subject: Do You Need To Protect Your Data Centres From Fire? [print this page] Business today are reliant so much on computer technology, but the facts are that many businesses are not protected through lack of information. Discover the secrets today to why you need to protect your data centres and save you losing vital information stored inside them.
The protection of data centres from fire is essential, however not to many business owners are aware of this.
The facts are that 43% of businesses that suffer with a significant fire never reopen for business. This begs the question, why is it an issue that in many cases it can take a back seat?
Its understandable in business there are always expenses to be considered and the cost of fire suppression is often overlooked. It is a proven fact that this is a big mistake, many business owners have realised this unfortunately after the event.
If you have a data centre of any substantial size then you will have an air conditioning system in place to control the temperature. The reason for the air conditioning is data centres create a tremendous amount of heat. In the event of the air conditioning system fails to function this could catch fire at any time, and the results could be devastating all data could be lost in just a few minutes which has taken years to build.
The question is how can we avoid this happening?
Then answer is simple and that is to get protected with a fire suppression system. It's remarkable that the word fire suppression is under a misapprehension, and not many individuals have a clue in this regard.
Water and computers are not a good combination this is why the word suppression is to be taken note of. In order to suppress a fire you have to reduce the oxygen in the air with the use of gas released at a very high pressure.
The gases used in these situations can vary from man made gasses which is FM200, this would be described as a synthetic gas Other gases used could be natural gasses such as IG55 which is made up of 50% Argon and 50% Nitrogen.
Let's consider where fire suppression would be affective and is widely used.
It is a fact that computer data centres cannot be protected with water, as we all know that simply is not possible, water would certainly distinguish a fire, however suppression is what is required to suppress the fire before it gets started.
Further areas to be protected with fire suppression are art galleries, museums, antique centres, power generation plants just to name a few.
Many people are concerned to the safety of human life when the gas is discharged. The facts are the with regard to IG55 this is made up of the air we breath so it is perfectly safe. Having said that so is FM200 and has been in use for the past 15 years in 65 nations throughout the world in a human environment.
