How Japan's data centers survived the earthquake

01.07.2011
Smart construction and good planning allowed Japan's data centers to escape virtually unharmed from the massive earthquake that rocked the country in March, a Japanese data center executive said Thursday.

Operators there had to grapple with blackouts and shortages of generator fuel and equipment. They have also fought hard to be exempt from nationwide power caps that go into effect Friday. But despite enduring the biggest earthquake in recorded history, none of Japan's data centers were severely damaged or knocked offline by the disaster, the executive said.

"So far there has been no critical damage reported to the Japan Data Center Council," said Atsushi Yamanaka, a general manager with data center operations company IDC Frontier, who gave a talk at the in San Francisco about the impact of the quake.

IDC Frontier is a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan. It operates Yahoo's data centers in the country and those of other clients. Yamanaka is also a member of JDCC, an association for operators and suppliers.

Data centers were hit with three major events: the earthquake itself, the tsunami that crippled nuclear power stations along the northeast coast, and that resulted from the crippled nuclear plants.

Most data centers in Japan exceed the country's already-strict building codes and incurred only minor damage when the earthquake hit, Yamanaka said. Modern data centers in Japan are built on giant "shock absorbers" -- isolators made from metal and rubber on which buildings "float" while the ground beneath shakes from side to side.