Drones attack Russia's most powerful data centre, over 650 km from Ukraine
Drones have struck Russia's most powerful data centre, owned by the country's largest bank and technology company, Sberbank.
Source: Reuters
Details: The facility is located in the city of Balakovo in Saratov Oblast, roughly 650-700 km from the border with Ukraine. It is Russia's primary data centre in terms of design power capacity, which stands at 82 MW. The site houses 3,000 server racks and up to 120,000 servers.
The Sberbank centre was also set to house Russia's largest supercomputer, which was scheduled for commissioning in 2027. It is not yet known whether it sustained damage in the attack.
However, the strike did not disrupt Sberbank's services, a senior company executive said.
"We confirm that the data processing centre was attacked. At the same time, all of Sberbank's systems and services are operating normally and without disruption," Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin told reporters.
Along with Yandex, its main domestic competitor, Sberbank is a leading Russian developer of artificial intelligence. The Russian domestic AI market is split between Sberbank's GigaChat model and YandexGPT.
Background:
- Drones have previously attacked Yandex data centres several times. Strikes occurred on 8 October in Sasovo, on 9 October in Kaluga and on 11 October in Vladimir.
- Data centres in Sasovo and Vladimir were reported to have ceased operations following the attacks.
- Yandex would need at least six months to replace the damaged infrastructure of these three data centres.
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