By Aditya Kalra and Dharmesh Prajapati
- Summary
- Companies
- Damage from data centre fire among string of Tata headaches
- One client says it lost more than two decades of data
- On June 5, Tata unit said business continuity plans in place
- Some Google Cloud issues linked to incident, source says
NEW DELHI, June 24 (Reuters) – A fire at a New Delhi data centre used by global tech โfirms has left some customers fearing the loss of decades of data and caused network disruptions for Google Cloud services in India, according to a company letter โand sources.
The blaze at the STT Global Data Centres India facility, owned by Singapore’s ST Telemedia and India’s Tata Communications (TATA.NS), opens new tab, caused “extensive damage” to parts of the site, making data recovery difficult, a Tata Communications unit said in a letter to a client seen by Reuters.
The firm, part of the salt-to-aviation Tata conglomerate, told Indian stock exchanges on June 5 it had activated business continuity plans to limit disruption after an early morning fire at the facility.
One client, โMatrix Cellular, an Indian company that sells international SIM cards, told Reuters it was struggling to recover more than two decades of data lost in the incident.
Some of Google Cloud’s โintermittent network disruptions in India are also linked to the fire, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Television footage from inside the facility โ on the day of the fire showed server racks and electrical infrastructure that appeared to be completely burned, with collapsed ceiling panels and debris strewn across the floor.
The fire was “so severe that it โcaused extensive damage” and hindered services, Tata Communications unit Novamesh said in the June 15 letter to Matrix Cellular, which has not previously been reported.
“Despite our ongoing best efforts to recover the data, โthe severity of the damage … presents significant challenges to the recovery of the affected data and systems,” the letter said.
STT Global Data Centres India said in a statement it was supporting affected customers, including by moving them to alternate capacity where possible, and that an “independent technical root cause analysis is underway”.
The firm’s initial assessment indicated the impact was limited to a single data hall and associated infrastructure, with the rest of the facility continuing to operate, โit added.
GOOGLE, CLIENT โWOES
The cause of the fire remains unclear, though Delhi fire authorities said it broke out in lithium battery units.
“Matrix has potentially lost access to over 20 years of accumulated operational and business data stored in the โaffected Tata data โ centre,” CEO Gaurav Khanna told Reuters.
“It’s been 20 days and they have not restored backup. If there is a backup it should have been restored by now.”
Google said on its incidents page on June 9 that “a fire at a third-party data center facility required an emergency power shutdown of networking equipment”, without naming Tata.
The incident referred to the same STT-Tata site, the source said, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive.
In its latest update on June 23, Google said there was still no workaround and warned customers of possible latency issues until the facility is fully restored.