26 Aug
A data center being offline for just a few hours can mean losses of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. The “Annual Outage Analysis 2025” report by the Uptime Institute highlights a paradox in the industry: although the overall frequency of outages and reported severity have decreased for the fourth consecutive year, their financial and reputational impact is becoming increasingly severe. In 2024, more than half of the surveyed organizations (54%) reported that their most recent significant outage exceeded $100,000, and one in five reported losses of over $1 million.
What have the past few years really looked like for data center operators in terms of operational disruptions? Beyond charts and statistics, every percentage point hides real stories—high-profile incidents and major financial losses that demonstrate just how fragile the balance between availability and downtime can be.
Energy, the “Achilles’ Heel” of the Data Center Industry
Even though only 9% of incidents reported in 2024 were classified as serious or severe—the lowest level ever recorded by Uptime—power remains the “Achilles’ heel” of data centers, accounting for more than half (54%) of major-impact outages. The numbers become even more telling when placed alongside real-world cases—let’s look at a few concrete examples.
In October 2023, a failure in the electrical distribution system at a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands caused an outage of nearly two hours , after the switchover from the public grid to backup generators partially failed. The incident impacted key Azure services—from App Service and SQL DB to storage and virtual machines—and about 1% of racks lost power. Full recovery took until the evening, with some storage accounts affected for several hours, directly impacting customers and critical services that depended on them. Microsoft did not disclose details about the financial impact of this outage.
Cooling, Network, and IT – the Next Major Risk Factors
The Uptime Institute report also shows that, after power, cooling systems (13%), networks (12%), and IT systems (11%) follow as leading causes of outages, confirming that critical infrastructure remains vulnerable precisely at the points where it should be strongest.
We already know that heatwaves are not a data center operator’s best friend. Back in July 2022, Google’s and Oracle’s London data centers were hit by a record-breaking heatwave, with temperatures soaring above 40 °C, which caused failures in cooling systems. Oracle’s first announcement about the incident stated that “unreasonable temperatures” had affected its cloud and network equipment at its South London data center, causing outages throughout the day and impacting customers. Google, in turn, partially shut down cloud services for several hours as a protective measure to prevent equipment damage and prolonged downtime, affecting a small number of users and causing temporary unavailability for services such as WordPress web hosting in Europe.
A more unusual incident was recently shared by Rick Bentley, founder of Cloudastructure and Hydro Hash, which operates a hydro-powered crypto-mining data center. This one occurred in Montana, USA, where the data center “froze solid overnight” . The problem, in this case, was the rapid temperature drop from -6 °C to -34 °C in less than 24 hours. Bentley emphasized that, although the team believed it was prepared, the combination of extreme cold with a power outage made the incident unavoidable.
Complex IT Infrastructures Mean More Frequent Outages
As mentioned earlier, in 2024 nearly a quarter of major-impact outages were caused by IT and network issues—a trend explained by the increasing complexity of infrastructures and the risks associated with misconfigurations. Uptime Institute data confirms this: the most common causes of IT-related outages are network and connectivity problems (30%), IT systems and software (23%), power outages (18%), third-party IT services such as public cloud or SaaS (8%), and cooling issues (7%).
A representative case is the incident on July 20, 2025, involving Alaska Airlines. This highlights that the damage is not only financial but also reputational. The U.S. airline suffered a critical hardware failure in its data centers, which led to the grounding of all flights for about three hours, between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. PT. The issue disrupted core flight operations and also affected its subsidiary, Horizon Air. As a result, on July 21, FlightAware data showed that 7% of flights (66) were canceled, while another 12% (110) experienced delays, leading to crowded airports and confusion among passengers. The hardware failure was reportedly caused by a third-party component, with the company stating it was working with the vendor to resolve the issue.
Operational Outages Caused by Human Error on the Rise
In 2025, outages caused by human error increased by 10 percentage points compared to 2024, with the most common cause being failure to follow procedures—possibly amplified by the industry’s rapid growth and staff shortages. Investments in employee training and real-time operational support can help mitigate these risks. According to Uptime Institute, over the past three years, the main causes of major human errors have been, in addition to not following procedures (58%), staff following incorrect processes (45%), understaffing (18%), insufficient preventive maintenance (16%), and omissions in data center design (14%).
A Final Note
As data center infrastructure becomes increasingly complex and interconnected, operational risks are diversifying and becoming more costly. Even infrastructure designed to be robust can be vulnerable to extreme conditions or configuration errors, underlining the importance of an integrated prevention strategy.
To reduce the risk of outages in data centers, several complementary measures are essential: redundant power systems (generators and UPSs) to ensure uninterrupted hardware operation; regular maintenance and testing, supported by monitoring and predictive analytics; failover to mirror sites for rapid traffic redirection; disaster recovery plans with checklists and regular drills; and staff training to minimize human error.
