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Power issues caused the May 16, 2014 downtime, as stated in Stack Exchange Primary Data Center Offline - May 16th, 2014

What happens when you plug a UPS into itself? , a post for a picture contest, talks about it being caused by a UPS being plugged into itself.

I know that the photo in the post itself is a joke. But was the failure being caused by a UPS being plugged into itself also a joke, or real?

Yes, plugging a UPS into itself sounds like a pretty stupid mistake to make, but I assume it's possible when you've got a large and complex system.

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As Nick tweeted: (NSFW language warning)

Turns out our "independent" power feeds which we built full redundancy behind all went to the same (now failing) UPS. One. Fucking. Job.

So as far as I can tell, it was due to connecting all feeds to a single UPS which failed, then when the power went down, all servers went down as well.

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    Yeah, though this isn't quite plugging a UPS to itself, that's close enough to have made a good joke. The DC power architecture we have was only done with redundancy in mind as we believed we were getting two redundant power supplies - that both came from one UPS was an unwelcome surprise.
    – Oded StaffMod
    Commented May 22, 2014 at 9:39
  • @Oded thanks, and hope you (well, not you personally ;)) hired a good lawyer for a lawsuit against those who dared lying! :-)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented May 22, 2014 at 10:21
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    Oded doesn't sue. Oded visits.
    – Bart
    Commented May 22, 2014 at 10:28
  • Only as last resort, @Bart. :)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented May 22, 2014 at 10:33
  • Small nitpick, the verb is "tweet", not "twit". Twit has a whole different meaning altogether.
    – user163250
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 1:11
  • @Cupcake totally right, what a shame! ;)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented May 28, 2014 at 4:55
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    @user163250: I believe the verb is now "posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter". Catchy, I know....
    – Nick Barnes
    Commented Nov 30 at 13:43
  • @NickBarnes Small nitpick: we can't ping deleted users, in the sense they won't get any ping as there's no user to get it. ;)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 30 at 17:27
  • @ShadowWizard: Sorry to disturb you, I thought I was shouting into the void (:
    – Nick Barnes
    Commented Nov 30 at 19:02
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    @Nick well the post author always get notification, yeah. All good, you do have a good point! There's even actual serious article about it. :-D
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 30 at 19:22
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    @NickBarnes - The approved name/verb combo is now 'Xitter' and 'Xcrete'. ;)
    – Orangutech
    Commented Dec 2 at 3:09
  • @Orangutech eww! Xcrete for some reason reminds me of "Excrement" which match my opinion about X. :D
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 2 at 7:19
  • @Orangutech if it helps, I've understood the "X" in "Xitter" is meant to be pronounced like the "X" in "Xi Jinping"
    – Ben Millwood
    Commented Dec 10 at 19:30

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