Lanham Napier, CEO The Cause, The Response and The Timeline

Without notifying us the utility providers cut power, and at that exact moment we were 15 minutes into cycling up the data center’s chillers. Our back up generators kicked in instantaneously, but the transfer to backup power triggered the chillers to stop cycling and then to begin cycling back up again—a process that would take on average 30 minutes. Those additional 30 minutes without chillers meant temperatures would rise to levels that could irreparably damage customers’ servers and devices. We made the decision to gradually pull servers offline before that would happen. And I know we made the right decision, even if it was a hard one to make.

A chiller is a cooling system that removes heat from one element and deposits into another element. For instance it could remove heat from water and disperse it into the air. A chiller is also a very scary story that can give you nightmares and keep you up at night.

 Rackspace delivers enterprise-class web infrastructure and managed hosting services. They have six data centers and manage more than 22,000 servers.