f ire protection FACILITIES
“Our customers include many international organizations, global companies and financial institutions for which a loss of data would be an absolute disaster,” explains Gérard Sikias, CEO of Safe Host. “As a service provider we guarantee the safety of our customers’ valuable data by protecting them as best and as comprehensively as possible. In addition to a site with low external risks, as is the case here outside the city center, our security concept also includes the use of best- of-breed safety and security technology from Siemens. In addition, our entire data center is designed for high redundancy according to the N+1 principle: This extends not only to IT, but also to essential systems such as uninterruptible power supply (UPS), emergency generators and the automatic gas extinguishing system.”
Technologically advanced fire safety solutions for data centers Safe Host owns a six-story building, five of which are occupied almost entirely by IT equipment. The top floor is used by company management and administration. The expansion of the data center was driven by demand: floor by floor, from the top of the building to the bottom, the facility was equipped with the necessary technology. For this reason, Safe Host’s building now contains different generations of fire detectors, fire control panels and extinguishing control panels from Siemens - some floors still use fire detectors and control panels from the older AlgoRex line, while most are equipped with devices from the current Sinteso family.
All fire safety and security devices are managed using a central management station from Siemens. This station collects information from more than 2,800 data points and visualizes them on 60 graphical displays of all the floors, offering varying levels of detail.
Today, Safe Host’s building is divided into 350 fire detection zones. No fewer than 830 highly sensitive fire detectors from the Sinteso and AlgoRex families are in use. To ensure reliable fire detection, they are supported by approximately 30 aspirating smoke detectors (ASDs) which continuously analyze the room air for smoke particles.
Aspirating smoke detection is widely used in data centers as it provides early warning at the incipient stages of a fire when cool smoke has insufficient thermal buoyancy to rise to the ceiling where conventional detectors are located. In data centers, this effect is often intensified by the computer room air-conditioning systems (CRACs) traditionally adopted to maintain the operating temperatures of the data center environment.
This applies relatively high velocity air currents, further preventing smoke from being able to enter conventional point detectors. When protection of data is the overriding consideration, even a small electrical fire can have significant consequences in terms of data loss, therefore detecting a fire at the earliest possible point is critical. In addition, some 50 manual call points are installed at strategic locations throughout the building.
All detectors are connected to a total of four fire control panels, supplemented by four floor repeater displays. In an emergency, 65 alarm sounders make sure that the building is evacuated quickly. The automatic extinguishing system meets all of the requirements specific to data centers. Water or water mist should not be used to extinguish a fire in a data center: the moisture would potentially
1. According to HDI-Gerling, one of Germany’s leading industrial insurance and security consulting companies, manufacturers using Just- in-Time production often experience a complete standstill of operations within 24 hours after IT goes down. At banks and similar commercial institutions it takes just one and a half days longer, statistically speaking, until operations come to a halt 2. 1 Petabyte = 1000 Terabyte = 1,000,000 Gigabyte
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cause more damage to the sensitive electronics of the servers and storage devices than the fire itself. For this reason, Safe Host uses a Sinorix N2 gas extinguishing system. If the fire detectors detect and confirm a fire, the system automatically triggers the extinguishing process. Valves on the gas cylinders in the basement of the building are opened and nitrogen, an inert natural gas, flows through a complex piping network into the room where it is needed. There nitrogen displaces oxygen, depriving the fire of one of its essential components.
All of this happens in a matter of seconds and it is an effective way to extinguish both open fires and smoldering fires. Safe Host’s building is divided into 21 extinguishing sectors; each sector can be extinguished if a fire is detected.
Business continuity is critical to any data center operation. Effective fire safety systems are a fundamental requirement in achieving maximum system uptime and availability, helping data centers to meet their many challenges and remain competitive, efficient and productive.
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