Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Delwin on Monday September 12 2016, @04:23PM

    by Delwin (4554) on Monday September 12 2016, @04:23PM (#400786)

    You must be talking about Helium, not Halon. Halon is heaver than air. It will also kill you quite quickly.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @04:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @04:35PM (#400792)

    Considering the voice like James Earl Jones part, I doubt he was referring to helium.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday September 12 2016, @05:21PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday September 12 2016, @05:21PM (#400817)

    Helium rises, which is often counterproductive when trying to displace O2 to stop a fire.
    Regardless of which gas, and considering equipment racks are taller than me, a properly designed system should be killing humans if it's doing its job. If you're a basketball player, you may get to die from the fire smoke rather than from the fire suppressant.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday September 12 2016, @07:37PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 12 2016, @07:37PM (#400891)

      a properly designed system should be killing humans if it's doing its job.

      Rather pessimistic. Assuming good mixing you'll get high as a kite via the usual solvent inhalant effect when its pretty effective at stopping fire (a couple percent)

      Of course you don't set a system off for fun, usually, implying there's a killer fire, so you get the heck out because of the fire not necessarily the halon or halon replacement.

      A good engineering rule of thumb is half the atmosphere is below 18kft and 18kft mountains or aircraft flying is no laughing matter for random sick civilians but its hardly guaranteed death and that's 50% depletion of O2 via 50% halon in the air.

      Probably 5% or so in the air might put out a fire if in some miracle it were perfectly mixed, 10% or so will make you high as a kite and lay down and die in the fire (I mean, there is a fire, after all), and nobody spends enough money to put way more than 50% in the air. I mean, even before it was banned, it wasn't cheap.

      Like I wrote I've worked at sites that had a halon dump, nobody dies although I heard its utterly terrifying and the mess was impressive.

      Of course, 50% of O2 displaced from air can't kill healthy hiker me, but if I huffed lungfulls of smoke to cause smoke inhalation problems (because you're doing a halon dump because of the fire...) then maybe 50% halon could kill a no longer healthy dude. Like 50:50 halon and plastic smoke probably wouldn't be good for you even if 50:50 halon and air would be fine. Then again at 50% plastic smoke intake you're probably dead already. Hmm.

    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 12 2016, @09:42PM

      by sjames (2882) on Monday September 12 2016, @09:42PM (#400951) Journal

      No. It should not be killing humans. Some places use a reduced oxygen environment (15% rather than the usual 20) to prevent fire. It's perfectly safe for any reasonably healthy person to be in the room for a while as long as they don't do heavy labor.

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday September 12 2016, @09:49PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Monday September 12 2016, @09:49PM (#400955)

        One could easily argue that being in a server room during an unexpected halon release, especially if there's a real fire, would be a stress level that qualifies as hard labor.
        (I did give VLM a +1 for his detailed response. I thought the O2 displacement was higher than 5%)

  • (Score: 2) by weeds on Monday September 12 2016, @08:01PM

    by weeds (611) on Monday September 12 2016, @08:01PM (#400903) Journal

    Halon - Not at 100% concentration, just enough to put out a fire. That won't kill you. I was in the room too.
    Denser than air = lower voice.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday September 12 2016, @08:43PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Monday September 12 2016, @08:43PM (#400914)

    Supposedly halon extinguishes fires at a low enough concentration that you can stay in the room for at least some amount of time and still be okay. Not that you'd probably *want* to, but yeah.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"