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Serving the Data / IT / Telecom Industry

1. Risk Management

Every data center manager must understand, manage, and take steps against all manner of risks.  Your facility probably is connected to many clients, who are expecting connectivity without downtime.  The best data centers take all aspects of risk management seriously – including fire.

2. Fire as a Risk

Taking fire and its aftermath seriously should be a top concern.   The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) reports an average of 146 electronic equipment room fires annually, and every single one of these events catastrophically affected connectivity and uptime.    NFPA 75 – Standard for the Fire Protection of Information Technology Equipment, is a great place to start.  But is it enough?

3. Your Fire Protection Plan

Your plan must include rapid fire detection and automatic action to extinguish fires, while causing minimum interference with your uptime and connectivity goals.  Your plan must also take into account the aftermath of a fire, and must do all it can to prevent any uptime or connectivity issues in the event of a single point of failure in the fire protection equipment chosen.

Water is a natural and obvious choice for automatic fire suppression.  However, the possible risk due to water damage is real.  Unnecessary water damage must be avoided.  Therefore, your choice of fire sprinkler system matters.

4.  The Right Automatic Fire Sprinkler System

The fire suppression system in your data center must do its job properly and not interfere with your uptime and connectivity goal.   To do this, pick protection that:

  • Detects a fire early.
  • Suppresses a fire thoroughly.
  • Only discharges in a fire event, and is immune to single-point failure.

You should have early warning fire detection.  You should also have a sprinkler system that keeps the water completely out of the data center until needed.  Combining these two concepts together results in the right system for you – a PREACTION fire sprinkler system.  Here’s how it works:

  • First, the early warning fire detection system responds. This is the PREACTION part of the system.
  • Then, when a sprinkler head melts from the heat of a fire, water flows to the heads that are open, right where the fire is.

Here are the things that will NOT discharge water into your data center.

  • Damage to a sprinkler head, either accidentally or intentionally.
  • Damage to the pipes themselves or the joints and fittings.
  • A failed smoke detector.

5.  The Right Preaction Fire Sprinkler System

Since you need to be paying attention to all of the risks affecting uptime and connectivity, choose your preaction fire sprinkler system wisely.  PREACTION-PAC from UNITED Fire Systems is simple and easy to specify, install, and maintain.  Everything works together seamlessly, saving you money, putting your system in service faster, and maximizing your assurance of proper operation when you need it and no accidental operation when you don’t.

6.  The Most Vulnerable System Component – The Piping

Many people take the preaction system piping installation for granted.  But the inside of your pipe – completely out of sight – is vulnerable to the age-old enemy of almost all materials.  That enemy is CORROSION.  Taking place where you can’t see it, corrosion happens because you have steel, residual water, and oxygen in the air all together.  This corrosion can weaken your piping system, cause leaks or pinholes, and even clog the sprinkler heads.  If you’re not careful, the time from initial system installation to major overhaul or complete system replacement can be as short as FIVE YEARS.

How can you avoid this intolerable situation, and extend your piping system’s lifetime from 5 years to 35 years or more?

7. Your Best Strategy – NITROGEN-PAC

To prevent corrosion, and lengthen your pipe’s life, just reduce the amount of oxygen available for the corrosion reaction to occur.  NITROGEN-PAC automatically replaces the air within the system with 98% nitrogen.  NITROGEN-PAC gets this nitrogen right from the air all around us.  Add NITROGEN-PAC to your PREACTION-PAC system, and the most vulnerable part of your significant investment in fire protection is protected.

 

Did You Know?

  • Your dry-pipe or preaction system piping may look brand new on the outside, but what about inside? Residual water and oxygen in the pressurized air could be rusting the interior of that pipe right now. This rust can weaken the pipe, cause pinholes to form, and even clog up the sprinkler heads in the event of a fire. NFPA 25 – Standard for the Inspection, Testing and Maintenance of Water-Based Fire Protection Systems mandates internal inspection of sprinkler pipes at least every 5 years. Are your pipes rusty? Have them internally inspected by a qualified fire protection contractor before it’s too late.