Azure Outage Proves the Hard Way that Availability Zones are a Good Idea

Microsoft Azure started patching a glaring hole in its availability strategy last September, when it started previewing in-region Availability Zones. Its rivals Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud had already been using the multi-zone strategy for some time.  Earlier this month – almost exactly one year later – came a confirmation that multi-zone cloud regions were a good idea that couldn’t be stronger. Lightning during a powerful storm caused a voltage swell in the utility feeds powering one of the Azure data centers in San Antonio, Texas, that overwhelmed the facility’s surge suppressors, knocking out its cooling systems. The “load-dependent thermal buffer” baked into the cooling system for such occasions was eventually depleted. Air temperature inside rose, triggering automatic shutdown of hardware.

Read the article over at DataCenter Knowledge here.