Data Centers Under Attack-From Tree Squirrels!


An Unexpected Danger to the Cloud

CHESTERLAND OH - Squirrels Account for 17% of the Damage to Fiber Optic Networks
Data center outages are a common occurrence, but often the causes behind all those error messages are a mystery to us. Turns out that in many cases, these services have just been attacked by...the common tree squirrel! As a matter of fact, this problem has been around since the beginning of last century, but has recently gained huge notoriety with several Internet blogs and shares on the subject. To help keep your data safe from any rodent vandalism, CAS DataLoggers offers its standalone USB recorders including portable temperature monitoring models from Lascar, Grant, and more.

Almost every power company and data center has a squirrel story. Level 3 Communications, an extensive fiber network company, claims that squirrels may just be the data center's primary problem, accounting for 17% of all their cable damage in 2011 and accounting for nearly all of their animal damage. However, this is down from 28% over 2010 and cable guards have since been added to their plant.

Mike Christian, director of engineering at Yahoo, claimed at a recent conference that "A frying squirrel did take out half of our Santa Clara data center two years back." The cute rodents go right through power lines and fiber-optic cables alike, and it's been theorized that the squirrels are causing all this havoc to keep their incisor teeth from overgrowing, or perhaps that they find cable sheathing grease much to their taste. For now the jury's out on this widespread but perplexing behavior.

Protecting internet connection and global communications against these little daredevils is increasingly becoming a priority for many telecom companies who are trying everything from peanut oil to cayenne pepper to human traps. The debate is ongoing whether it's actually cheaper to fix damages than to try preventing them, but the next time your connection cops out, you know what to blame!

If you need a portable data logger for measurements in your plant, laboratory, or outdoors, we have several models that are especially suited to these applications. Our solutions can measure many common parameters such as temperature, humidity, voltage, current, pressure and force. Some models offer internal batteries allowing them to be used where AC power is not available, and built-in buttons or keypads provide for stand-alone operation so they don't rely on cables or cloud services.

For more information on our standalone dataloggers which continue to log data regardless of squirrel shenanigans, or to find the ideal solution for your application-specific needs, contact a CAS Data Logger Applications Specialist at (800) 956-4437 or visit the website at www.DataLoggerInc.com.

Contact Information:

CAS DataLoggers, Inc.

12628 Chillicothe Road

Chesterland, Ohio 44026

(440) 729-2570

(800) 956-4437

sales@dataloggerinc.com

www.dataloggerinc.com

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