DBS & Citibank Disruptions Were Due to Data Centre’s Cooling System Issue

By
Goh Yi Ling
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Were you one of the people who were affected when DBS and Citibank services were down over the weekend?

Many banking services, such as ATM services, Paylah, PayNow and bank transfer transactions, could not go through for DBS users during the downtime.

As it turned out, the downtime was due to an issue with the data centre under Equinix.

Now, there are more details about what really happened which caused the outage lasting more than several hours.

Here is what Equinix said.

Equinix Said That Data Centre’s Cooling System Had a Technical Issue

Further to the information released about why DBS, Citibank and other service providers like WhatsApp and Singapore faced some downtime last Saturday (14 October 2023), a more concrete explanation has arrived.

What could have been the technical issue faced by the data centre? Was it a hacking?

Thankfully, the reason is less nefarious than that.

According to Equinix, whose data centres caused the downtime for the banks, the technical issue was with the cooling system.

Equinix revealed this information when speaking to local news outlet Channel News Asia about the outage.

The cooling system in question required chilled water to cool the data centres.

There was a planned system upgrade at one of the data centres, but this caused a rise in temperatures in “some of the halls in the data centre”.

The result? It “impacted some customers’ operations”.

The good thing is that all is back to normal, and Equinix is now doing damage control with the whole host of clients affected.

Apart from banks, mobile service providers such as redONE were also affected when the temperature in the data centre ran too high.

We always knew being too hot was an issue.

Equinix Is the Most Network-Dense Data Centre Provider in SEA

If you’re wondering why a planned improvement for Equinix could lead to disastrous consequences, don’t discount Singapore’s data centres just yet.

According to Equinix’s website, it is the “most network-dense data centre provider in Southeast Asia”.

Their five data centres spread around the east, west and central parts of Singapore are “business hubs for multiple companies and offer a broad choice of network services from many providers”.

They service many international and regional networks that “digitally connect the region with the rest of the world”.

So, we guess Equinix deserves a second chance to redeem itself. After all, mistakes happen and it seems like Equinix will be better equipped to deal with such problems moving forward.

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Goh Yi Ling
Email: [email protected]