Google Data Center Fire Returns Worldwide 404 Errors
A Google Data Center in Seattle catches fire causing domino fail effect.
A fire at a Seattle data center, nicknamed “The Googtopia” has affected over 42,000 servers, bringing down search engine results pages across the globe. The blaze, which started after an electrical short on a Co2 handler caught fire and took out three walls surrounding the centre’s electrical equipment room. So far the team has established that the servers themselves are undamaged and it looks likely that no data has been lost. “We have just been allowed into the building to physically inspect the damage,” said Googtopia team in a company blog.
According to their statement, Google returned 404 errors (page not found) for over an hour in many locations around the world after a fire in one of their data centers, but not because of the fire. According to Google, the Google Data Center Fire started as only a small blaze caused by systems designed to reduce CO2 emissions. Ironically, the worst damage was caused by the fire suppression sprinklers and not the fire.
“Early indications are that the short was in a high-volume wire conduit. We were not allowed to activate our back-up generator plan based on instructions from the fire department.”
Google is now working round the clock to fix the problem and is using parts from the company’s seventeen other data centers to re-establish the affected sites, which include popular British online forum B3ta.com. The team had hoped to get the sites online yesterday but continuing fire service action and network issues have extended the problem.
Nearly 50,000 Google Servers were destroyed in their data centers.
Google Fire Bad News for Advertisers
While data loss was minimized by Google’s swift reaction with a replacement router, A Web Guy, Mark Aaron Murnahan reported that many advertisers were falsely charged for AdWords and that Google expects it to take some time to determine the advertisers and the amount of lost ads.
Where are Google’s data centers located?
Google has disclosed the sites of four new facilities announced in 2007, but many of its older data center locations remain under wraps. Much of Google’s data center equipment is housed in the company’s own facilities, but it also continues to lease space in a number of third-party facilities. Much of its third-party data center space is focused around peering centers in major connectivity hubs. Here’s our best information about where Google is operating data centers, building new ones, or maintaining equipment for network peering. The data centers in bold were affected by the fire which caused a domino effect of fail into other data centers.
- UNITED STATES
- Mountain View, Calif.
- Pleasanton, Calif.
- San Jose, Calif.
- Los Angeles, Calif.
- Palo Alto, Calif.
- Seattle
- Portland, Oregon
- The Dalles, Oregon
- Chicago
- Atlanta, Ga. (two sites)
- Reston, Virginia
- Ashburn, Va.
- Virginia Beach, Virginia
- Houston, Texas
- Miami, Fla.
- Lenoir, North Carolina
- Goose Creek, South Carolina
INTERNATIONAL
- Toronto, Canada
- Berlin, Germany
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Munich, Germany
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Groningen, Netherlands
- Mons, Belgium
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Paris
- London
- Dublin, Ireland
- Milan, Italy
- Moscow, Russia
- Sao Paolo, Brazil
- Tokyo
- Hong Kong
- Beijing
For more information, see Google’s full statement.
