Data Centre Fire Suppression Systems

February 8, 2010 · 1 Comment

I was visiting a major hosting provider today, and we got talking about Disaster Recovery and how it's all very well to have such a system in place, but until you actually put it into practice, how can you ever really be sure it will work.

This led onto me asking "Have you ever tested your fire suppression systems?"

The response - and a funny one I thought - "no, we've never started a small fire in one of our data centres to see what would happen".

So, how can we therefore be sure that things such as fire suppression will work, should the unthinkable happen?

Tags: Disaster Recovery

1 response so far ↓

1 Gary Funk // Feb 9, 2010 at 12:17 AM

That is why there are inspections. At the .gov where I work, our computer room is secured and sealed. The fire suppression system is inspected every three months. We don't 'test' it because it costs about $7500 to recharge the system.