At quarter past eight on Sunday night, co-founder and chairman of Internet Data Center Indonesia, Johar Alam Rangkuti, tweeted that IDC 3D, which is one of the country’s primary data centers, located in South Jakarta, had to be shut down due to a “UPS blowout”. Further reports from Twitter say that the fire at IDC 3D right now is already under control after a number of fire trucks were dispatched to the site. An emergency shutdown of all servers and connections had to be initiated immediately to ensure no further damage caused by the smoke.
UPS blowout. All shutdown at IDC 3D.
— Johar Alam Rangkuti (@joharalam) August 12, 2012
IDC 3D hosts a number of significant Indonesian sites including popular news portals Detik, Okezone, as well as Yahoo Indonesia, and humor site malesbanget. Out of the three major news sits hosted on IDC, Yahoo is the only one currently accessible.
IDC 3D is also home to Open IXP (Open Internet Exchange Point) which was set up in 2005 as an alternative to the IIX (Indonesia Internet Exchange). IIX is hosted at Cyber Building, also in South Jakarta, but quite a distance from IDC 3D. Both centers handle the country’s Internet traffic routing in addition to hosting a great number of Indonesian sites. Because of the fire and the emergency procedures, any connection to Open IXP was cut off from 8 o’clock on Sunday evening, which means many sites may have become inaccessible.
Detik, the country’s most popular news portal is fully hosted at IDC 3D and reportedly takes up half the servers located at the center. This shut down greatly affects Detik’s ability in delivering news as the site is not mirrored anywhere else in the country. It has mirrors in the US but since the majority of local traffic goes to Open IXP, it becomes inaccessible.
The data center is also home to Jardiknas, the national education network, operated by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry’s technology division tweeted around 10:30 pm that while everything is under control, they still have an investigation to do at the site and the entire network is still down, but seems to think that things should be back to normal by midnight. Of course, this depends on the severity of the damage caused by the fire and smoke.
[1/2] 1) Kebakaran #IDC3D sdh padam; 2) Perkabelan & ruang Data Center Jardiknas/Kemdikbud dlm kondisi aman; 3) Listrik blm dpt dinyalakan.. — Pustekkom Kemdikbud(@pustekkom) August 12, 2012
[2/2] krn masih dicek kondisi perkabelannya di lt 1 (ruang listrik) yg terdampak kebakaran oleh Tim #IDC3D; 4) Diperkirakan pkl 24.00 normal
— Pustekkom Kemdikbud(@pustekkom) August 12, 2012
Shortly after 11 pm, Rangkuti reported that they have concluded independent as well as PLN electricity audit and electricity as well as servers and connections should be operational shortly. Power has been restored but only for lighting purposes for the moment.
Jaringan aman. Audit PLN dan independent sudah. Salah satu dari 8 UPS kebakar. Shutdown diperlukan karena banyak asap RT @ylbsumaryo — Johar Alam Rangkuti (@joharalam) August 12, 2012
Listrik sudah dinyalakan kembali sementara hanya untuk penerangan. Untuk ruang mesin bertahap
— Johar Alam Rangkuti (@joharalam) August 12, 2012
We’ll report more once we have further information.
[Update: 9:20 am] While power has been restored to lighting and air conditioning since just before midnight, the servers are still being tested. All sites hosted solely on IDC 3D are still down, including that of Garuda Indonesia, the country’s national airline.
Tweeps fyi Gedung IDC di Duren Tiga dimana Server Portal n Web GA berada terjadi musibah ‘small’ fire n saat ini masih dlm perbaikan.
— PT. Garuda Indonesia (@IndonesiaGaruda) August 12, 2012
After dawn on Monday, Rangkuti said that electricity on the first floor has been fully restored and all clusters located there are up and running. They are currently still working on bringing back up servers on the second floor.
Seluruh Lantai 1 IDC 3D sudah nyala semua.
— Johar Alam Rangkuti (@joharalam) August 13, 2012
AC lantai 2 IDC 3D sudah menyala. Tahap berikutnya secara bertahap coba menyalakan data center.
— Johar Alam Rangkuti (@joharalam) August 13, 2012
We also received third party information that despite being hosted at IDC, Yahoo Indonesia managed to stay up by deploying its backup from Friday. Yahoo Indonesia is not hosted on IDC according to former director of global tech initiatives Michael Smith Jr.
[Update 2, 2:15 pm] Everything seems to be back up and running since one hour ago.
