Electrical fire disrupts Glenside Data Centre in Adelaide

What happened

An electrical fire was reported at Glenside Data Centre in Adelaide, Australia, starting at 9:45am local time on 19 April 2023. It was put out before fire services arrived. The site is the South Australian state government's primary data centre. An official said the cooling system was affected by an electrical incident and that power was expected to be returned to cooling overnight. The electronic medical records system for state hospitals, and some other government ICT services, were disrupted.

Systems were still reported offline at 5pm local time. The state health service said it was moving systems and applications to a data centre at another location. The exact cause has not been reported.

Contributing factors

The cooling system was reported to have been affected by an electrical incident. The exact cause has not been established in the reporting.

Lessons learned

1. Data centres supporting critical public services should plan for loss of cooling after an electrical fault, including how long the IT load can be sustained.
2. A tested move to an alternate facility can limit how long essential records stay unavailable.
3. An internal response that puts out a fire before the fire service arrives still needs a clear record of which equipment was affected.

Source

datacenterdynamics.com