Fire at Delhi data center disrupts Google Cloud services

A fire at a third-party data center in New Delhi forced an emergency shutdown late Tuesday night, disrupting Google Cloud services across several major Indian cities and causing widespread network slowdowns. The incident led to elevated latency and intermittent connectivity problems for users in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and surrounding regions.

Google confirmed the disruption, stating that the fire necessitated an emergency power shutdown of networking equipment. This action isolated a local network hub, known as a Point of Presence, in Delhi and significantly reduced available network capacity in the metro area. In response, the company rerouted significant traffic away from the impacted facility to offset the reduced local capacity.

However, this rerouting has itself contributed to ongoing service issues. Google stated that demand is exceeding capacity across Indian metros and regional Internet Service Providers, leading to intermittent latency spikes and possible packet loss for a subset of customers. The company said it is investigating additional traffic mitigation measures and exploring enhancements to its internet edge peering to alleviate the latency issues.