephan Beckart of Telegeography commented:
There are 20 cable systems that land on Japan's coast, including both trans-Pacific and intra-Asian networks. All the damaged cables appeared to be ones that come to shore north of Tokyo, at the Ajigaura and Kitaibaraki landing stations. Most of the country's cable landing stations are south of Tokyo, and networks located there don't appear to have been affected. All the networks with landings north of Tokyo also have landings to the south, so no system has had a complete outage.
The Japanese Government is recognizing the key importance played by data centers in keeping critical services operating during and after the earthquake, and there are confirmed news reports that it is cooperating with data center providers to support their activities, as reported by Data Center Knowledge:
“The government (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) is working on prioritizing power and energy supply to data centers which are considered critical information and telecommunication, and we are working with them,” Kei Furuta, managing director, Equinix Japan (NASDAQ:EQIX) said.
Data center resiliency may be put to a hard test by the rolling blackouts that the the local utility providers are implementing. All facilities will have to rely on their backup generators for extended periods of time in the near future, until the overall situation improves.
The situation is obviously extremely challenging at the moment, and DataCenterDynamics reports of at least one telecoms provider having trouble accessing fuel supplies:
A source that spoke on condition of anonymity told DatacenterDynamics that at least one large telecoms provider had reported problems accessing diesel fuel in the Tokyo area.
In view of the connectivity problems experienced in the region, Equinix announced today that it is offering its customers the opportunity to upgrade and improve their connectivity to other network providers:
While there has been no impact to the Equinix Tokyo TY1 and TY2 facilities and services, we understand the subsea communications infrastructure has been impaired and would like to offer our assistance in the restoration effort.
Equinix can create private VLANs over our exchange fabric to allow service providers with available capacity to quickly set up bilateral VLAN connections with other providers in need of capacity. This service will be performed free of charge for restoration purposes.
To further assist our customers with this restoration, we would like to offer you a free second port or a free port upgrade. Please contact our Tokyo team for additional information.
The Equinix Tokyo facilities host over 50 different networks, including both international and domestic carriers. The two data centers are also connected to the Japan Network Access Point (JPNAP), Japan's largest Internet exchange point, and represent a key hub for the country's connectivity.
Rerouting traffic through different submarine cables or relying to competitors for much needed additional capacity may be the only way, right now, for some Japanese Telecom providers to ensure that a decent quality service is guaranteed to their customers.
The importance of having sufficient bandwidth available in Japan as a tool to to support the country’s recovery efforts is underlined by the U.S. Pacific Command request to block a range of popular but bandwidth intense commercial websites like YouTube.
As CNN reports today:
U.S. Pacific Command made the request to free up the bandwidth. The sites, 13 in all, are blocked across the Department of Defense's .mil computer system. "This is a response to a time of extreme demand for networks," Strategic Command spokesman Rodney Ellison said.
"We are doing this to facilitate the recovery efforts under way in Japan," Ellison explained. "We are trying to make sure we are giving them as many avenues and as much support as we can."
Disclosure: I am long EQIX.
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