Data centreUnited StatesEIR-2352

Circuit breaker failure causes Salesforce data centre outage in Washington

May 2016Published 13 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor

SignificantElectrical

Estimated damageModelled by the register's adjusterHow? Know the real figure?

Low confidence

out of service for about •• daysShown in the record →Full estimate

From the recordRoot cause Failed part

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Companies named in this entry: Salesforce

What happened

On 10 May 2016, a circuit breaker controlling power into Salesforce's data centre in Washington, D.C. failed. Multiple redundant power systems did not engage, causing power failures at the computer system level. Customers on the NA14 instance were unable to access Salesforce for approximately 18 hours. Service was moved to another data centre, where the increased load built up by the outage exposed a firmware bug on the storage array.

This increased the time taken for the database to write to the array and led to a database failure. Salesforce restored the database from an earlier backup, but about five hours of customer data were lost and file discrepancies of unknown origin were found. The company later replaced the power circuits at the Washington site. The cause of the initial breaker failure was reported as unknown.

Contributing factors

A circuit breaker failed and the redundant power systems did not engage as intended. Load shifted to another data centre during the outage exposed a storage array firmware bug. The cause of the initial power failure was not known at the time of reporting.

Lessons learned

Test that redundant power paths actually transfer load when a breaker or upstream component fails, not only that they exist on paper.
Plan for the load surge that follows a failover, and check that storage and database systems at the receiving site are validated under that load.
Maintain verified, tested backups and recovery procedures, because a power fault can cascade into data integrity problems that are slow to diagnose.

More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, worker safety and safe systems of work, from every incident on the register.

Source

ciodive.com

Published 2026-10-13. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.

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The record behind this entry

The record behind EIR-2352 holds the site, the operator, the root cause, what failed, the downtime, the type of facility, how long the outage lasted and the services that went down as fields you can filter, count and export, with its source and their verification status.

Site: ••••••••••••
Operator: •••••••••
Root cause: ••••••••••••••••
Failed part: •••••••
Downtime: ••••
Type of facility: ••••••••
Outage: •••••
Services affected: ••••••••••••
Sources: ••••••••

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