Google, Oracle datacenters melt down in extreme European heatwave
A punishing heat wave currently gripping the UK and other parts of Europe is wreaking havoc on Google and Oracle cloud servers, particularly those located in datacenters that are not built to take the high heat. Over 34 locations exceeded the UK's previous temperature record of 38.7°C recorded in July 2019, and the country recorded its hottest-ever temperature, 40.3°C (104.5°F) in Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
As reported by The Register(opens in new tab), Oracle has been forced to power down some hardware, which could leave some customers unable to access some Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services, while Google is reporting «experiencing elevated error rates, latencies or service unavailability» across multiple cloud services in Europe.
In both cases, the trouble was caused by a breakdown of cooling systems that were struggling to cope with the extreme heat. «As a result of unseasonal temperatures in the region, a subset of cooling infrastructure within the UK South (London) Datacentre has experienced an issue,» Oracle's system status website(opens in new tab) says. «The relevant service teams have been engaged and are working to restore the affected infrastructure back to a healthy state. Our engineers expect redundancy to the impacted cooling infrastructure to be restored within the next 1-2 hours, after which services will begin to be recovered.»
In an update posted at 3 pm ET, Oracle said that work on cooling systems is continuing, and temperatures are dropping as a result of both the repair work and the shutdown of «non-critical» systems. «As the operating temperatures approach workable levels, some services may start to see recovery.»
Google also reported a cooling failure earlier today impacting its europe-west2
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