May 14, 2010 at 16:37A pillar fell near the Amazon data center: fifth downtime in a week
On Tuesday, one of Amazon's data centers completely lost power because a car accidentally crashed into a pole near a building and damaged a power line. Unfortunately, switching to power from the generators did not work as needed, and as a result, EC2 servers were de-energized for some time. Reportedly, for some customers from the east coast of the USA, downtime lasted more than an hour. This is the fifth (!) Amazon EC2 malfunction in the past week.
Details of the incident are also very curious. The fact is that at first the power switched normally to the generators, but from the fallen column there was a powerful impulse to the ground near the data center, and a safety sensor was triggered from it, which should track grounding problems inside the data center. Due to erroneous operation of the sensor, the security system instantly automatically de-energized the building to protect the equipment.
Details of the incident are also very curious. The fact is that at first the power switched normally to the generators, but from the fallen column there was a powerful impulse to the ground near the data center, and a safety sensor was triggered from it, which should track grounding problems inside the data center. Due to erroneous operation of the sensor, the security system instantly automatically de-energized the building to protect the equipment.