Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Updated: Pacnet, Global Switch confirm data centre power incident

Issue traced back to contractor causing a fire trip system shutdown

Sydney-based data centre provider, Global Switch, has traced a power incident which affected some customers back to a unnamed contractor who accidentally initiated a fire trip system shutdown on one of its uninterruptible power supply (UPS) groups.

This meant one out of two power distribution feeds stopped working at approximately 10:20AM AEST on 14 July.

Global Switch managing director, Damon Reid, told Computerworld Australia that this incident lead to a "very small" number of customers losing power.

"The power was reestablished on to the second feed for those customers within an hour and the UPS system was back up and running on that second feed as well," Reid said. "We know the root cause of the problem now and we're just working through how that occurred."

Reid also said that findings from the investigative report, which was to be completed over the next few days, would be released to affected customers. "We will keep our customers fully up to date as we work through this," he said.

Telecommunications service provider, Pacnet, confirmed that its network was affected by the power failure on level two at the Global Switch data centre.

Pacnet Australia chief executive officer, Deborah Homewood, said in a statement that it experienced a "network event." "While the core network was not affected, some edge services were impacted. Pacnet maintained continued communication with affected customers and managed a higher than normal call volume during this time," she said. All services had now been restored to normal operation but the company was "monitoring the situation," Homewood said.

In a statement supplied by Pacnet, George Pezzutto of telecommunication service provider AINS (a Pacnet customer), claimed that not all customers were affected by the event.

“We had a number of carrier interconnects go down that ultimately affected our network but we had no issue whatsoever with Pacnet," said Pezzutto.

"They stayed up because we both had dual power feeds to our equipment,” he said.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: etwork, Global Switch, INS, Pacnet
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Enabling Agile and Intelligent Businesses
    In the last 3 to 5 years there has been widespread adoption of SOA with businesses making significant economic investments in service-enabling their IT systems. Looking to enable your business for efficient IT execution? Read this white paper now.
    Learn more »
  • Get Control: make document management an integral part of your overall IT strategy
    As a government business process manager, you are expected to do more with less. A savings opportunity that is often overlooked is your imaging and printing environment. This is because print costs are fragmented and rarely quantified in full. HP Managed Print Services (MPS) is a tried and tested approach to reducing these costs by increasing user-to-device ratios, getting the right mix of devices in the right places, and reducing tech support and help desk inquiries. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • Why Encrypt? Securing Email without compromising communications.
    Encryption is a vital component of any DLP strategy. It allows businesses to exchange sensitive information without compromising on security; even if data is intercepted, encryption makes it unreadable and renders it tamper-proof. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments