Comment by fredoralive
9 days ago
That may not be a perfect answer. One issue with fire suppression systems and spinning rust drives is that the pressure change etc. from the system can also ‘suppress’ the glass platters in drives as well.
9 days ago
That may not be a perfect answer. One issue with fire suppression systems and spinning rust drives is that the pressure change etc. from the system can also ‘suppress’ the glass platters in drives as well.
That's why the top-security DCs that my employer operates have large quantities of Nitrogen stored, and use that slightly lower the O2 saturation of the air in the case of fire.
Yes, it's fucking expensive, that's one of the reason you pay more for a VM (or colocation) than at Hetzner or OVH. But I'm also pretty confident that single fire wouldn't destroy all hard drives in that IT space.
Reminds me of the classic video[1] showing how shouting at the harddrives make them go slower.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
I'd be interested in if you can even use dry fire suppression on the 5th floor of a building.