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The report points out (Image 8) design choices that contributed to a raging fire, once the fire started: * no emergency electricity cut-off device, an "economi

by ovi256 5y ago

The report points out (Image 8) design choices that contributed to a raging fire, once the fire started: * no emergency electricity cut-off device, an "economic strategy choice of the site operator" - the electrical room where the fire started was hot, 400C at the door (measured by thermal camera), with meter long electrical arcing from the door, thundering deafening sounds. Making access of utility technicians "difficult" - it took them 2 hours to cut incoming electrical service from the utility. On site UPS devices also had no cut-off, so they kept supplying. * emergency water network provided only 70m3/h at the site. A firefighting boat arrived, Europa 1, was called, supplying 14.5m3/min max flow rate. The freeflowing air cooling design, a good design choice as it saves on operating costs for cooling, contributed to nourishing the fire.

stingraycharles 5y ago
So basically, my takeaway is: * Freeflowing air in DCs is good for cooling( * It’s bad when you have a fire; * An improved DC design would allow an operator to $somehow stop the freeflowing air (although one could argue that it’s not free flowing anymore if one can control it); * I’d like to know how much money really was saved by not allowing the UPSes to be cut off. I’m very curious how the insurance companies respond, and whether they’ll demand e.g. UPS supplies to be able to cut off. Or maybe in general, the fire department should be more aware of these types of trade-offs being made, and give their approval accordingly.
- lbriner 5y ago
  It is VERY common in buildings to have ventilation dampers that are closed when a fire alarm starts exactly for this reason. I am most surprised that the design sounds like it was made a certain way deliberately even though the basics were got wrong. Does Strasbourg not have any fire regulations that require fireman accessible power cut-outs, automatic extinguishers etc? It doesn't matter just that their equipment burned but the severity of the fire was massively dangerous to the fire brigade and anything else nearby if it couldn't be extinguished properly.
  - ovi256 5y ago
    > Does Strasbourg not have any fire regulations that require fireman accessible power cut-outs, automatic extinguishers etc? I think it's a safe bet it doesn't, because that building passed fire safety review and was approved as such.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      I think it’s a valid question; inspections themselves can be failure points.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      I can't speak for Strasbourg, but here in the UK you don't get an inspection by the local building inspector or fire department - instead, you hire a fire risk assessor of your choice, on the free market. So if you're not in compliance, you don't need to bribe anyone or cheat - you simply have to hire a friendly dumbass who'll check the basics but won't ask too many questions.
      - xxpor 5y ago
        Mark this one up as something else that's been privatized in the UK that's shocking to me as an American. This sort of stuff is always run through the government (the level depends on the state). Insurance companies might impose additional requirements, but then they'll send out their own inspectors.
        j16sdiz 5y ago
        The inspector is a chartered engineer, and is liable if your building don't confirm to the fire code.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        >Instead, you hire a fire risk assessor of your choice, on the free market. That sounds a lot better than the one size fits all crap we get in the US. If you are trying to do anything other than take over an existing and operating industrial site that's grandfathered in or run a warehouse for some sort of boring and non-reactive goods it tends to be a terrible maze of conflicting and irrelevant requirements.
- smarx007 5y ago
  > I’d like to know how much money really was saved by not allowing the UPSes to be cut off. I don't think this was a cost-cutting measure. Instead, (automatic) cut-off devices are also systems that can fail. And if there is such a centralized device, it can nullify the hard work of 4 redundant power supplies if it "decides" to malfunction one day. So, this was a SPOF-cutting measure. I still think that having 4 separate switches for 4 power supplies is not so wrong. Firefighters anyway wrote that the electrical room had a door at 400C and observed 1-meter arcs, so they had to ask the electrical company to cut the power from their side for the sake of safety anyway.
  - tssva 5y ago
    I disagree with your idea that not having an automated power disconnect system is acceptable but for the sake of argument lets say it is. The standard for manual emergency power cutoff switches is to be located where they are easily accessible in an emergency which means outside of the electrical room. Most large data centers have manual switches in multiple locations. They should at a minimum have had cutoff switches located in their NOC.
    - smarx007 5y ago
      Right! Sorry, I didn't write it clearly but I agree that there should be automatic disconnect, but think it's OK to have 4 separate disconnects to maintain the supply redundancy. Though now it can get really expensive.
  - the_arun 5y ago
    Building datacenters and is hard. So this is an opportunity for cloud providers. 1. Imagine if Amazon starts building datacenters for others as a service 2. People starts leasing or renting entire DCs built by Amazon, Google etc. Maintenance is done by these cloud providers. Do we have these already?
    - traceroute66 5y ago
      > 1. Imagine if Amazon starts building datacenters for others as a service Just as an FYI, those fancy datacentres you see on Amazon/Google/Microsoft marketing videos are really the exception rather than the rule. You will find the majority of cloud servers in exactly the same third-party datacentres that everyone else uses. Why ? Because only the US and perhaps one or two other countries in the world has the spare land for a cloud operator to dump a massive datacentre campus on. Most other countries don't. Or if they do, its either protected land (greenbelt etc.) or its uninhabitable (e.g. Australian Outback).
hinkley 5y ago
> The freeflowing air cooling design, a good design choice as it saves on operating costs for cooling, contributed to nourishing the fire. The reason you use forced air in your house instead of being built for natural convection is so you don't die in a fire. Fires are all about convection. Infernos doubly so. There was an early luxury cruise ship tragedy, I think in New York City. A 'freeflowing air cooling design' and all wood paneling. It caught on fire, so they turned around to come back into port... and burned to the waterline, killing a bunch of people. Building code for passenger ships got changed to require forced air and limit natural (flammable) materials after this.

