Generator Catches Fire, Causes Lengthy Data Center Outage at WebNX

An emergency generator caught fire at a data center in Ogden, Utah over the Easter weekend, causing the full shutdown of the data center and lengthy outages for customers. The incident at a WebNX facility comes a month after a more serious fire that destroyed an entire OVH data center in Strasbourg, France.

Dedicated server hosting firm WebNX says a backup generator experienced a “catastrophic failure” Sunday afternoon, and fire officials opted to cut power to the entire building. The company says a small number of servers may have suffered water damage as emergency crews battled the generator fire.

“Sunday afternoon the city power was disrupted and, as designed, our backup generators…