Telehouse Power Supply Fault Causes Disruption for Some UK ISPs

Internet connectivity from a number of broadband ISPs was affected this morning (6am) after a major datacentre in London (Telehouse North) suffered a fault with one of their Power Distribution Units (PDU), which created smoke and triggered the firm alarm (the building was naturally evacuated).

The majority of people won’t have noticed the connectivity problems because power was largely restored by 7:30am (roughly when the bulk of us start to wake up for work) and providers usually know how to work around such issues, although a number of ISPs across the United Kingdom did report some disruption to their networks.

Readers might recall that the UK suffered a string of nasty data centre related faults during July 2016 (here), including one that involved a major power failure stemming from Telehouse North and that also occurred during the same early morning period. However today’s disruption has so far been much less significant and full service should be restored any minute.

We should add that Telehouse Europe is currently in the process of launching a new £135 million data centre in the London Docklands area, called Telehouse North Two. The new site has a total power capacity of up to 73 MVA, which includes a capacity of up to 50 MVA from the substation and 23 MVA from six additional commercial power feeds.