Issue 15, April/May
FOCUS NEWS JAPAN
SURVIVING JAPAN’S EARTHQUAKE
KVH’s TDC2 data center in Tokyo
Imtiaz Issadeen was on the eighth floor of Japanese data center operator KVH’s office building in Tokyo when Japan’s earthquake, estimated to be one of the largest on record, struck around 2.47pm local time on 11 March. Closer to ground level, in two data centers, one in Tokyo the other just outside in Chiba prefecture, data center staff were lucky to be in what could be deemed one of the safest places to be in such a tremor – inside the earthquake-proof data centers.
Issadeen, senior project director for KVH, said the earthquake measured a magnitude of 6 in Chiba, where it caused damage to oil refineries and other buildings, but only measured 4 inside the data center. “We have the most advanced seismic isolation of any data center in Japan
KVH ground movement being recorded on a scribe
today, and probably the whole world. Our buildings shook a bit but we have not had any problems at all.” Issadeen said.
Sitting on one of the world’s most active fault lines, KVH designed and built its data centers with the worst possible earthquakes in mind. Portable maximum loss (PML) is the measure used for seismic risk analysis in buildings – 100 is worst, 0 best. For its Chiba Data Center, close to the epicenter, it measured a 2.6 PML.
The Chiba plant weighs 39,000 tonnes and sits on 2m-diameter piles to bedrock. It has three different types of seismic isolators; a large drum-like solution that can displace the building one foot in any direction; spring isolators that drag it back; and lead dampers
CONNECTIVITY CUTS OVERCOME Some providers offering subsea cable connections were affected by the earthquake. One landing station nearest the epicentre was flooded, causing a problem for a number of providers.
Verizon owns and operates data centers in Tokyo and Osaka, it also has a local domestic network for enterprise and global customers. During the earthquake all Verizon operations – network, data center and services centers – continued to run as normal and no structural damage occurred. It routed all restorable traffic using its Asia Pacific Optical Mesh network within milliseconds of submarine cables being damaged by the initial earthquake and further aftershocks.
The Verizon global optical mesh network (11,000km of undersea cable) runs between Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China to the US – it has completely separate geographic routes from other Asia Pacific submarine cables and avoided the main earthquake fault area. Verizon has also been able to restore traffic for other Japanese and Asia Pacific service providers.
ROLLING BLACKOUTS Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) was working to prioritize energy supply to data centers, considering them critical to information and telecommunication as rolling blackouts swept the region.
METI released a statement days after the earthquake saying power plants operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and Tohoku Electric Power Company were “seriously damaged”. The statement went on to say restoration of adequate capacity in the following several days was unlikely, with high possibility of a large-scale blackout.
To avoid large-scale outages TEPCO implemented a rolling blackout plan on Tuesday 15 March. The plan consisted of multiple-hour blackout blocks in five regions. The power provider made similar implementation plans for every following day through to Friday, 18 March. Tohoku Electric is reported to have taken similar measures.
A lead damper at KVH’s data center in Japan
that place it where it is supposed to sit after the event. Seismographs are situated beside the building’s sub basement, on the piles and on the floor above, to give an indication of the differential measurements of each.
PREPARING FOR POWER CUTS
Power has been one of the big issues following the Japan earthquake but KVH had more than 103 hours of fuel in underground tanks and unlimited water in 150m-deep wells, which can provide 400 tonnes of water a day at the time of the earthquake. Japanese FSA guidelines make it mandatory for data centers catering to the financial services markets to have 72 hours of continual operations given any event.
Ports are still in operation but some roads in the tsunami-hit region were blocked when we spoke with Issadeen, making it difficult for large trucks carrying fuel to pass. Japan has a stockpile of fuel for emergency. “As soon as this (debri and emergency operations) is cleared you will find fuel flowing again,” Issadeen said.
Issadeen does admit some companies may still find themselves struggling but KVH has a contract with a large fuel supplier that can deliver 16,000L worth of fuel at one time - four times the amount of the average Japanese data center. “Unlike other facilities, our entire heat rejection and cooling system is backed up by uninterruptable power supply (UPS) power. We offer a very high-density service – up to 10kW a rack – so we need to keep our data center cool.”
Japan earthquake reporting by Penny Jones and Yevgeniy Sverdlik
See latest earthquake coverage at
www.datacenterdynamics.com/apac
www.datacenterdynamics.com 11
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