If your business has a Managed Services agreement with a technology services provider, safety may have been one of the factors considered during the decision-making process.
Advantages of Managed Services include fixing technology costs at an affordable level while increasing system capabilities. But gaining a higher level of safety than you could achieve on your own should also be an outcome. A comprehensive Managed Services agreement should include system monitoring maintenance, backup management, firewall and security management, and anti-virus and threat management.
Such an agreement protects your systems and data, but there is another aspect that you should consider: the protection of the equipment that contains your data. In protecting computer equipment from fire, the last thing you would want to use is a system that would destroy the equipment that it's designed to protect.
Water-based systems are effective for protecting overall structures. But within a data center, water will destroy equipment. Depending on the gas used, a waterless system may protect the equipment but would be harmful to humans or the environment. A gas may protect equipment during a fire but leave a residue that harms the equipment.
To be most effective, a fire suppression system should extinguish a fire while not harming equipment or posing a threat to humans or the environment.
Meeting All Objectives
A gas often used in state-of-the-art fire suppression systems that achieves these objectives is heptafluoropropane, or HFC-227. This gas is also known by its trademarked name of FM-200.
FM-200 extinguishes by removing heat from the fire. The gas is stored in pressurized cylinders and is delivered through a network of pipes and nozzles throughout the data center.
If discharged, FM-200 can be dispersed by opening doors and ventilating the data center for a few minutes. This means that the data center can continue to operate, particularly if the fire was minor or if the suppression system was activated as a precaution.
FM-200 is a hydrofluorocarbon and does not damage the environment by depleting ozone. It was developed to replace gasses that deplete ozone, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). In the concentrations needed to extinguish fires, FM-200 is not harmful to humans. In fact, it is used as a propellant in metered-dose inhalants, such as the ones used to treat asthma.
FM-200 in a Data Center
NetStandard, a technology services provider in Kansas City, Kan., uses an FM-200 fire suppression system in its data center. In addition to the safety benefits described above, the system takes up little space and the gas cylinders are conveniently (and safely) housed within the data center.
NetStandard believes this system is essential to providing comprehensive equipment and data protection and highlights the system when existing or prospective clients tour the data center.
Recently featured during a local newscast, the system was also recently profiled on NetStandard's corporate blog.
Your Choice as a Client
As a client, you can't control what kind of fire suppression system that your data center uses. However, you can investigate what the data center uses and decide if this system will protect the equipment, and ultimately your data, in the event of a fire.
The stakes are enormous. The Fire Suppression Systems Association maintains a list of successful -- and not so successful -- suppression incidents. During one incident at a corporate computer room, a power interruption was detected and the suppression system was discharged. Damage was limited to the UPS device that failed and operation was restored within an hour.
Compare this with a fire a fire at the National Weather Service, when firefighters sprayed a burning Cray C90 supercomputer (worth $45 million) with dry chemicals that destroyed it. During the height of hurricane season, the weather service went without its most advanced weather models and had to use two back-up computers with only 40 percent of the capacity of the Cray.
What outcome would you want?
Your data center's commitment to equipment and data safety must match your risk management and business continuity policies.
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