Outside the Blast Zone

Those of you looking to get into the data center business are in luck if you happen to own a bit of land 50-100 miles outside of Washington DC. Computer World reports a trend toward data center outsourcing for the federal government with an eye on facilities outside the instant-death-and-destruction radius of a nuclear weapon. So, if you have the land start building. If not, there is still a lesson here I think.

Now, your business might not be particularly concerned about the destruction range of a nuke, at least not in terms of business continuity, but there is probably still a “blast zone” outside of which it would be wise to store some data. For instance, if your business is located in Tornado Alley, you might want to store some data in a place that doesn’t have a natural disaster in its name (Tranquil Springs, or Safe Town for instance). You really don’t want to have to explain the embarrassing phenomenon of having all your data locations wiped out by one catastrophe. That would be like locking all your spare keys in one car. Shameful.

That said, you should still have some versions of your data on-site and/or nearby in case you need a non-disaster related recovery. After all, most data restores are not prompted by disaster.