back to article Power outage in Sheffield kills e-commerce at Insight UK

Insight Enterprise's UK website has been out of action for almost the entire day following an external power outage in Sheffield that took down its data centre in the same locale. The problems began just after 3.00am today, and El Chan understands that when the electricity returned, a surge killed the power protectors and took …

  1. Steve K
    Coat

    Rebranding?

    No secondary provision.?

    Soon to be rebranded "HindSight UK"...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rebranding?

      That entirely depends on whether the cost of secondary provision is greater than the cost of the business they'll lose while down. Sometimes three nines is plenty.

      1. calmeilles

        Re: Rebranding?

        It's not just immediate cash costs but also reputation.

        Tender from Insight? Oh! Those guys who can't even keep their own data centre running...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    *shrugs*

    Used to happen to my old place of work all the bloody time, after a while we invested in a ups that was good for 4+ hours and much better switchgear for the mains.

    (that and some solar panels to eak things out during the day if the power went.)

    Anon. Because they weren't that v bad a bunch.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A surge

    killed the power protectors???

    Weren't up to much in the way of protecting anything then it would seem.

    1. DaLo

      Re: A surge

      Quite possibly a bad configuration on their servers and AC which meant that once power resumed they all automatically started up again rather than a phased start up.

      All those motors, fans and spinning disks might have drawn too much current all at once causing the failsafes to kick in. This might have been interpreted as the power not stable/another outage and then not resumed until they figured it out later.

      Just a guess...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A surge

      "Weren't up to much in the way of protecting anything then it would seem."

      If they laid down their lives protecting the valuable kit I'd argue that protecting stuff is exactly what they did. Rather like a fuse.

  4. The Godfather

    Hmm

    So, on promise equally risky...

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