[q1w2]

Does anyone know if there's a real-time feed of Earthquakes somewhere? The USGS website doesn't post the Earthquakes until 10-15 minutes after it's over - which nullifies any type of automated warning for our data centers.

[tkgally]

There is in Japan. I don't know how the realtime data feed is set up, but here is one public webpage that shows the degree of shaking as it happens:

https://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/kyoshin/

I felt a moderate earthquake here in Yokohama a few days ago. I had my phone with me, so I clicked my bookmark for that page and, before the shaking stopped, could see that it was a magnitude 6 with epicenter offshore from Fukushima--nothing to worry about. A minute or so later the permanent record of the quake was online:

https://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/2024040412...

[puzzledobserver]

Curious: Why might data centers need earthquake warnings, and how might they prepare if given a few minutes or seconds of heads up?

[dietrichepp]

I can think of some ideas: parking the heads on hard drives is one.

Magnetic hard drives are sensitive to vibration. You can shout at hard drives and measure the effects (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4).

One of the worst-case scenarios is a head crash. A head crash will damage the media and may result in data loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash

My guess is that earthquakes powerful enough to cause a head crash are powerful enough for widespread destruction anyway, but I’m no expert. I did some quick searches for hard drives damaged by earthquake, and the only results I got were scenarios where the hard drives or the whole rack got knocked over by the earthquake and hit the floor.

[nwiswell]

Some other thoughts:

- Personnel-level warning to immediately rerack servers, close racks, and get off ladders and away from fall hazards

- Proactively spin up generators to reduce failover in the more-likely event of a power disruption

- Potentially temporarily shut off very large circulation fans so that blades don't collide with the housings

- Potentially stop and carefully restart cooling water loops, in case there's a rupture in the system somewhere

[dredmorbius]

Good list.

Add to this: initiate failover or zone transfer of distributed servers / services to other DCs outside the likely impacted area.

[dietrichepp]

Personally, I’d rather have the generators off when the earthquake hits!

[joecool1029]

Need realtime seismographs, my friend's dad has one he built as a hobby up in quebec city that picked it up: https://alainmichaud.ca/

[geerlingguy]

Another great site with a ton of citizen stations (some are placed next to USGS seismographs too): https://shakenet.raspberryshake.org