It's my life, you're just along for the ride!

When Hurricane Sandy smashed into lower Manhattan last week, customers of the data center Peer1 faced the prospect of major downtime. Just a blackout would’ve been no problem. But when the basement flooded, it took out the pumps that transport fuel from the reserve tanks to the generators on top of the building. That’s where Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena came in.

“I wake up Tuesday, I live in Soho,” said Mr. Casalena. “There’s no reception. There’s no power, so all the cell towers are dead.” Somehow a couple of messages snuck through to his cell phone: “Anthony there’s a major problem at Peer1, the basement’s flooded, they can’t access any reserve fuel, we have 12 hours.” He hurriedly packed a bag and started walking downtown.

Squarespace was already preparing  its “hundreds of thousands” customers using the platform for the possibility of downtime. But when he got to Peer1, Mr. Casalena realized it might be possible to keep the data center going. All they needed was a steady supply of fuel to the generators on the roof. So he told the team back at the office not to shut down the service just yet–”I emailed all the people and said, don’t shut down. I don’t see them turning off, and I think we’re just going to try and push it.”

There was fuel in the area. The only problem was getting it upstairs. “So we find, like, oil drums–one of our employees finds oil drums somewhere on Craigslist,” Mr. Casalena explained. “We’re just filling them up and trying to take them upstairs, and on day one it was pretty haphazard. It wasn’t like, a nice thing with everyone on the stairwell carrying things one flight–it was like half an oil drum of diesel with people pushing it upstairs taking an hour and a half.” Continue reading →