Server room disaster recovery/prevention

First of all, I think it is an execellent idea that you are thinking of the safety and assurance of your computer hardware and networking equipment. Some companies, and the employees responsible for these duties of disaster recovery and protection have to make do with what they have sometimes. Your best bet is to look into getting some sort of insurance policy that your company can afford, for all the valued equipment that you want insured and protected.

I'm not entirely sure on the Halon systems, as they have gotten out dated in the past 5 years, and yes they are very expensive, and once discharged, are costly again to setup and certify.

I believe there are other alternatives to halon now, but may not be any less expensive, suchas other discharge systems that are ceiling installed and discharge a oxygen combating agent of some sort to put out an electrical fire with the least damage possible. Once again, certified insurance companies could recommned more about such a system. Many buildings, containing server rooms, that used to be used for something else (such as a storage closet) have standard sprinkler systems distributed through out the building for general fire safety code reasons. Possibly you could have building maintenance disable a range of sprinklers, not sure.

One of your best bets at this time, is to invest in Computer room specific fire extinguishers, which contain dry agents/chemicals, and are not liquid foam type. These extinguishers could beplaced in, or very near your server room.

Other than that, you could survey any electrical risks within your server room yourself, or with a company electrician, to weed out possible fire risks, like jam-packed outlets or surge supressors.

Best of Luck!

Paul M. Chavez

We had to remove our halogen from the computer room by law. We replaced with a sprinkler system and then proceeded to split our computer room into three.

We had another computer room in the building next door and another one in a different suburb!

Approximately a third of the equipment was in each and it was split in such a way that any two computer rooms could carry the load if we lost one and any one computer room had sufficient equipment to keep the essentials going.

It was expensive, but if you have a fire in a computer room - even if extinguished, the smoke will have damaged your hard drives and put a corrosive layer on all your boards.

It depends on how much you value your computer systems. For instance, if your computer systems went up in smoke tomorrow, would your company be out of business next week?

New installations of Halogen based systems have been banned by the EPA. Halogens are present in such chemicals as chlorine, bromide, florine and the presence of halogens in these chemicals is a major factor to their being corrosive and toxic.
www.epa.gov for more information.

Look here:

http://www.pyrogen.com