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posted by CoolHand on Monday September 12 2016, @01:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the booms-and-bangs dept.

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-loud-sound-just-shut-down-a-banks-data-center-for-10-hours

ING Bank's main data center in Bucharest, Romania, was severely damaged over the weekend during a fire extinguishing test. In what is a very rare but known phenomenon, it was the loud sound of inert gas being released that destroyed dozens of hard drives. The site is currently offline and the bank relies solely on its backup data center, located within a couple of miles' proximity.

"The drill went as designed, but we had collateral damage", ING's spokeswoman in Romania told me, confirming the inert gas issue. Local clients were unable to use debit cards and to perform online banking operations on Saturday between 1PM and 11PM because of the test. "Our team is investigating the incident," she said.

The purpose of the drill was to see how the data center's fire suppression system worked. Data centers typically rely on inert gas to protect the equipment in the event of a fire, as the substance does not chemically damage electronics, and the gas only slightly decreases the temperature within the data center.


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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday September 12 2016, @02:30PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday September 12 2016, @02:30PM (#400723) Homepage

    The gas is stored in cylinders, and is released at high velocity out of nozzles uniformly spread across the data center. According to people familiar with the system, the pressure at ING Bank's data center was higher than expected, and produced a loud sound when rapidly expelled through tiny holes (think about the noise a steam engine releases).

    Sound means vibration, and this is what damaged the hard drives. The HDD cases started to vibrate, and the vibration was transmitted to the read/write heads, causing them to go off the data tracks.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @02:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @02:54PM (#400736)

    What, you couldn't find any grammar to bitch about so you've resorted to cut-n-pasting more of the article?
    Why not post the whole article in case people were left wondering?

    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday September 12 2016, @07:39PM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday September 12 2016, @07:39PM (#400892) Homepage

      Why not post the whole article in case people were left wondering?

      Because what I've added is the specific part of the article which explains exactly how a loud noise shut down a bank's data center, as per the headline.

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