Exodus Power Outage Disrupts Yahoo Service

Users of Yahoo’s instant messaging, games and chat functions were blocked from those services for up to three hours Monday after one of the largest Internet data hosting companies lost power at a Sunnyvale, Calif., facility.

Exodus Communications Inc., which touted its multiple backup systems to win business handling Web sites and related functions for Yahoo and other big corporations, said it’s investigating why the Sunnyvale data center failed to shift to on-site power.

The shutdown began after an underground Pacific Gas & Electric connector failed at 2:50 p.m., cutting power to the Exodus plant and about 670 other businesses and homes. The failure was unrelated to rolling blackouts prompted by the energy crisis, said PG&E; spokeswoman Jennifer Ramp.

PG&E; rerouted electricity to most of the customers in 90 minutes, but some were without power for nearly five hours.

The Exodus facility, meanwhile, was supposed to switch instantly to its battery-based uninterruptible power supply system and then to diesel generators. “The operation center failed to automatically roll over,” said Exodus spokeswoman Celia Cratch. “Exodus engineers are performing analysis to prevent such occurrences in the future.”

The facility was without power for an hour, and it took Yahoo longer to get everything back on line. Cratch said she didn’t know if any of Exodus’ other 41 centers had suffered such prolonged outages before, or if the company faced any financial liability for guaranteeing fail-safe data-hosting.

For Yahoo, which runs some of the most popular pages on the Internet, it was the worst outage since last year’s denial of service attack by a hacker. Yahoo spokeswoman Shannon Stubo said no data were lost, and that Yahoo has “been very happy with Exodus,” and that there would be no change in their relationship.

Exodus’ pride in its backup systems is underscored in some of its contracts. “Any material interruptions of service could result in claims and have a material adverse effect on our financial position,” the company said in its most recent annual securities filing.

Analyst Tim Newington with Credit Suisse First Boston in New York said, “This is a one-time blip” for Exodus, without serious financial repercussions. “It’s not going to happen on a regular basis.”