Data centres are sharpening their focus on bolstering fire safety, cooling systems and electrical infrastructure to shield their operations from sudden disruptions, said industry executives and analysts. This follows a fire at a third-party data centre of Google Cloud in Delhi Wednesday that sparked an emergency shutdown of networking equipment at the facility, affecting the cloud computing unit’s customers in several Indian cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.
Data centres, considered the backbone of a digital economy, have emerged as critical national infrastructure as the rapid use of AI triggers a sharp rise in computing power and value concentrated inside such centres. While a traditional server rack typically contains $50,000-$100,000 worth of equipment, an AI rack contains hardware worth $2 million-$7.5 million, per industry estimates.
