SILICON FOREST BLOG: Reports to the contrary appear to have been exaggerations.
Reports this week that Google's data center in The Dallas is under attack from hunters are grossly exaggerated, according to the company.Earlier this week, IT News in Australia reported that Google engineering manager Vijay Gill had told a conference in Sydney that hunters were targeting insulators on the Oregon data center's electrical poles.
"I have yet to see them actually hit the insulator, but they regularly shoot down the fibre."Every November when hunting season starts invariably we know that the fibre will be shot down, so much so that we are now building an underground path [for it]."
Gill said that on one occasion, a snowstorm and avalanche prevented Google from transporting repairers and gear into the area of the cut.
It usually used a helicopter or a Caterpiller D9 tractor for transport. It improvised by sending three technicians on skis to "repair the fibre that got shot down".
"These guys had to cross country ski for three days," Gill said.
Upon further review, Google says it didn't happen just that way.
The Dalles Chronicle is skeptical of the claim, according to Informationweek, which reports that Google now says hunters aren't a problem.
-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; phone: 503-294-7699...according to a Google spokesperson, the company is aware of a single incident involving a hunter and cables at one of its many data centers around the world. What Gill was trying to convey at the conference was the risk that any exposed cable faces from a variety of threats. He wasn't attempting to describe The Dalles as a war zone.
"We use a variety of technologies to interconnect our datacenters, including above-ground, below-ground, and undersea fiber optic cables," a Google spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. "Each are subject to different failure modes, and because of our large network volume we regularly see events which are, on an absolute scale, still quite rare -- including hunting, flooding, fire, road construction and even once a cow funeral. To ensure that these events don't impact our users and our operations, we have redundant connectivity with multiple diverse fiber paths to all of our important locations."