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dklsf • today at 5:08 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

If those go off, they end up destroying hard drives (the spinning kind), due to the sound pressure....

So fire suppression and data centers don't mix too well


Replies

shagie • today at 5:14 PM

Ahh... the Vax War (bit hard to search for it now... gotta search for the first line). VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places.

https://www.hack.org/~mc/texts/vaxen-joke.txt

Realizing that I'm spoiling some of it... but we're here, so some of it is inherently spoiled...

           The fire alarm klaxon went off and the siren warning
           of imminent halon gas release was screaming.  We
           started to panic but the data center manager shouted
           over the din, "Don't worry, the halon system failed
           its acceptance test last week. It's disabled and
           nothing will happen."
 
           He was half right, the primary halon system indeed
           failed to discharge. But the secondary halon system
           observed that the primary had conked and instantly
           did its duty, which was to deal with Dire Disasters.
           It had twice the capacity and six times the discharge
           rate.
wolvoleo • today at 5:18 PM

They don't have to blow that fast. It can be regulated.

But yes, I've seen low-O2 installations also. These have other issues though, like no protection when humans need to be in there for maintenance. And the need to be very very careful when reducing it again, making sure everyone is out. It happened to my colleague once that this went wrong and while it's not low enough that you'll die, he wasn't exactly feeling great for the next few hours.