Weather Brings Fujitsu Data Center Down in Australia, Ghana Facility Down After Fire

Weather in Perth, Australia, has brought another data center down, while a fire in Ghana knocked out a data center operated by the telecommunications network provider Surfline.

The data center in Perth, operated by Fujitsu, suffered a power outage Sunday during severe thunderstorms. Among customers affected were WA Health, the Government of Western Australia Department of Health, and, possibly, Bankwest.

Fujitsu faciliy suffered two incidents. The first lasted 1.5 hours. Despite backup systems responding as designed, according to the company, a second failure occurred in an undisclosed control system leading to a longer outage. An investigation is underway to determine what happened. It is uncertain if lightning strikes were to blame.

In Early January, Aussie ISP iiNet had an outage due to an equipment failure during record breaking temperatures.

"The protection mechanisms of the Fujitsu data center kicked in to protect the computer equipment and site safety, causing an interruption to service," Fujitsu's general manager of data center service Michael Gunton told Australia’s IT News.

Bankwest is an anchor tenant of the facility. The banking company began a consolidation effort in 2010, choosing Fujitsu as a core data center destination as it decommissioned other facilities.

Bankwest has not confirmed it was affected, however its ATM and phone banking systems were down for 12 hours.

Fire in Ghana Contained, Issues Persist

A fire in Ghana caused by a major power outage disrupted network connectivity for Surfline data center users. The telco provides LTE services.

The fire in caused an unspecified technical issue, bringing the data center down, according to a company statement. The fire has been contained, but problems persisted as of Monday morning Eastern Time U.S. Subscribers were unable to access the network.

The company sent text messages to notify customers of the problem.

It also released a statement on Facebook:

“Nobody was injured, but we do not know the extent of the damage at this time. Please bear with us as we assess the impact of this unfortunate incident and work to get the network back up to speed.”

Judging by comments on Facebook, many customers are frustrated by lack of transparency about the outage. Teams are working to fix the problem and the company will hopefully reveal what happened in further detail once status is back to normal.