Fasthosts keeps websites online amidst severe weather conditions
Gloucester data centre maintained service using generator back-up facilities.
Less than 0.05% of customers experienced a reduced service for a limited time.
Whilst Gloucester continues to struggle with very serious concerns, Gloucester-based Fasthosts Internet, (www.fasthosts.co.uk), the UK’s largest web hosting provider, has at least managed to keep hundreds of thousands of websites online. As part of the company’s business continuity plan, Fasthosts’ technicians worked day and night during the past 48 hours to ensure that the company’s state-of-the-art data centre was kept running and its 300,000 customers’ websites remained online.
During the early hours of Monday 23rd, as a result of local power supply outages, Fasthosts’ robust automatic back-up systems were activated and its newly refitted diesel turbines deployed. Fasthosts’ data centre uses an advanced APC X UPS system which provides uninterruptible power to all servers. When the mains electricity failed, the power supply was switched instantly, with no interruption, to N+1 diesel generators which are capable of running the data centre for weeks. As a result, thousands of servers and some 700,000 hosted domains remained online and unaffected.
Since the early hours of Tuesday morning, the local mains power has been reinstated to the normal level. A minor amount of servers, which make only 0.05% of users served by the Gloucester data centre, experienced a reduction in service as a result of a system reset. These servers have been brought back to regular service now.
Fasthosts’ data centres are raised above street level and thus unaffected by flood waters. A big operational challenge for a web host at such a time is retaining fuel stocks needed to maintain its back-up generators. The company tracked the escalating weather conditions over the weekend and used its relationships with diesel suppliers to ensure that a delivery could be made.
Mark Jeffries, CTO Fasthosts Internet Ltd said, “We are satisfied that our disaster recovery plan worked well and were able to uphold our uptime promise to our customers. I am hugely proud of our staff for their commitment during the difficult trading conditions”.
Due to the weather conditions in Gloucester, and failed local telephone lines, Fasthosts' customer service department is currently running reduced support by phone (8am to 8pm) from offices outside Gloucestershire, but is still providing a full technical support service via email. The company is committed to maintaining a high standard of service, and will keep its customers well informed.
