MTN Gallo Manor data centre DDoSed
Another disruption in services hit MTN’s data centre in Gallo Manor, Johannesburg on 5 May, with administrators complaining the servers they host there have disappeared off the Internet.
This comes after a power outage due to load shedding brought the data centre to its knees on 3 May, when MTN’s backup power generators didn’t kick in.
The power spike that accompanied the load shedding damaged “a number of nodes,” said MTN, causing a cluster in the data centre to fail.
Reports from clients who were in contact with MTN suggest the network operator did not have the necessary spares available to repair the damaged equipment.
It is not clear what caused the recent outage, though initial indications are that it is not related to the earlier downtime.
A spokesperson for MTN was not immediately available for comment.
Update: MTN chief technology officer Eben Albertyn has provided the following feedback.
MTN experienced packet loss on some of its nodes that service the Gallo Manor area. Our assessment is that our network suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which is hampering our ability to provide connectivity services. Our engineers worked fervently to fully restore services and avert further attacks. Our connectivity is now fully restored. The interruption lasted only a few minutes and is completely unrelated to the outage experienced on Monday. MTN wishes to apologise profusely to its customers for any inconvenience caused.
More on recent outages
Load shedding wipes out MTN data centre
Major MTN Gallo Manor data centre outage
MTN deep packet inspection upgrade may cause outages