Trouble at The Planet datacenter

The Planet's Houston datacenter went offline late Saturday afternoon, after an explosion knocked down walls at an electric equipment room. Reports are that approximately 9,000 servers and 7,500 clients are affected. The company expects to have operations on the second floor of the facility restored today; the first floor has sustained more serious damage.

The support team posts detailed updates about the situation on a dedicated web site, and several discussion threads address the developments on the company's forums. Repair teams and equipment from other sites have been brought to the datacenter and repairs have been going throughout the weekend.

The Planet is popular with shared hosting resellers, who purchase servers at The Planet, and then sell storage space and bandwidth to their own clients. Thus the actual number of affected customers --individuals and small companies, is likely to be much larger than the reported figure.

Redundant power supply is one of The Planet's selling points, but it seems that when trouble hits, one cannot put one's trust in technology. So far, The Planet has been managing public opinion and the situation as a whole very well, by addressing the issues in a transparent and timely manner.