Global warming and a heat wave! On July 19, Google and Oracle's servers went down due to hot weather, causing some websites and services to go down. Google said one of its data centers in the United Kingdom experienced a cooling system failure due to the hot weather. This caused some servers to stop working. Several cloud services in Europe experienced high error rates, delays or were inaccessible. Google shut down some machines to prevent further damage. The extreme heat also caused Oracle's data centers to go down. The company said that while shutting down some of its equipment would result in customers not being able to access some cloud infrastructure services, it had to do so to prevent increased system failures. Oracle is working to fix its cooling system. While it is not clear how many users were affected by the outage, it is bound to take a toll on users who use Oracle and Google Cloud Services to host their sites.

During the hot summer months, data centers are prone to failure. High temperatures lead to a significant increase in the chance of server replacement parts. The temperature of the server room is generally controlled at 20°C-26°C. Once the temperature of the server room is too high, it will lead to equipment downtime, even data loss, component and storage media damage. The continuous high temperature will overload the cooling equipment and overheat its own system, which will easily cause the cooling equipment to fail, thus causing the whole data center to be paralyzed. High temperatures also make the air in the server room dry, which generates static electricity and poses a fire hazard. In addition, dust can also cause high temperature inside the equipment of the server room, which cannot dissipate heat in time. Therefore, regular dust removal and maintenance of the server room is needed to eliminate safety hazards. All these add to the operation and maintenance cost of the data center.

High temperature weather can also be a test for power supply systems. High loads can lead to sudden power outages and even damage to server hard drives. the life of the UPS battery has a lot to do with the ambient temperature, and every 1°C rise in the operating temperature significantly reduces its life. If too much dust accumulates, it may also cause a short circuit in the battery. high UPS chassis temperatures may explode and cause a fire in the server room.

In the context of global warming, data centers are facing increasing challenges of extreme weather. To reduce the impact of hot weather, the industry continues to explore. One of the most disruptive solutions is to build data centers under the sea. The average PUE of the national data center in FY2021 is 1.49. The NDRC and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology require new data centers to have a PUE of 1.3 or less. And the PUE of single cabin of submarine data center is only 1.076, which has a broad application prospect.