Update: Systems and services have now been restored, but expect intermittent issues.
If you’ve tried to use Wells Fargo online or mobile banking or a Wells Fargo ATM today then chances are it won’t have worked. This is as a result of a smoke at a server farm in Shoreview, Minnesota. Due to this farm servers have been shut down leading to this large outage.
We’re experiencing a systems issue that is causing intermittent outages, and we’re working to restore services as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
— Wells Fargo (@WellsFargo) February 7, 2019
Some media outlets are reporting that the shut down is due to a fire rather than just smoke, but the official Wells Fargo twitter account only mentions smoke (although there is the old saying where there is smoke there is fire).
We’re experiencing system issues due to a power shutdown at one of our facilities, initiated after smoke was detected following routine maintenance. We’re working to restore services as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
— Wells Fargo (@WellsFargo) February 7, 2019
What’s worrying is that because this is an isolated incident it appears that Wells Fargo doesn’t have any in built redundancy if one server farm goes down. It seems ridiculous that all of the Wells Fargo server assets for online, mobile and ATM banking is located in a single server farm. Normally for essential services such as this you’d have the load spread out over multiple different physical locations with additional resources available if one or more of those experiences downtime. Interestingly enough there are a number of people on reddit claiming to have first hand knowledge of what is currently occurring.
