Hurricane Ike Procedures

[GatorDHanna]

Here at HostGator, we're preparing for Hurricane Ike and have a few announcements to share.

First of all, there will be absolutely no service interruptions due to Hurricane Ike. HostGator's servers are located in a secure datacenter in Dallas. The datacenter has redundant power sources (generator, battery backups, etc.) and is inland enough so that it will not be affected by any weather conditions.

Customers will experience slower than usual response times when contacting HostGator over the weekend. The City of Houston has ordered quite a few of our employees to evacuate due to the hurricane. Employees working remotely will be working on chats and tickets, so responses will be coming. We appreciate your patience as we work through the queues over the next couple of days.

We apologize about these inconveniences. We are continuing to make preparations and will keep you updated as we have more information.

[GatorBrent]

Hi Everyone,


The houston office is still currently running on a skeleton crew with me included. I plan on sending everyone home at about 6 central time tonight and locking the doors. (support will become much slower after this)

I'd love to have everyone working here till the very last minute, but for safety reasons that will not be possible. We have remotes located in Dallas, various parts of florida, and a few other locations currently.

The remotes will be about one fifth of the normal support we use so as you can imagine it's going to be close to impossible for us to keep up on chat, and ticket support.

One of our biggest concerns right now is for our office which is a 4 story glass building. I've been through many hurricanes and really don't expect Ike to cause much damage to houston. However most of houston isn't made of glass as our building....

I have a wireless air card so I should be able to keep everyone pretty updated once we loser power / internet. As long as the building isn't destroyed and power is resumed quickly we could be up fully up and running in a day or two.

What really sucks is that we have a brand new $200,000 generator sitting downstairs. Had this hurricane hit a week or two later it would have been fully operational and power outages wouldn't have affected us.

[REVOLUTIONS inc.]

Gators are resilient as hell.
Hurricane shmurricane.
I foresee Ike getting his butt kicked!

[achunl]

This sounds great, however, what about the servers that are located in Houston? What might we expect?

Thanks

[GatorBrent]

All of our shared and reseller boxes are located in Dallas far far from the hurricane. We do have a few 100 dedicated customers located in houston, but we do not expect them to go offline. The datacenter they are in is very secure and has multiple generators / bandwidth providers.

[Keith W]

Brent and the rest of the Hostgator crew, the most important thing is your safety above all else, please look after yourselves OK.

Will be thinking of you guys.

Take care, Keith

[GatorDHanna]

Originally Posted by achunl

This sounds great, however, what about the servers that are located in Houston? What might we expect?

All servers (including those in Houston) should be fine.

The Planet is very diligent about being prepared for issues like this and they've taken plenty of precautions to ensure that everything should continue to run smoothly in both Houston datacenters. This post at The Planet's forum outlines exactly what they have been doing to prepare.

[jbourque]

I would also like to know what are the plans for the Houston DC? My dedicated server is located there as well and if down so are ALL my customers.

I understand the major concerns with regards to IKE so what are the plans for the DC I know you guys can not fight mother nature but I am crapping here.

Thanks and God Bless you Guys and Gals

My server is in Houston as well, but from what I have been told, they have hardened their facilities at all datacenter locations, to include Houston.

[Keith W]

I am not worried about any servers or web sites, I am worried about you Gators, please please keep yourselves safe OK

[achunl]

Again, thanks for the info and I guess we will have to hope for the best! :-)

Also, I do have 2 dedi servers and 1 shared server I have accounts on and they all trace route to the Houston area. :-(

Bad Luck for me, also.

Thanks

[GatorWesley]

The Planet in Houston is pretty far north away from Galveston, so by the time the storm hits it should be weakened. But The Planet has been preparing for this and have a good backup system in place.

[GatorFord]

We're hunkering down folks. We'll be just fine.

[uoyevol]

Good luck everyone. Thanks for posting this info, made me feel a little better since i was one of the many involved in the DC-1 explosion .... Most important of all is all of your safety and i hope you are all safe!!!!!!

[GatorFord]

Originally Posted by uoyevol

Good luck everyone. Thanks for posting this info, made me feel a little better since i was one of the many involved in the DC-1 explosion .... Most important of all is all of your safety and i hope you are all safe!!!!!!

'
Thanks, I've found http://www.stormpulse.com to be a great site to track what it's doing.

[uoyevol]

Originally Posted by GatorFord

'
Thanks, I've found http://www.stormpulse.com to be a great site to track what it's doing.

wow, thats a cool site, thanks for the link!!!

[Pazeh]

take care gators, and be safe!! that's the only important thing now!

[GatorFord]

Another good one though it's crashing from traffic is :

http://www.houstonhidefromthewind.org/

[New2This]

Take care of yourselves first and foremost because without you there would be no hostgator...

[jbourque]

The best tracking site yet

Embedded info from all the major site

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/wolfy/

Enjoy

Joe

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by New2This

Take care of yourselves first and foremost because without you there would be no hostgator...

Yes, like the U.S. Air Force says, machines are replaceable, people are not.

[GatorJoshL]

At this time we have a number of employees, including myself that are working very hard to answer all support issues remotely. The HG office is closed and we will continue through the night here in Houston (till we run out of power) and across the nation at our other remote locations. Please bear with us as we continue to try and provide the best support. Please remember that there is a hurricane that is effecting all of our Houston office employees and most have evacuated. We will update you all on the situation as needed.

Thank you all for your patience as we deal with this the best we can,

Josh Loe

[GatorFord]

Originally Posted by jbourque

The best tracking site yet

Embedded info from all the major site

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/wolfy/

Enjoy

Joe

Very nice Joe, thank you sir.

Lot of people losing power 10k to 15k plus in Galveston area or more.

By the way me and other HG employees will be posting pictures of our preparations. We're holed up at our Support Manager Josh's house and snapped some great pics of up boarding his windows up. Thanks to everyone!

[Colm Cille]

Láimh Dé oraibh, agus brat na Maighdine Muire umaibh,

The hand of God be upon you, and the mantle of the Virgin Mary about you (all of you).

[techboywi]

Thank You for all your hard work to keep the servers running. As others have said, the lives of the HG employees are the most important, hopefully you are all safe and doing well, and come out of this with as little damage as possible