Fire suppression is a vital part of data centers today because even a small fire can threaten expensive equipment and critical information, potentially crippling a business.
Unfortunately, fire suppression for data centers presents a more complex challenge than in conventional buildings. Let’s take a look at three of the most important issues, and the impact they have on fire suppression.
Large open areas
For both convenience and better environmental control, server rooms and data centers typically occupy large open spaces. While this is useful from an operational standpoint, it poses additional challenges in effectively identifying and suppressing a fire.
Because of the large open areas, specialized sensors need to be placed around the room so that they can detect a fire as quickly as possible. Sensor type and placement is critical, both for protection and cost control, so it’s important that an experience technician make these decisions. Also, it’s important that large spaces have an adequate supply of fire suppression agent, and that enough nozzles are installed to properly protect all valuable equipment. Finally, large spaces should also have a warning system in place. If a fire starts on the other side of the room, then data center managers should be immediately notified. Typically, suppression systems do this through a combination of sirens, flashing lights, video surveillance, and digital alert notifications.
Per square foot, few areas have as much sensitive equipment as data centers, including servers, switches and routers, environmental sensors, climate control systems, and other sensitive equipment. This poses a unique challenge when it comes to fire suppression because heat can be particularly dangerous in these rooms, where temperatures are already tightly controlled. Even a small change in temperature can create serious problems for the equipment, which means that a small fire may be able to cause damage throughout the room even if it’s only contained in a small area. Climate control systems alone may not be able to deal with the additional heat caused by a fire, which means that immediate action is required.
However, now we face an additional challenge: Many of the elements used to quickly extinguish fires, such as water and foam, can also damage this sensitive equipment. In cases where this could be a problem, systems are typically set up with clean suppression agents, such as:
- Dry chemicals that act similar to foam agents, but without as much danger to electronics.
- Inert gases that starve fires without interfering with electronics.
- Light mists that pose less danger than sprinkler systems.
- Hybrid systems that use a combination of agents.
Since even agents like these may cause damage to systems (or at least expensive cleanup), it’s also important that a suppression system includes a way to check for false alarms and to quickly delay the release of the agent if necessary so that someone can run an additional check and make sure there are no mistakes.
High volume of airflow
We already mentioned how important climate control is for these types of locations. Data centers generate a tremendous amount of heat, which can damage electronics if it lingers. These centers use powerful air conditioning systems to draw heat away and keep cool air circulating throughout the space.
These AC systems are very effective, but they can also create problems when it comes to fire hazards. If air moves quickly through vents, it may draw off telltale smoke before it can alert sensors. Once a fire has begun, an AC system can actually make it worse by literally fanning the flames and helping the fire to spread more rapidly.
This is another reason it is important to have an experienced technician design and install safety systems for these rooms, acknowledging the current AC system and ensuring that the two systems don’t interfere with each other at important times.