by ovi256 5y ago

stingraycharles 5y ago

So basically, my takeaway is: * Freeflowing air in DCs is good for cooling( * It’s bad when you have a fire; * An improved DC design would allow an operator to $somehow stop the freeflowing air (although one could argue that it’s not free flowing anymore if one can control it); * I’d like to know how much money really was saved by not allowing the UPSes to be cut off. I’m very curious how the insurance companies respond, and whether they’ll demand e.g. UPS supplies to be able to cut off. Or maybe in general, the fire department should be more aware of these types of trade-offs being made, and give their approval accordingly.

lbriner 5y ago
It is VERY common in buildings to have ventilation dampers that are closed when a fire alarm starts exactly for this reason. I am most surprised that the design sounds like it was made a certain way deliberately even though the basics were got wrong. Does Strasbourg not have any fire regulations that require fireman accessible power cut-outs, automatic extinguishers etc? It doesn't matter just that their equipment burned but the severity of the fire was massively dangerous to the fire brigade and anything else nearby if it couldn't be extinguished properly.
- ovi256 5y ago
  > Does Strasbourg not have any fire regulations that require fireman accessible power cut-outs, automatic extinguishers etc? I think it's a safe bet it doesn't, because that building passed fire safety review and was approved as such.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    I think it’s a valid question; inspections themselves can be failure points.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    I can't speak for Strasbourg, but here in the UK you don't get an inspection by the local building inspector or fire department - instead, you hire a fire risk assessor of your choice, on the free market. So if you're not in compliance, you don't need to bribe anyone or cheat - you simply have to hire a friendly dumbass who'll check the basics but won't ask too many questions.
    - xxpor 5y ago
      Mark this one up as something else that's been privatized in the UK that's shocking to me as an American. This sort of stuff is always run through the government (the level depends on the state). Insurance companies might impose additional requirements, but then they'll send out their own inspectors.
      - j16sdiz 5y ago
        The inspector is a chartered engineer, and is liable if your building don't confirm to the fire code.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >Instead, you hire a fire risk assessor of your choice, on the free market. That sounds a lot better than the one size fits all crap we get in the US. If you are trying to do anything other than take over an existing and operating industrial site that's grandfathered in or run a warehouse for some sort of boring and non-reactive goods it tends to be a terrible maze of conflicting and irrelevant requirements.
smarx007 5y ago
> I’d like to know how much money really was saved by not allowing the UPSes to be cut off. I don't think this was a cost-cutting measure. Instead, (automatic) cut-off devices are also systems that can fail. And if there is such a centralized device, it can nullify the hard work of 4 redundant power supplies if it "decides" to malfunction one day. So, this was a SPOF-cutting measure. I still think that having 4 separate switches for 4 power supplies is not so wrong. Firefighters anyway wrote that the electrical room had a door at 400C and observed 1-meter arcs, so they had to ask the electrical company to cut the power from their side for the sake of safety anyway.
- tssva 5y ago
  I disagree with your idea that not having an automated power disconnect system is acceptable but for the sake of argument lets say it is. The standard for manual emergency power cutoff switches is to be located where they are easily accessible in an emergency which means outside of the electrical room. Most large data centers have manual switches in multiple locations. They should at a minimum have had cutoff switches located in their NOC.
  - smarx007 5y ago
    Right! Sorry, I didn't write it clearly but I agree that there should be automatic disconnect, but think it's OK to have 4 separate disconnects to maintain the supply redundancy. Though now it can get really expensive.
- the_arun 5y ago
  Building datacenters and is hard. So this is an opportunity for cloud providers. 1. Imagine if Amazon starts building datacenters for others as a service 2. People starts leasing or renting entire DCs built by Amazon, Google etc. Maintenance is done by these cloud providers. Do we have these already?
  - traceroute66 5y ago
    > 1. Imagine if Amazon starts building datacenters for others as a service Just as an FYI, those fancy datacentres you see on Amazon/Google/Microsoft marketing videos are really the exception rather than the rule. You will find the majority of cloud servers in exactly the same third-party datacentres that everyone else uses. Why ? Because only the US and perhaps one or two other countries in the world has the spare land for a cloud operator to dump a massive datacentre campus on. Most other countries don't. Or if they do, its either protected land (greenbelt etc.) or its uninhabitable (e.g. Australian Outback).

hinkley 5y ago

> The freeflowing air cooling design, a good design choice as it saves on operating costs for cooling, contributed to nourishing the fire. The reason you use forced air in your house instead of being built for natural convection is so you don't die in a fire. Fires are all about convection. Infernos doubly so. There was an early luxury cruise ship tragedy, I think in New York City. A 'freeflowing air cooling design' and all wood paneling. It caught on fire, so they turned around to come back into port... and burned to the waterline, killing a bunch of people. Building code for passenger ships got changed to require forced air and limit natural (flammable) materials after this.