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Google Cloud and Oracle servers in the UK were plagued with cooling-related outages on Tuesday as the country experienced record heat that reached as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Both companies blame the temperature for the unexpected shutdowns.
On its google cloud status page, Google notes that it has experienced a “cooling-related failure” in one of its UK-based data centers. “This caused a partial capacity failure in that area, leading to the virtual machine [virtual machine] cancellations and loss of machines for a small number of our customers,” Google says. The company adds that it has also “turned off” some of its machines to prevent further damage.
As pointed out The register and Bleeping Computer, Oracle has a similar message for customers on its status page but directly cites “non-seasonal temperatures” in the UK as the cause of the outage. The software company shut down some of its machines to prevent system crashes earlier today, but its latest update says the service is slowly coming back online. Oracle says temperatures in the data center “have reached achievable levels,” but it’s still working to fix its cooling system.
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While it’s unclear how many users the two outages affect, the outages could cause problems for users who use Oracle and Google Cloud services to host their websites.
The UK’s infrastructure is simply not built to handle extreme heat levels, which is unusual for the country, even in summer. As well as crippling data centres, the heat has disrupted travel across the country, melting the runway at London Luton Airport and causing railways to bend and break. It also sparked wildfires in several areas in the UK, including London, Kent, Cornwall and Pembrokeshire. As the effects of climate change continue to reverberate around the world, scorching heatwaves could become something the UK will be forced to adapt to.