[vinay_ys]

Ha, you bring back old memories. We had the largest compute footprint in India at that time in Ambattur (Chennai industrial suburb). This particular DC in question was as multi-story building and the ground-floor itself was several ft above road level and there was the huge natural lake in front. Luckily heavy rains only caused havoc to the road-side storm-drains and road traffic. And we had more than 250K liters of diesel to last us more than 24 hours and we had several tankers on standby. So we didn't have to shutdown anything. Funny thing is we had selected this site less than a year ago and had discussed the 100 year flood lines and worst case probabilities of heavy rains and flooding etc. Being well-prepared really paid off.

[vivegi]

Yes. It was a miracle that Ambattur did not suffer as much given the proximity to Redhills lake reservoir. Had the Water Resource Department also opened the sluice gates of the Redhills reservoir like Chembarampakkam lake during the floods and incessant rains, the situation would have been different. Given Ambattur was accessible and relatively unaffected, that was the location we brought up our alternate operating site within a week.

In any case, it is good you didn't have to go through a DC recovery during one of the worst disasters in the 21st century.

The question I keep asking in all DR planning sessions/table top exercises is - what would we do if we had a situation like what happened in Fukushima or in Chennai 2015. In both cases, flooding caused failure of backup power generators. Also, what do we do when we have all or partial resources, but are faced with a denial-of-premises situation (what I faced).