Tata unit says 'extensive damage' from fire at Delhi data centre hampers recovery

The cause of the fire is not yet clear, and Delhi fire authorities said it occurred in lithium battery units. (Representational image)

A fire at a New Delhi data centre owned by Singapore’s ‌ST Telemedia and Tata Communications caused “extensive damage” to parts of the facility, making data recovery challenging, ​a Tata letter seen by Reuters shows.

The firm, part of the salt-to-aviation Tata conglomerate, told Indian stock ⁠exchanges on June 5 it had activated business continuity protocols to minimise disruptions after an early morning fire at the STT Global Data Centres India facility.

One data centre client, India’s Matrix Cellular, which provides international SIM cards, told Reuters it is struggling to recover two decades ‌of data lost in the blaze.

Some of Google Cloud’s intermittent network disruptions in India also relate to the incident, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Television news images from inside the facility ‌on the day of the fire showed server racks and electrical infrastructure that appeared to be completely burnt, with ‌ceiling ⁠panels collapsed and debris littering the floor.

The fire was “so severe that it caused extensive damage” to parts of ⁠the facility and hindered services, Tata Communications unit Novamesh told a client in the June 15 letter, which has not previously been reported.

“Despite our ongoing best efforts to recover the data, the severity of the damage ... presents significant challenges to the recovery of the affected data and systems,” it ​said in the letter sent to Matrix Cellular and ‌reviewed by Reuters.

The cause of the fire is not yet clear, and Delhi fire authorities said it occurred in lithium battery units.

“Matrix has potentially lost access to over 20 years of accumulated operational and business data stored in the affected Tata data centre,” CEO Gaurav ‌Khanna told Reuters.

“It’s been 20 days and they have not restored backup. If there is a backup it ​should have been restored by now.”

On June 9 Google said on its incidents page “a fire at a third-party data center facility required an emergency power shutdown of networking equipment”, without naming Tata.