Generator explosion disrupts Los Angeles data centres

What happened

An explosion in the basement of 811 Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles started a fire that firefighters put out. The blast is believed to have started in the building’s generator. It took out an on-site power station, briefly left twelve buildings without electricity, and caused power and network outages nearby. At least two data centres lost utility power: Equinix LA1, one block away on West 7th Street, and CoreSite’s LA1 in the One Wilshire building.

Both failed over to generator power until utility supply returned. Level 3 Communications, located in the Equinix data centre, had some disruption that affected its local customers. Internap, also at the Equinix site, and some of its customers were affected. Customers at One Wilshire were reported to have had no network trouble. Two people were injured. The precise cause was not reported.

Contributing factors

Reporting says the blast is believed to have started in the office building’s generator and that the fire took out an on-site power station. Why the generator failed, and how supply to the nearby data centres was lost, were not reported.

Lessons learned

1. A failure in a nearby building’s power plant can remove utility supply from data centres even when their own plant is sound.
2. A tested switch to on-site generation can keep a site running through a short utility outage.
3. Network services in a facility can still be disrupted when a power event affects carriers, so that risk should be planned for separately from site power.

Source

datacenterdynamics.com