Power Hungry
By Dale Dougherty
For those of us in California, the Y2K crisis has come a year later, proof that the new millennium really did begin in 2001. This 21st century crisis, however, is not technological; it's legal and political. As of this writing, we're in a Stage 3 power alert. The most prosperous and populous state in the U.S. is struggling to ensure that there's enough electrical power to go around.
An early conference sponsored by the Internet Society concerned the spread of the Internet to developing countries. I recall a speaker saying that the initial problem in developing countries wasn't telecommunications, but having stable, affordable electricity.
Riding to work, I monitor the news for predictions of power outages, just as I listen to the weather report when a bad storm is on the way. Stage 3 alerts are very unsettling. I now know that ISO means Independent System Operator. At O'Reilly, our CIO sent out the message: "As of 11:45 a.m. this morning, the California ISO has instituted a series of rolling blackouts across the northern and central parts of the state. As such, it's highly likely that we will sustain a blackout sometime during the afternoon hours if the shortage continues. Please save your work on our servers." If the power goes out, our computers are down, and so are we. This is like being a trucker during a gas shortage.
It's easier to accept people going offline at work than it is having Web servers go down. Fortunately, our servers are located off-site for just such reasons. I talked to Dane Jasper, who runs the ISP Sonic.net in Santa Rosa, where our Web servers are located.
