This is a good reminder that no system is immune to failure, cloud or otherwise. Georedundancy is expensive and difficult, so it's a delicate trade-off, but engineering good physical backup systems is also difficult.
Our servers are in a state far away from hurricanes, but in a state with many other natural disasters, including tornadoes, so it's hard to say if it's a good trade or not. Interesting question: why aren't there more DCs in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, or New Mexico? And is physical ___location a huge determinant in where you colo your servers?
We once had space in a datacenter in Arizona, but everyone else had the same idea. We had to move out and find a new datacenter when they were at capacity and we couldn't expand. While they were building a new facility, it was over a year away and our expansion needed to happen sooner. As a final point, the added space was already being pre-reserved at a premium, and we couldn't afford the new rates vs. other areas of the U.S.
At the time, physical ___location wasn't a big deal, but as the company grew, and the data center overhead did as well - it became cheaper to have the core data centers closer to our operations, where our staff could be utilized. Georedunancy ultimately ended up being used for DR and minimum required service availability during major issues.
I know that Arizona is a huge place for DCs just because there aren't any natural disasters there.
There are a few of them out here in Utah that I know of, but none at the scale that they really could be. It would make a lot of sense to put some out here, I would think
Most places I've worked have had the first DC close to the office, then the second one in another country. When you're just starting up it's important to have easy physical access, and it's seldom worth migrating away from an existing DC rather than just opening up a new one.
Our servers are in a state far away from hurricanes, but in a state with many other natural disasters, including tornadoes, so it's hard to say if it's a good trade or not. Interesting question: why aren't there more DCs in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, or New Mexico? And is physical ___location a huge determinant in where you colo your servers?