-
Click through for an updated map of the storm's progress, complete with projected paths and historical data.More >> Click through for an updated map of the storm's progress, complete with projected paths and historical data.More >> New York City and other centers hit by "superstorm" Sandy began to restore power and transportation Wednesday and early Thursday, even as the recovery of more bodies pushed the death toll from the storm higher.More >> New York City and other centers hit by "superstorm" Sandy began to restore power and transportation Wednesday and early Thursday, even as the recovery of more bodies pushed the death toll from the storm higher.More >> Some of the numbers are staggering: more than 75 Americans dead, thousands evacuated from their homes, millions left without power for days and billions of dollars in damage from "superstorm" Sandy.More >> Some of the numbers are staggering: more than 75 Americans dead, thousands evacuated from their homes, millions left without power for days and billions of dollars in damage from "superstorm" Sandy.More >> As the most powerful storm to hit the U.S. Northeast in a generation rolled toward Canada Wednesday morning, it leaves behind at least 51 dead and millions without power.More >> As the most powerful storm to hit the U.S. Northeast in a generation rolled toward Canada Wednesday morning, it leaves behind at least 51 dead and millions without power.More >> The torrential rains and hurtling winds of "superstorm" Sandy are slowly passing through, along with some of the more acute health dangers such as falling trees and high flood waters.More >> The torrential rains and hurtling winds of "superstorm" Sandy are slowly passing through, along with some of the more acute health dangers such as falling trees and high flood waters.More >> Power outages and flooding caused by "superstorm" Sandy could lead to food safety problems and people need to take steps to ensure that their food supply is accessible and safe.More >> Power outages and flooding caused by "superstorm" Sandy could lead to food safety problems and people need to take steps to ensure that their food supply is accessible and safe.More >> The most powerful storm to hit the U.S. Northeast in a generation cut a swath of destruction through the region, leaving at least 16 dead and millions without power.More >> The most powerful storm to hit the U.S. Northeast in a generation cut a swath of destruction through the region, leaving at least 16 dead and millions without power.More >> As Hurricane Sandy sent strong storm surges into the coasts of New Jersey, New York and Delaware Monday morning, federal officials warned that more than 50 million people could face historic flooding.More >> As Hurricane Sandy sent strong storm surges into the coasts of New Jersey, New York and Delaware Monday morning, federal officials warned that more than 50 million people could face historic flooding and damaging winds.More >>
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -
Hurricane Sandy may be felt in Nashville and throughout Tennessee in a way most would not think about - the Internet.
Large online companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon have data centers along the eastern seaboard and should the storm take those centers out, it will be felt by customers of Netflix and other online services.
Steve Brugman is president and CEO of The Nexus Group, a data center in Nashville.
"Everybody needs to communicate with other businesses through the Internet or point to point connections and typically those connections are through a data center," he explained.
Brugman continued, "If indeed those large organizations, Amazon and Google [and] maybe even some banks, that don't have redundant facilities that you may choose to bank with, if indeed they were to lose their primary data center and once again, it's less likely that a data center loses power, but its more likely to lose communication ability."
One of Amazon's data centers has suffered from at least three outages in the past four months, two caused by summer storms that knocked out power in the Washington, D.C. area.
The outages affected Web sites and services such as Instagram and Netflix.
The company announced Friday that a data center outage last week affected a small number of customers.
Brugman added that these large corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars backing up data by basically copying it and moving it to other sites in other cities and states.
Backup generators are also used to keep the centers powered. Problems, he said, are more likely to occur through communicating with the data rather than the data centers losing power.
"Most data centers, ours included, have redundant power, so I lose connection to the power grid, but I have backup generators that would keep me up and running," he told Nashville's News 2.
Brugman continued, "If that backup generators or secondary power source were to go down then you'd literally lose power and all that data in the data center would power off, pure and simple."
In addition to causing problems online, Hurricane Sandy has also forced thousands of flights to be canceled.
Experts also expect gas prices to increase nationwide.
Related Stories:
