Fire at Delhi data centre! Google Cloud services impacted across India

NEW DELHI: Looks like Google’s cloud has hit a spot of turbulence. Thousands of businesses and organisations relying on Google Cloud services across India could face intermittent connectivity issues after a fire at a third-party data centre facility in Delhi forced an emergency shutdown of networking equipment, reducing network capacity in the region.

According to a service health update from Google Cloud, network traffic originating from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and surrounding areas has been experiencing intermittent periods of elevated latency and possible packet loss since 9 June.

The incident began at approximately 11:22 PDT on 9 June and continues to affect customers connected through the Delhi region. While the disruption has not resulted in a full outage, some users may notice slower response times, delays in data transfers and less efficient routing into Google Cloud’s infrastructure.

Google said the fire led to the isolation of a non-compute local Point of Presence (POP) facility in Delhi. To maintain services, the company rerouted substantial volumes of traffic away from the affected location. However, those changes have placed additional pressure on network capacity across Indian metros and regional internet service providers.

As a result, customers using Hybrid Connectivity and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) services may experience intermittent latency spikes as traffic is redirected through alternative routes.

The issue is particularly significant for enterprises that depend on low-latency cloud connections for business-critical applications, internal systems and data workloads. Although Google Cloud’s core computing infrastructure remains operational, network performance may be inconsistent until the affected facility is fully restored.

In its latest update, Google said it is exploring additional traffic mitigation measures and expanding internet edge peering capacity to ease congestion and improve performance for affected customers.

The company also noted that there is currently no workaround available for users experiencing the disruption. Customers may continue to see elevated latency and non-optimal routing until restoration efforts are completed.

Google Cloud has said it will provide its next update on 10 June as engineers continue efforts to stabilise network performance across the affected regions.

For now, the cloud remains online, but for some users across India’s major metros, the route to it may be taking a few unexpected detours.