FIRE PREVENTION
49
Pre-emptive
safeguards
By Mark Carroll, Operations
Director, VIRTUS
www.virtusdatacentres.com
What keeps our customers and Data Centre managers up
at night? Probably many things, but hopefully it’s not a fire
breaking out in their data centre. That’s because they know
that all modern data centres are built to not only stop fires
starting, but also to put them out faster than most of us
would even notice one had started. Solutions range from the
more extreme; permanently flooding a room with carbon
dioxide so that there is no chance of a fire starting, to the
more process-driven strategy of removing flammables from
the facilities and everything in between.
In the unlikely event all of this fails, then the building will
react in a variety of ways. It could pump a vast amount of
carbon dioxide into the room, suffocating the fire like an
enormous fire extinguisher. Another example would be a
water mist system that targets only the area the fire is in,
leaving all other equipment dry as a bone and still running
perfectly. The overall goal is that the building needs to put
the fire out with a minimum impact on customer uptime.
For argument’s sake, let’s say that there’s a situation
which even after all of the above, it still requires the
emergency services to be called, or the emergency services
are called for another reason. Our emergency services
don’t just put out fires, they carry out a huge amount of
protective and lifesaving duties. In a 36,000m 2 data centre
facility, this could be a difficult task. These buildings are
vast, with endless white corridors, all containing huge
amounts of equipment which is mostly tasked with taming
With safeguards in place, fires in
data centres are rare but pre-emptive
safeguards remain a necessity…
unimaginable quantitates of electricity. Therefore, the
highest quality engineers are required to aid support of the
infrastructure, such as:
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•
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Connectivity: IT engineers strive to keep all client
data routed and uninterrupted
Supply: electricians work closely with clients to ensure
power demands are met
Resilience: high and low voltage engineers are
continuously monitoring the loading, capacity and
distribution and are always on call to ensure the data
centre power needs are supported
Engineering teams should also work closely with local
emergency services to not only familiarise themselves
with facilities, but to also help them to learn them more
about data centres as a whole. Allowing them to study the
infrastructure behind these resilient beasts should help
to make them more effective at dealing with a problem
should it arise. Common questions that need answering
include:
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•
•
•
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Where’s the nearest water source?
Where are the access points?
How do you shut down the affected power supply?
Where can you park an ambulance or fire engine?
What are the security processes?
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