Gemini Major Outage - July 18, 2026

<p> Incident began at <strong>2026-07-15 16:57</strong> and ended at <strong>2026-07-16 05:25</strong> <span>(all times are <strong>US/Pacific</strong>).</span></p><div class="cBIRi14aVDP__status-update-text"><h1>Preliminary Incident Report</h1> <p>We sincerely apologize for the disruption this incident caused to your business. We know how much you rely on Google Cloud, and we regret the impact on your productivity. Please note, this information is based on our best knowledge at the time of posting and is subject to change as our investigation continues. A final Incident Report with preventative actions will be posted once our investigation is complete.</p> <p>If you have experienced impact outside of what is listed below, please reach out to Google Cloud Support using <a href="https://cloud.google.com/support">https://cloud.google.com/support</a>.</p> <h2>Date/Time of the Issue (All time US/Pacific)</h2> <p><strong>Google Cloud VMware Engine Impact:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Start: 15 July 2026 17:09</li> <li>End: 16 July 2026 2:33</li> <li>Duration: 9 Hours, 24 Minutes</li> </ul> <p><strong>Google Cloud NetApp Volumes Impact:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Start: 15 July 2026 16:39</li> <li>End: 16 July 2026 01:10</li> <li>Duration: 8 Hours 31 Minutes</li> </ul> <p><strong>Bare Metal Solution Impact:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Start: 15 July 2026 18:37</li> <li>End: 16 July 2026 07:34</li> <li>Duration: 12 Hours 57 Minutes</li> </ul> <h2>Summary</h2> <p>On Wednesday, 15 July 2026, Google Cloud VMware Engine, Bare Metal Solution, and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes experienced service interruptions for a total duration of 14 hours, 55 minutes. We are taking immediate steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.</p> <h2>Preliminary Root Cause</h2> <p>A regional data center hosting services in europe-west4-a experienced a loss of utility power and subsequent cooling capacity.</p> <p>The sequence of events leading to customer impact was as follows:</p> <ul> <li>An electrical fault occurred on the utility grid upstream of the data center, disrupting the electrical distribution gear and cooling equipment.</li> <li>The loss of cooling infrastructure resulted in ambient temperatures rising rapidly within the affected data halls. Host servers, storage clusters, and network switches were shut down to prevent equipment damages due to the extreme heat.</li> <li>The high temperatures in the data hall resulted in disruption to customer workloads and control plane operations across the affected services.</li> </ul> <p>Google engineers have begun a full root cause analysis and we will provide additional information once it is available.</p> <h2>Remediation</h2> <p>Google engineering teams were alerted to the issue via automated temperature and hardware unreachability telemetry starting at 16:39 US/Pacific.</p> <p>Engineers collaborated with the third-party facility provider to safely restore primary utility power and cooling systems, returning ambient room temperatures to safe operational levels. With the environment stabilized, field support engineers and remote teams systematically booted and verified the server hosts, storage nodes, and network fabric in a controlled sequence. Automated recovery playbooks were executed to restore underlying network switches and routing infrastructure, allowing storage appliances and compute clusters to be brought back online and verified for health. The underlying infrastructure has been fully recovered, and normal operations have been successfully restored.</p> <h2>Description of Impact</h2> <p>On 15 July 2026 from 16:39 to 16 July 2026 07:34 US/Pacific, customers experienced service disruptions across several products in europe-west4-a zone:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Google Cloud VMware Engine:</strong> Customers lost connectivity to their private clouds and workloads as foundational hosts and network switches were powered off for thermal protection.</li> <li><strong>Bare Metal Solution:</strong> Customers experienced connectivity loss to their database servers and storage appliances as the underlying hardware was powered down.</li> <li><strong>Google Cloud NetApp Volumes:</strong> Customers in the STANDARD, PREMIUM, and EXTREME service levels were unable to access their storage volumes. Control plane operations, including the creation of new storage pools, volumes, and backups, experienced failures in the affected region.</li> </ul> </div><hr><p>Affected products: Bare Metal Solution, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, VMWare engine</p><p>Affected locations: Netherlands (europe-west4)</p>