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Data centreAustraliaEIR-2268

UPS fault causes power loss at Vocus data centre in Melbourne

Mar 2023Published 12 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor

MajorElectrical
Estimated damageModelled by the register's adjusterHow? Know the real figure?
Figure hidden: shown to subscribersLow confidence
out of service for about •• daysShown in the record →Full estimate
From the recordRoot cause hiddenFailed part hidden

Companies named in this entry: Vocus

What happened

On 13 March 2023 Vocus reported a major incident at its VDC-MEL03 data centre at 530 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria. Power was lost on site between 09:02 and 09:27 AEDT and again between 10:13 and 10:20 AEDT, and the outage included protected circuits. Vocus said the initial investigation identified faulty components in the A feed uninterruptible power supply (UPS) as the root cause. Emergency repairs restored A feed power, and further work was scheduled for 17 March to replace the faulty UPS completely.

Vocus restored IP network services, Vocus Cloud, NBN services, voice, DNS and local transmission, and colocation power returned to dual feed. Customers including Aussie Broadband and the ISPs Dodo and iPrimus reported problems as a result of the outage.

Contributing factors

Vocus identified faulty components in the A feed UPS as the root cause. No further contributing factors were reported.

Lessons learned

  1. Protected circuits can lose power when a single UPS path fails, so operators should test how each UPS feed fails and what it isolates.
  2. Restoring one feed does not remove the fault, so faulty UPS components should be replaced promptly rather than left in service after emergency repair.
  3. Downstream providers depend on upstream power resilience, so operators should share incident status quickly with customers who may be affected.

More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

datacenterdynamics.com

Other entries that name Melbourne

Published 2026-10-12. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.

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