August 1, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Data center operator 365 Main (365main.com) announced on Wednesday that it had uncovered the details behind the failure of its backup power generators during an outage that affected its San Francisco facility last week.
Approximately 40 percent of the customers in the facility lost power to their equipment for up to 45 minutes on Tuesday, July 24, starting at 1:47 p.m., following a power surge caused by the unexpected opening of breakers at a local PG&E power station.
Three of 365 Main's 10 backup power generators failed to complete their start sequences, says the company, which began an investigation immediately.
365 Main says its team discovered a weakness in a component of the generators known as the Detroit Diesel Electronic Controller that was not allowing the component to correctly reset its memory.
Working with engineers from Hitec, the manufacturer of the generators, the company applied a fix to the component. Following the fix, says 365 Main, the generators passed 50 consecutive start-up sequence tests without incident.
365 Main says it has applied the fix in all its facilities using that model of generator, and is sharing its findings with other Hitec customers. The manufacturer has expanded its preventative maintenance program as a result of the investigation.
"365 Main has a track record of providing customers with data centers that are considered to be among the world's finest," says president and CEO Chris Dolan. "We extend our sincere apologies to customers who were impacted by this incident. Addressing customer concerns is our top priority. In the days since the incident occurred, we have identified and corrected the root source of the problem and are taking steps to prevent this type of problem from happening again. We are also making our comprehensive findings available to other data centers to try to prevent the same problem from recurring elsewhere."
