We found out that our data center lost data due to four lightning strikes

ByBo Insogna, TheLightningMan.com

Google is around the worldSet up data centerHowever, data was lost due to lightning striking the facility that supplies power to the data center that manages some areas of Western Europe.

Google Cloud Status
https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/15056#5719570367119360

August 13, 2015 at 9: 19, GoogleThe data center installed in BelgiumThunder strikes occurred in the local facility that supplies electricity to four times. Due to a lightning strike at a local facility, the power supply to the storage system that manages the disk capacity of the "Google Compute Engine (GCE) instance" in a specific region of Western Europe stopped and the function stopped. Although the automatic auxiliary device immediately started up and restored electric power, it means that the data written to the storage system has failed while the power supply was dropped.


Most of the failed data could be recovered by moving it to another storage, but it was difficult to recover some data, resulting in data loss. According to Google, the lost data is equivalent to 0.000001% of the persistent disc managing the Western Europe specific area.

In parallel with the restoration work at the data center, upgrading to storage hardware that makes the impact of power shortage and power outage as low as possible is witnessed so that this situation does not occur. Google acknowledges that data that caused the loss of data is entirely responsible, but "If GCE instances and persistent disks are operated in a single data center, there is a tremendous disaster in the data center It is inevitable that a big problem will occur if you do so.It prepares for such a situation, users recommending stronger safety will be prepared to prepare to switch to different GCE zones. " We are calling attention to.

BySung ming whang

According to Future-Tech, a consulting firm for data centers, there is a high possibility that current will penetrate buildings and cause obstacles if lightning strikes directly at data centers where well protected facilities are in place.