Mislabeled wires responsible for two-day IT outage in South Dakota; officials
14 days ago
- #infrastructure failure
- #IT outage
- #South Dakota
- A wiring issue at the South Dakota State Data Center caused a two-day power outage in August, disrupting IT systems.
- The outage stemmed from replacing an uninterruptible power supply, which failed and tripped the main breaker multiple times.
- Mislabeled electrical lines led to switches being energized unexpectedly, causing further damage and prolonging the outage.
- The facility had been updated multiple times over 50 years, contributing to the mislabeling issue.
- Despite built-in redundancy, the mislabeling caused switches to malfunction, leading to a network outage.
- Damaged parts replacements cost about $80,000, but the state's technology staff response was praised as a 'proud moment'.