Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/01/11/webfusion_fire_alarm/
Fire safety gaffe knocks out Webfusion data centre
False alarm triggers mass server shutdown
Posted in On-Prem, 11th January 2011 14:57 GMT
A bungling fire safety contractor caused a complete shutdown at hosting firm Webfusion's data centre today, crippling thousands of websites.
The firm's domain name arm, 123-Reg, was also temporarily offline.
"An external third party was carrying out routine maintenance in our data centre, and testing our systems for fire prevention," Webfusion said in a system status update.
"Unfortunately, due to human error, our fire prevention systems were in fact triggered.
"As a result of this, and acting as the system should in the event of a real fire, all of our servers were sent in to a safe mode whereby they went offline.
"Safety is our biggest concern, hence the system is configured to react in this way to avoid a major incident and permanent data loss."
The firm's £2.5m Leeds data centre, designed by IBM, opened in February last year. It disappeared from the internet at around 12pm, and customers are still reporting connectivity problems.
Webfusion said: "We deeply regret any problems this may have caused you, and assure you we are doing our utmost to return to normal service levels as quickly as we possibly can." ®
Update 4.40pm
Webfusion got in touch to say everything is now up and running again.