Power outage at Docklands IBX LD8 data centre in London

What happened

Equinix's Docklands IBX LD8 data centre in London experienced a power outage on 18 August 2020. Reporting written while the outage was still ongoing at midday said it appeared to have started early that morning and affected customers at the site and their network services. Equinix said engineers had diagnosed a faulty UPS system as the root cause. A customer reported losing both A and B feeds to one of two racks at about 4.23am, and said reports from Equinix indicated that the UPS failure then triggered the fire alarm.

The customer said its equipment was dual-fed and suspected a lack of resiliency. Equinix said it was allowing more flexible site access under Covid-19 restrictions while working to limit the impact.

Contributing factors

Equinix attributed the outage to a faulty UPS system. A customer suspected that the diverse A and B feeds did not remain independent under that fault. The fire-alarm sequence was reported only via that customer account.

Lessons learned

1. A UPS fault can take customer loads offline even where dual feeds are provided, so operators should understand how those feeds depend on shared UPS equipment.
2. Customers should check that A and B feeds stay independent under a single UPS fault.
3. Prompt notice of the diagnosed cause and of access arrangements helps customers manage network impact.

Source

datacenterdynamics.com