Lightning reported to disrupt Google data centre in Belgium

What happened

A 2015 report said one of Google's data centres in Belgium was hit by four lightning strikes and lost some data. The report said the incident affected the Google Compute Engine service. Automatic auxiliary systems were said to have restored power quickly, and storage systems had battery backup, but some recently written data was on systems more susceptible to power failure from extended or repeated battery drain. Google was reported to have said the outage was its own responsibility, that the loss affected only 0.000001% of disk space, and that most persistent disk storage already used hardware less vulnerable to power failures. Which clients were affected, and what data was lost, were not reported.

Contributing factors

The report linked the disruption to repeated lightning strikes and to storage systems that were more susceptible to power failure when batteries were drained for an extended or repeated period.

Lessons learned

1. Storage hardware should be able to tolerate repeated power interruptions and battery drain.
2. Auxiliary power and battery backup should be reviewed for multiple external events such as lightning.
3. Users should be told, as far as is known, what service was affected and what remains unknown.

Source

bisinfotech.com