We were all in shock when the news about the Japan’s powerful earthquake and the massive tsunami flooded the Internet. The first thing we did was contacted our close business partners to find out if they were all ok. Luckily they were, and had already been united with their closest family members, but still stranded in the city due to the traffic chaos. Yesterday, when they were back in their Tokyo office, it was a perfect day to review what had been happening on our Japanese servers during the big Friday.

Perhaps the most intriguing information is that one remote desktop session was established exactly one second prior to the big earthquake and lasted for almost three hours. I imagine the persons involved evacuated from the building the next second and returned to their computers three hours later. Surprisingly, the first ISL Online session after the initial quake was established only two minutes afterwards and was followed by other sessions one after another almost like on a normal day. Still, if we compare the number of sessions from 11 March with a normal Friday average, it is immediately clear that a large chunk of sessions are missing (coloured pink).

Internet and the Cloud infrastructure
According to ZDNet, the Internet in Japan did what it’s supposed to do. It didn’t even blink. Exactly like ISL’s Cloud network infrastructure, a global network of dedicated servers, which hosts ISL Online sessions wordwide. Because of its cloud infrastructure, it is largely independent of potential disturbances which might occur on individual servers. In a rare case when a server drops out, either due to the Internet or power supply failure or internal errors, all ISL Online sessions are seamlessly transferred to the next best server. But despite the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and proceeding devastating tsunami, all Japanese servers worked well and ISL Online services without any interruptions.

I hope, as well as everybody at ISL Online does, that Japan recovers soon. We wish all best to our Japanese partners and to the Japanese people a speedy recovery, from what has turned out to be one of the biggest natural disasters of recent times.

がんばれ日本
Good luck Japan!