A tenth of every rack for the state: what awaits Russia's data centers after November 12

By November 12, owners of commercial data centers in Russia must reserve 10% of their space and capacity for "whitelisted" services. The digital ministry is preparing rules to disconnect "non-priority" clients and temporary state management for operators that fail to comply.

Kurs Media editorial team11 November 2026, 11:26

Server racks in a data center. Under the decree, owners of commercial data centers must keep 10% of their space and capacity in reserve. Photo: Carl Lender, CC BY 2.0

In October, the Russian internet spent several days learning what life without data centers looks like. Drone strikes hit facilities belonging to Yandex, Sber and VK. Email, payment services, retail chains' checkout systems and delivery apps went down. Yandex then spent weeks restoring its cloud — and in the end admitted that 2.84% of client data in Yandex Cloud could not be recovered.

The state's response came on November 2. Vladimir Putin signed a decree requiring owners of commercial data centers to hold a tenth of their space and capacity in reserve. The deadline is November 12. Operators have ten days to find free racks — and facilities that are already heavily loaded may simply not have any.

What the decree requires

The document is brief. Data center owners must reserve 10% of their space and capacity "in response to the unfriendly actions of certain foreign states." The reserve is intended for information resources owned by Russian citizens and companies — in practice, for the "whitelisted" services that are supposed to keep working even when the rest of the internet is restricted.

Until a government subcommission calls on the reserve, operators may rent it out and use it themselves. But once the demand comes, the resources must be handed over "within twenty-four hours." The subcommission sets the price for using them; nobody pays for the reservation itself. Moving computing abroad is allowed only with the consent of the FSB.

The decree does not apply to state and municipal data centers, to corporate data centers that serve only their owner's own needs — such as banks' — or to facilities already damaged in attacks.

Racks that don't exist

The main problem is that there is still no method for calculating the reserve. At a meeting at the Ministry of Digital Development, operators received questionnaires about their free capacity, but how to count the 10% — by floor space, by racks or by megawatts — remains unclear, two market participants told Vedomosti. The ministry began analyzing the data it had collected only on November 9.

According to Telesputnik, the reserve can be pooled across all of a holding's or operator's sites, with the operator choosing a specific data center. For large players that is a relief. For small operators with one or two halls, it is not.

RTK-DC, a subsidiary of Rostelecom, takes a calmer view. Dmitry Panyshev of RTK-DC believes the market's combined resources may be sufficient. It will be harder, he said, in regions where load is high.

When there is no room

The most sensitive part so far is not the decree itself but what is being discussed around it. On November 6, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev proposed at a meeting with operators that, if free capacity runs short, operators would disconnect existing clients. Client priorities would be set in advance, RBC and Vedomosti reported, citing participants. The ministry confirmed that the measures are "being worked out."

The disconnections would be classified as force majeure so that operators are not liable to their clients. Lawyers interviewed by Telesputnik are skeptical: force majeure does not guarantee release from liability and certainly does not compensate clients for their losses.

For those who fail to comply, there is a tougher option: temporary management under decree No. 604 on the protection of critical infrastructure, with the Federal Agency for State Property Management acting as manager.

Who is at risk

The largest services will almost certainly be on the whitelists or already run their own data centers. The risk falls on mid-sized and small companies that rent racks and cloud capacity from commercial operators: online stores, service companies, developers, regional media. If the subcommission makes a demand, the operator will have twenty-four hours — and the client even less.

There is another side. October showed how costly it is to keep everything in one place without a backup. Since then, Yandex has begun enabling backups by default for new virtual machines and has placed part of its clients' data with Selectel, K2Cloud and VK Cloud.

On Thursday, November 12, the reserve is supposed to be ready. The market is still waiting for the method to calculate it.