A major power outage occurred at Equinix’s flagship SG1 data centre in Singapore this morning between 11:09am and 12.24pm. In an official statement, Equinix said the power outage was due to equipment failure during scheduled maintenance, when a reduction in power redundancy was required.
Two data halls were affected. The issue has since been resolved.
The importance of SG1 data centre was highlighted in Downdetector reports across major ISPs in Singapore including Singtel, StarHub, and ViewQwest. All registered a spike in outages reported at around 11am.
Equinix SG1 is located at 20 Ayer Rajah Crescent, Singapore. Spread across 181,716 sq ft., with 109,209 sq ft in raised floor space for colocation, the data center has access to 13.0 MW of power. It is home to the Asia-Pacific Network Operation Centre (NOC) and is the most network-dense data centre in the region. Phase 4 expansion of the SG1 data center was completed in Q2 2009.
On October 14, 2023, SG3 experienced an hours-long outage which brought digital banking and financial services to a grinding halt in Singapore. Nearly 2.5 million payments and ATM transactions could not be completed and customers made as many as 810,000 failed attempts to access digital banking. The outage was due to a “technical issue with the cooling system”, according to a spokesperson from Equinix.
This is where the upcoming Digital Infrastructure Act (DIA) would come in very useful. The law could require operators to meet higher security and resilience standards to reduce the likelihood of systemic disruptions which can cause a “significant impact” on the economy and society. The DIA is still under review and is expected to be presented to Parliament this year.
