rack power question, and a prediction about "direct heat removal" (DHR)

Fri Apr 4 18:32:39 UTC 2008

Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net> writes:

> For fire suppression, an alarm would sound and only when it can in
> some fashion be "proven" that no humans are inside the area, CO2 is
> flooded into the area and the fire goes out.  Some form of ducting
> which mixes the CO2 with regular air and exhausts it is needed after
> the fire is out.  Firemen go in with oxygen if they need to enter
> before this is done.  (obviously there would be an entire tested
> procedure for how this is done, probably including a small oxygen mask
> with ~4 minutes of O2 placed beside each fire extinguisher and within
> easy reach).

You'll never get your insurance company to sign off on this.  The US
Navy loses people to CO2 fire suppression systems from time to time;
acceptable risk on a warship and acceptable risk in a data center are
not even on the same page.  This includes dumps that are unintentional
- having enough CO2 around to do meaningful fire suppression in a
moderate size datacenter has its own hazards associated with it.

http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/the-dangers-of-co2-use-in-firefighting-videos/

Being in the same room as a halon or fm200 dump is bad enough.  I
don't think I'd be willing to work at (or make my employees work at) a
datacenter that had CO2 fire suppression installed, no matter how
strenuous the assurances were that there were interlocks in place.

                                        ---Rob