Equinix Hit By Outages in Sydney, Paris

Equinix data centers in Paris and Sydney, Australia have experienced power outages this morning, according to widespread reports from affected customers.  

The downtime in Sydney occurred at the Equinix SY1 data center, which suffered a power loss during a utility power outage that affected 200,000 customers over five Australian states, including New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. The downtime disrupted VoIP phone service for much of the region. Equinix SY1 is a 65,000 square foot facility. The company's SY2 data center was unaffected.

"The SY1 incident occurred at 10:56 AM local time and resulted in the loss of power to customers in one section of the center for approximately 12 minutes," Equinix reported. "The outage was caused by the failure of a UPS system to deliver power after the utility provided power was interrupted in a statewide power outage with Energy Australia. This UPS unit serviced approximately 1/3 of the center. 2/3 of the center was not impacted. Within 12 minutes of the initial loss of power, all systems were restored."

The power outage at the Equinix PA2 Saint-Denis IBX Center caused downtime for  several prominent customers, including the video site DailyMotion and the Paris operations of the European web hosting provider ClaraNet. Early media reports say the facility-level loss of power was brief, but some customers sites are taking longer to recover.

"The PA2 incident occurred at 11:33 AM local time and resulted in the loss of power to customers in one section of the center for approximately one minute," Equinix said, confirming the brevity of the outage. "The outage was caused by the human error of a vendor that was conducting routine maintenance on a UPS system. The error caused one UPS unit to go offline, impacting the delivery of power to approximately 1/3 of the PA2 center. 2/3 of the center was not impacted. Within one minute of the initial loss of power, all systems were restored.

"Throughout both incidents, Equinix executives were immediately engaged to manage the most expeditious possible resolution," the company said. "Our top engineers and vendors were immediately on-site to: first, restore power; second, determine the root cause of the outage, and; third, enact appropriate measures to ensure against the recurrence of related issues. Our customer service and sales staff were immediately engaged to notify customers and assist with specific issues caused by the incidents."