Fire at Samsung data centre in Gwacheon causes global outage

What happened

In April 2014, a major fire was reported at Samsung's data centre in Gwacheon, South Korea. A secondary account, citing Data Center Knowledge, described it as a fully involved building fire rather than a smoke event. It was reported to cause several hours of downtime and a global service outage for users of Samsung TVs, smartphones and tablets. The cause, any injuries, and whether power equipment was involved were not reported.

Contributing factors

Not reported. The available account does not identify how the fire started or which systems were involved.

Lessons learned

1. A data centre fire can interrupt customer services well beyond the site, so operators should plan for multi-hour loss of the facility.
2. Early public reports may not distinguish a smoke event from a fully involved fire; confirm the scale before treating the incident as minor.
3. Until the origin is known, review detection, suppression and backup arrangements rather than assuming a single failed component.

Source

acronis.com