[AusNOG] [AUSNog] : Re Data Centre Fire Suppression Safety

[Robert Hudson]

I can confirm that the sound/pressure wave from a gas discharge can, does
and absolutely did destroy a lot of spinning disks in some very expensive
kit (big data and database appliances) when such a system was accidently
deployed in a datacentre I am familiar with.

On Fri, 14 Dec. 2018, 5:02 am Bevan Slattery <bevan at slattery.net.au wrote:

> It’s pretty much all been said.
>
> Halon (long gone).  Reaction sucks oxygen out of air.
> FM200 (safe but being phased out).  Heard it can leave a residue despite
> the brochure saying not.
> Inergen  more common (and others like it).  Fundamentally mostly nitrogen
> that drops oxygen below 15% and drops temperature.  These are two
> components of a fire (heat, fuel and oxygen).  People can operate
> comfortably below 15% oxygen.  In fact at 10% you can still function more
> than enough to pick up your gear and leave the room.
>
> I did quite a bit of research on reduced oxygen environments (hypoxic)
> which is used on (Firepass etc.)
> http://www.firepass.com/oxygen-reduction-fire
>
> Obviously dry pipe is used a lot. The issues with gas suppression today
> are more around noise (and vibration) and temp drop and they relate to
> spinning disks and circuit boards, more than people.
>
> The issues around dry pipe is, well when it goes off, it’s not very dry
> and water/equipment certainly doesn’t mix.
>
> Cheers
>
> B
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* AusNOG <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net> on behalf of Paul
> Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 12, 2018 3:53 pm
> *To:* AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> *Subject:* [AusNOG] [AUSNog] : Re Data Centre Fire Suppression Safety
>
> Every data centre has a fire suppression system. We're not used to
> thinking of this as a hazardous environment, but consequent totwo techs
> being found dead working on a fire suppression system in Antarctica
> <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/antarctica-two-technicians-dead-mcmurdo-station-ross-island>,
> I find myself wondering yet again, why there aren't more stringent controls
> around the fire suppression systems in data centres: viz - when you enter a
> data centre, how confident can you be you're not going to be quietly
> asphyxiated?
>
> Kind regards
>
> Paul Wilkins
>
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20181214/4cb92e2a/attachment.html>