Server Host - Weather Emergency

[Mike]

If we go down over the next few hours, it could be related to the circumstances outlined in the email below which I received a few minutes ago:

As many of you may already be aware, the Midwestern portion of the United States has been inundated with unusually heavy rainfall over the past several days and weeks. The situation has resulted in historical levels of rainfall and flooding throughout the region.

Our Cedar Falls, IA Data Center, while not directly impacted by this situation, is located in an area which is currently experiencing flooding, road closures, utility issues, and mandatory evacuations. Due to the already wide ranging impact of these natural weather events, and the potential to disrupt power and connectivity stability across the area, we are reaching out to all of our customers hosted within the Cedar Falls, IA Data Center in an effort to keep you well informed.

The Layered Technologies/FastServers teams are working diligently with our facilities provider, connectivity providers, and with other local resources in preparation for any possible utility or connectivity disruptions in the area. Our normal contingency plans are already in place covering power, connectivity, and support redundancies. However, the scale of this natural weather event dictate that we take additional precautions to ensure the integrity of the site, and the safety of our employees.

We are sending this notification out to ensure you are aware of the events surrounding our facility, and to inform you of some of the special actions we are taking to keep our operations and support services available:

- Our Chicago-based support team will be on standby to take over for our Cedar Falls team, should the need arise
- We have been in contact with our Cedar Falls staff not yet on shift to check on their well being
- We have been in contact with all service providers, and have been active in emergency planning with the facilities provider, covering emergency power, access, and interaction with the local power utility
- Our sales group will be suspending new orders for 48 hours to ensure our focus is on supporting existing customers and managing any impact from the weather situation

Our Cedar Falls Data Center was designed and built from the ground-up to sustain operations throughout most natural and man-made events. Redundancies are in place for generator power, fuel providers, connectivity, and access for situations such as this. N+1 redundant power generators with three emergency fuel providers are in place, and 3 diverse paths for fiber connectivity across 3 separate carriers service our operations. We remain very focused on the situation at hand, and the sheer scale of the damage caused to the local communities from the rain and flooding. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely, and take whatever actions are possible to minimize any impact to our customers and to our employees.

We appreciate your patience and understanding while we work through this event. We will continue to provide updates as necessary to our forums at http://forums.fastservers.net and major updates through both the forums and email notification to our customers.

Sincerely,
Jack Finlayson
CEO
Layered Technologies

It mut be bad for them to send that out so fingers crossed!