The Pacific Northwest is known for naturally temperate and cool weather. It rarely gets very cold, or very hot, with weather moderated by our proximity to the North Pacific Ocean. This environment makes for an ideal location for operating a datacenter as it allows the use of "free cooling", that is using filtered outside air for facility cooling. This keeps power usage low, conserving energy.

This week however the region has been hit with a very unusual heat wave. Right now the temperature has reached an all-time record high of 101˚F (38˚C) and it could get hotter. This is very tough on the residents as air conditioning is a rare thing in most houses and many office buildings. Here at digital.forest we've invested in cooling infrastructure to be specifically prepared for days like this. Our datacenter cooling systems are designed to use outside air when it is cool enough, but can switch to mechanical cooling when required. Today while it is 101˚F outside, it remains in the mid-60s in the digital.forest datacenters.

The photo above was taken just a few minutes ago in datacenter three.

As always, we're here, keeping a close eye on things, monitoring conditions and staying cool.

Fifteen years ago today on July 12th, 1994 digital.forest was "born." It has been a privilege to serve our amazing and fantastic clients over those years. We look forward to a prosperous future for everyone associated with digital.forest; staff and clients. We would not be here without you.

Please Note: This posting to our Support Blog has no critical information concerning scheduled maintenance or datacenter expansion... it is just a bit of fun. Some geeky amusement for the technically-minded among our valued clients.

Uptime is an important metric. Here at digital.forest we know that uptime is the basis of our business. Everything is focused on uptime first, with all else coming next in line. When you run Internet-connected servers, as most of our clients do, the uptime of those servers can become an obsession, as this story will demonstrate. Our long-time clients Cheatcodes.com take their fun as seriously as they take their uptime. For example...

Through the normal course of business over the past several years since they moved their servers from our old facility in Bothell to our facility in Seattle, Cheatcodes.com has rebooted all of their servers except one. That server has been up continuously since that day in March 2005. Cheatcodes.com has outgrown their old rack and recently consolidated all of their servers into a new cabinet in digital.forest's Datacenter 1. But they REALLY wanted to maintain that unbroken streak of uptime for that server. Being the fun geeks that they are, Steve & Steve came prepared to move that server, while it stayed running. With dual power supplies, and four power cords, one of which was a long extension cord from from Steve J's garage, they carefully planned and executed moving their server "hot"...

Move complete, 100% Uptime maintained: 945 days and counting.

Congratulations to Steve & Steve of Cheatcodes.com, and thanks, as always, for the entertaining diversions!

The Seattle region has been hit with a fairly unusual amount of snow over the past day and a half. Facility Operations are unaffected and things continue to hum along normally in the datacenter. Support and Office staff however have had a hard time traveling to the office. Our Sales & Billing Departments are closed for the day. NOC support are on-site and we have some tech support working remotely, but we're a bit short-handed overall. Please be patient while we handle our normal workload a few folks short.

Meanwhile here is how things looked this morning at sunrise:

(a little slippery out on the hillside!)

We thought you might like to see the world from our perspective here at digital.forest.

The above is a look north-northwest from our offices in the Intergate.Seattle datacenter campus as yesterday passed before us. As you can see winter is closing in on Seattle, with low clouds and light rain. This is our world from November through June. The upside? Cool temperatures outside make for reduced power usage at our facility as we make use of "air-side economizers" exclusively for cooling our datacenter. Seattle is blessed with an ideal climate for datacenter operations as outdoor temps are perfect for use of such devices all year at nights, and daytimes for more than half the year.

Additionally our power comes from Seattle City Light's grid, which is over 90% hydro-powered, which when you think about it, is sourced from gravity. Hard to get "greener" than that.