Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed privately owned data centers to reserve 10% of their total capacity for potential use by the country’s state IT infrastructure. The measure is intended to provide the government with rapid access to additional computing resources if required, according to Reuters as reported by Tom’s Hardware.
The decision follows several attacks on Russian data center facilities. In early October, Ukrainian drones struck the country’s largest data center, a 63-megawatt site whose damage forced multiple modules offline. Users subsequently reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay and Market, although Yandex said key services continued operating. Two weeks later, another drone attack damaged a data center belonging to Russia’s finance ministry, reportedly affecting facilities containing tax databases and other state registry information.
Putin has ordered Russia’s Digital Development Ministry to catalogue available data center capacity and floor space at privately owned facilities nationwide. A new government commission will be empowered to request the release of reserved resources, and operators will have 24 hours to comply with such orders.
The plan may also allow temporary use of data centers located outside Russia, subject to approval by the country’s Federal Security Service. The announcement coincided with the Russian Federal State Statistics Service acknowledging that its servers had been targeted in cyberattacks. The attacks reportedly resulted in the theft of 23TB of data, including wartime-loss information classified for official use only.
Data centers have also been targeted in Ukraine. Russian bombing of Ukrainian facilities in September reportedly caused internet outages for around 100,000 households, while a government official warned that localized service disruptions could continue despite the country’s decentralized network.
Sources: Tom's Hardware.