[BlueOnyx:24782] OT: severe weather / power at VIRTBIZ

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

Hi Fellow BlueOnyxers

As the official host datacenter of all things BlueOnyx, I'm fortunate to 
count many of you as customers.  Your support of VIRTBIZ helps us to 
continue the support for BlueOnyx. Accordingly, I occasionally like to 
update everyone here on our operations.

You might have seen in the news that the US in general and specifically 
Texas (where we are located) has been enduring fairly extreme weather.  
Extended sub-freezing temperatures with snow and ice are not conditions 
with which we are well accustomed or prepared for.      Personally, we 
were no longer able to stay in our home as the power was out for the 
better part of 2 days, causing our pipes to freeze so we no longer had 
operational plumbing.    We've moved (along with the cats) to the 
datacenter where things are warm and we have basic necessities such as 
sleeping quarters and hot showers.    Many of our staff have not been 
able to make it into work because roads have been impassable.

At the same time, we've been taking in new customers who have found 
their offices to be without power or are otherwise unable to function so 
they have been moving their networks to our facility.   In most cases, 
they're coming with servers.   In other cases they're bringing in 
desktops and workstations as well so their staff can remote in and work 
from home.

I wrote an update to our customers yesterday and will share it with you 
here if you're interested. 
https://www.virtbiz.com/virtbiz-and-the-weather-power-crisis/

I'm mindful that we're not alone in going through some difficult 
times.   I'm thankful for the things that are going right, and, as a bit 
of fun, one of our cats is extremely interested in the operations of the 
datacenter and has been pacing up and down the rows of racks, stopping 
wherever he hears the beep of an alarm. That's helped us to send out 
some proactive alerts to customers that may have underlying hardware 
issues!    Our other cat is more interested in being a paperweight.

Just thought I would share.   Pardon the interruption.

-- 
Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
Access, Web Hosting, Colocation, Dedicated
www.virtbiz.com | toll-free (866) 4 VIRTBIZ