UK Heatwave Causes Google and Oracle Outages
As temperatures reached a record-breaking high.
Scorching hot weather hit the United Kingdom this week, with the temperature hitting a record-breaking 40.2 degrees Celcius (104.4 Fahrenheit) today, which led to Google Cloud and Oracle servers struggling with cooling-related outages at the companies’ data centers.
Both companies blamed the high temperature for the unexpected shutdowns. Google stated that it experienced a “cooling-related failure” in one of its data centers in the UK. “This caused a partial failure of capacity in that zone, leading to VM [virtual machine] terminations and a loss of machines for a small set of our customers.”
The company added that to prevent further damage, they “powered down” some of its machines. Oracle also had a similar issue, stating that the data centers are struggling with “unseasonal temperatures” in the UK. While the service is slowly returning online, the company noted that it shut down its machines earlier today to prevent system failures. Oracle added that temperatures have reached a “workable level” but are still undergoing a repair for its cooling system.
It is unclear how many users were affected. The UK’s infrastructure is not built to handle extreme heat. In addition, many places do not have air conditioning, resulting in many people finding it hard to deal with the heat.
Elsewhere, Apple may soon be releasing 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models equipped with its latest M2 chip.
