The power of water

Sun Oct 20 17:22:50 UTC 2002

At 2:03 PM -0400 10/19/02, Sean Donelan wrote:
>Stuff happens to everyone, its how you respond.  Would your company have
>been able to recover as quickly?
>
>http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/nsd/tess/consumermail.html
>
>Thanks to folks for pointing this one out.

Good job.

I've had to deal with assorted water problems, thankfully not 
recently.  Some lessons were learned.  These water problems were 
indirectly or directly caused by firefighting.

1. When the data/comm center is on a bottom floor, consider floor drains at
    the time of installation. Might want emergency access to pumps, or even
    wet-dry shop vacs.

2. We had a repeated problem in several moderate-rise buildings where there
    were fairly frequent, although small, fires on upper floors. Water, of
    course, runs downhill.  Some things done (this was the US Senate offsite
    computer center)

    a. Put waterproof gaskets on the emergency stairs that had entrances
       from the control room.
    b. When it happened often enough, we mounted rolled-up plastic tarps on
       rollers suspended from the ceiling, with a good solid handle dangling
       down on a rope. During the peak problem period, we'd hear an alarm,
       pull the tarps over the equipment, and then do a fast power-down (not
       necessarily emergency pull--this depended on heat buildup). The tarps
       were a few inches over the top of the racks, to leave some room for
       emergency airflow during cooldown.

3. Consider putting data centers not in the ground floor on the basement,
    but not too high either.  Sean, I believe, knows the specific NFPA rule,
    but IIRC you can't have a UPS with acid electrolyte above the third floor.
    So, you can put a data center on the 2nd floor and both allow the UPS
    and have a place for the water to drain.