By Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil
NEW DELHI, June 24 (Reuters) – A fire at a New Delhi data centre used by global tech firms 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 and sources.
The blaze at the STT Global Data Centres India facility, owned by Singapore’s ST Telemedia and India’s Tata Communications, 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, Matrix 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 intermittent 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 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 caused 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, the 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, it added.
Tata Communications said in a statement it had restored the services of all customers “who had subscribed for recovery and backup services”, adding that further efforts were “being pursued to the extent possible.”
GOOGLE, CLIENT WOES
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 affected Tata data 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.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Another client, Indian internet service provider R2 Net, faces estimated losses of $2 million and the potential loss of customers due to the disruption, its CEO, Sanjay Singh, said.
The fire affected “vital tracking data stored in servers and used by law enforcement to monitor illegal internet activity,” he told Reuters.
In a June 23 email seen by Reuters, STT Global Data Centres India told R2 Net that a detailed assessment and independent technical root cause analysis was under way and expected to take five to seven weeks.
Reuters could not identify other affected companies.
Tata Communications says 300 Fortune 500 companies are among its clients and that it connects businesses to 80% of the world’s cloud giants.
‘FORCE MAJEURE’
ST Telemedia acquired a 74% stake in Tata Communications’ data centre business in 2016. Their joint venture now runs 30 data centres in 10 Indian cities.
The fire adds to challenges for the Tata group. Tata Electronics recently disclosed a cybersecurity incident after a ransomware website published what it said were client documents linked to Apple and Tesla on the dark web.
Matrix said it lost customer data, usage records, support history, and billing and vendor-related data in the fire, adding that sales have fallen sharply due to the outage.
“This is clearly an unfortunate force majeure event … services under the agreements at the data centre facility have been hindered,” Novamesh said in its letter. “The position continues to be assessed.”
The data centre had a “state-of-the-art fire protection and suppression system,” the joint venture says on its website.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil. Editing by Tony Munroe, Clarence Fernandez and Mark Potter)
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