Re: OVH datacenter SBG2 in Strasbourg on fire 🔥

Thu Mar 11 16:41:00 UTC 2021

If you pump 100s of megawatts of energy into a confined space (i.e. a 
large data center), and there is an uncontrolled release of that energy 
(i.e. a fire), that's a lot of energy which is going to go somewhere.
Stored energy, batteries, backup fuel for generators, server plastic, etc.
There is a lot of stuff that can burn in a data center, especially if you 
start over-stuffing it.

China has the top 7 data centers over 100 megawatts.

http://worldstopdatacenters.com/power/

Ok, an ISP may not have a mega datacenter.  Even "small" data centers have 
a large fuel load. They are major industrial operations.  Like other major 
industrial fires, often the firefighter response is to rescue any trapped 
people and then contain the fire until it burns itself out.

The "cloud" is just someone else's physical data center.

1975 AT&T New York City fire, documentary how it recovered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_AWAmGi-g8