Event Recap
RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | Fire Suppression
23 Oct 2018
Uptime Institute again looked at fire suppression strategies in a roundtable held on October 23, 2018. In this roundtable, participants shared their experiences with fire protection and fire suppression.
All participants agreed that fire protection begins with fire prevention, especially after co-moderator Pitt Turner, Uptime Network Global Executive, noted that most forms of fire either do not originate in the data center or can easily be excluded. Fuel for fire, one participant noted, is not plentiful in the data center.
Another noted that some of the most prominent data center fires actually began elsewhere in the build and spread to the data center. Pitt Turner noted that fires that originated in data center were generally either electrical and self-extinguishing or the result of poor procedures, such as smoking or storing papers in the data center.
Roundtable participants suggested that their primary interests in data center fire suppression were life safety and continued operations.
Selection of the fire suppression system was somewhat harder. Only one participant had actually experienced a data center fire, but it quickly extinguished itself. Still that leads that participant to worry about the presence of water in the data center.
The roundtable was noteworthy for the presence of several EMEA Network members. As a result of their popularity in Europe, the discussion quickly turned to gaseous suppression. Although Uptime Institute advises data center operators to use nitrogen-charged, dry pipe or preaction, water-based systems, we also recognize that some facilities will incorporate gaseous systems for business or other reasons.
In this session, one participant noted that it was installing new nozzles on its high-pressure inert gas systems because it had experienced some disk performance degradation during a discharge. Uptime Institute has documented the phenomenon and notes that low-pressure HFC systems have not been implicated in disk damage. As a result, the group expressed a general preference for one brand of HFC. One large manufacturer recounted that safety executives at his company had insisted on the HFC when a local AHJ had required a specific brand of inert gas.
All participants agreed that fire protection begins with fire prevention, especially after co-moderator Pitt Turner, Uptime Network Global Executive, noted that most forms of fire either do not originate in the data center or can easily be excluded. Fuel for fire, one participant noted, is not plentiful in the data center.
Another noted that some of the most prominent data center fires actually began elsewhere in the build and spread to the data center. Pitt Turner noted that fires that originated in data center were generally either electrical and self-extinguishing or the result of poor procedures, such as smoking or storing papers in the data center.
Roundtable participants suggested that their primary interests in data center fire suppression were life safety and continued operations.
Selection of the fire suppression system was somewhat harder. Only one participant had actually experienced a data center fire, but it quickly extinguished itself. Still that leads that participant to worry about the presence of water in the data center.
The roundtable was noteworthy for the presence of several EMEA Network members. As a result of their popularity in Europe, the discussion quickly turned to gaseous suppression. Although Uptime Institute advises data center operators to use nitrogen-charged, dry pipe or preaction, water-based systems, we also recognize that some facilities will incorporate gaseous systems for business or other reasons.
In this session, one participant noted that it was installing new nozzles on its high-pressure inert gas systems because it had experienced some disk performance degradation during a discharge. Uptime Institute has documented the phenomenon and notes that low-pressure HFC systems have not been implicated in disk damage. As a result, the group expressed a general preference for one brand of HFC. One large manufacturer recounted that safety executives at his company had insisted on the HFC when a local AHJ had required a specific brand of inert gas.
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