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Lightning Wipes Storage Disks At Google Data Center

Posted by samzenpus on from the come-on-thunder dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Lightning struck a Google data center in Belgium four times in rapid succession last week, permanently erasing a small amount of users' data from the cloud. The affected disks were part of Google Computer Engine (GCE), a utility that lets people run virtual computers in the cloud on Google's servers. Despite the uncontrollable nature of the incident, Google has accepted full responsibility for the blackout and promises to upgrade its data center storage hardware, increasing its resilience against power outages.

6 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cannot be trusted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just use Amazon like everyone else. Google cannot be trusted, and I have said that many times. They 1) frequently decide to shut down services users rely on. One of the persistence mechanisms we depended on recently got the head shot, costing us so much money that we decided to move to Amazon, which has a standardized stack, and 2) data loss, and 3) non-existant customer service. Try contacting Google with a pressing issue.... you'll eventually give up.

  2. Oh realy? by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lightning struck the same place not twice, but four times?

    1. Re:Oh realy? by DigiShaman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      How rapid? I'm of the understanding that the first bolt ionizes the pathway in the air thereby reducing the resistance for the subsequent strikes to follow. All of this occurring within a few seconds.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:Oh realy? by pubwvj · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Lightning striking in the same spot repeatedly is a lot more likely than people think. The reason lightning may have struck a spot is due to there being a good path. Thus lightning is likely to strike that easy path again.

      We have that. We live on a mountain where there is a large copper vein running under us. I have watched lightning strike repeatedly in the same spot.

      There are videos of lightning repeatedly striking tall buildings during a single storm.

      More over, lightning does not need to be very close to do a lot of damage. In a recent storm we had nine nearby strikes - not all in the same spot but spread out over at least a square mile of our land. We lost many miles of wire because of the EMP that the lightning strikes generated got picked up by the wires and overloaded them causing the wires to melt. Some sections of fence wire simply vanished. Google could have had a few nearby strikes that did that. This happens.

      See:
      http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2015/0...
      and
      http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2015/0...

  3. Re:Whaaa? by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The affected service was Google Computer Engine, meaning that data may be changing. Replication isn't instantaneous, so I'd imagine the lost data was pending modifications.

  4. Re:Whaaa? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From what I read elsewhere it was new/current data, not even an hour old, and the lightening may have caused things to run off batteries for a bit too long due to the multiple strikes. Seems not unreasonable as an explanation, might be entirely wrong though. Articles implied that users can also backup on their own sites to ensure that they are not behoved to anyone.