Incident & post-mortem Resolved — back to nominal

Equinix PA4 Cooling Incident: Our Continuity Response

Resolved
Incident status
24 Jun · 15:06
Start (local time)
No data loss
Customer data
PA4 · Pantin
Affected site

On 24 June 2026 at 15:06, a cooling incident occurred at the Equinix PA4 datacenter (Pantin), one of the three sites where we operate our infrastructure. The incident originated with our datacenter, not our own equipment. We are publishing here, transparently, how we handled it.

Our priority was simple: protect hardware and data rather than keep services running at all costs under degraded environmental conditions. Our services returned to nominal operation on 25 June at 08:30, redundancy included. On the datacenter side, a single cooling unit remains to be brought back to full capacity (one chiller at 50%, awaiting parts).

In short

A water-supply failure on Equinix PA4's adiabatic cooling system caused the protective shutdown of several chillers and a rise in room temperatures. In line with our incident management plan, and after coordinating with the affected customers, we failed over redundant services to their continuity site, migrated single-site machines between clusters where possible, then performed a controlled shutdown of the vast majority of our PA4 equipment. No data loss or uncontrolled outage occurred.

Timeline

TimestampEvent
24 Jun · 15:06Cooling incident detected at Equinix PA4 (loss of water supply to the adiabatic cooling system).
24 Jun · ~16:00Room temperatures begin to rise.
24 Jun · 20:30Our thermal alarm thresholds reached. Incident management plan activated.
24 Jun · 20:30 – 22:30Affected customers notified; then, with their agreement: standby machines powered off, active machines failed over to their continuity site, single-datacenter machines migrated between clusters.
24 Jun · 22:30Controlled shutdown of the vast majority of our PA4 equipment to protect hardware.
25 Jun · morningCooling sufficiently restored on the datacenter side (most chillers back online, one at reduced capacity), redundancy still reduced.
25 Jun · 07:30Temperatures deemed stable enough: start of the restart and gradual restoration of our services.
25 Jun · 08:30All our services back to nominal operation — incident closed on the RDEM Systems side.
Datacenter sideRedundancy back to normal on the datacenter side; five chillers at full capacity, one at 50% (awaiting parts) before returning to full cooling capacity.

Network impact: one of our transit providers present at PA4 had its equipment shut down due to the temperature. Thanks to our multi-site, multi-transit connectivity via our AS206014, traffic kept flowing through our other points of presence, with no loss of connectivity.

Our response

Our architecture across three interconnected Equinix datacenters gave us real continuity options. Here is what we activated:

Failover

Services with a continuity plan were failed over to their backup site, away from PA4.

Inter-cluster migration

For single-datacenter machines, migration to other clusters where the situation allowed, to keep services running.

Controlled shutdown

Clean, orderly power-off of the remaining PA4 equipment to avoid any heat-related hardware damage.

What this incident demonstrates

Thermal monitoring with alarm thresholds defined in advance, not endured.

A proactive decision: protect hardware rather than risk an uncontrolled outage.

Communication with customers before acting, not after.

Real continuity options thanks to a multi-datacenter architecture.

Cause of the incident

According to our datacenter's communications, the suspected initial cause is a loss of water supply to the adiabatic cooling system, which triggered high-pressure conditions and the protective shutdown of several chillers' compressors. Recovery and repair work is ongoing on the Equinix side.

We do not reproduce the datacenter's internal operational detail here. The consolidated root-cause analysis (RCA) will be published once available and confirmed.

Our transparency commitment

  • We only state "no impact" when it is objectively true for the affected customers.
  • On 25 June, our PA4 services returned to nominal operation at 08:30, redundancy included; one chiller remains to be brought back to full capacity on the datacenter side.
  • This page is updated as the situation evolves.

Infrastructure built for continuity

Three interconnected Equinix datacenters, high-availability clusters and proven incident procedures. Let's talk about the resilience of your infrastructure.

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