6 October 2016
Data Center Fire Prevention - article from our partner in Australia
6 ways to prevent fires in data centres
The fire strategy for any data centre should remain the same: Prevent a fire from starting, mitigate damage to sensitive equipment and reduce downtime.
Data centre managers, consultants and fire engineers traditionally have selected conventional fire protection strategies. These can include:
Early warning of fire via aspirated smoke detection systems,
Manual intervention, if possible (portable fire extinguishers),
Confirmation of the presence of smoke from point-type detection,
Automatic alarms to notify of personnel inside and outside the risk area,
Automatic shutdown of ancillary services (power, air handling systems air cooling systems, uninterruptible power supplies, etc.),
Time delay to allow evacuation of personnel from the risk area,
Automatic fire suppression (inert gases, chemical gases, water mist, pre-action sprinklers etc.).
Whilst traditional methods can usually be relied upon to extinguish the fire, failures can occur, especially when not regularly inspected, tested and maintained. In addition these systems require the fire to have started and progressed prior to release to allow evacuation.
Data Centres can now offer their customers Fire Prevention certainty, by protecting their facilities with FirePASS revolutionary Oxygen-Reduction Fire Prevention Technology. ARA FirePASS produces an atmosphere with a reduced oxygen concentration of 15%. Combustion, with the type of fuels that you would expect to find in data centres, cannot occur below 16%.