As economies across Africa continue to realign to a modern, sustainable and digital outlook, Dominic Jeff of Securiton International argues that the data centres underpinning this transformation require the highest standard of Early Warning Fire Detection. However, data centres present a number of unique fire safety challenges.
Data centres and telecommunications hubs are nowadays as crucial as electricity and transport infrastructure, but arguably they are much more fragile and time sensitive. A train can be five minutes late without serious knock-on effects, but even a brief data outage can have wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences.
The cost of a data centre outage is not just financial: business and transactions grind to a halt, connected appliances fail and even life-saving operations may be interrupted. Data centre operators therefore adopt a series of stringent contingency measures to ensure they can keep the servers working in the event of power outages, cyberattack or intruder threats. The very real and physical threat of a fire in the building should be no different – especially given that fire could destroy data centre infrastructure completely.
What this means in terms of fire protection is that data centre providers must go much further than is currently stipulated by regulations, which are generally concerned with preserving life. In this industry, sounding an alarm once flames are visible and having staff calmly walk to the exits while critical economic infrastructure goes up in flames is just not good enough.
Multiple fire risks and challenges
Data centres are a complex area for fire detection, and yet the very highest standard of early detection is required if an operator is to avoid lengthy interruptions. No single technology can achieve this, but a comprehensive package of the best detection and suppression methods can tackle all the key danger areas and provide something close to peace of mind. This is why Securiton has adopted a holistic approach to this industry. For the first time, all of our key technologies are deployed in tandem, offering an unprecedented combination of early and reliable fire detection.
At the heart of a data centre are banks of servers and related networking equipment, staked together in aisles where they give off a significant amount of heat as a side effect to their furious electronic activity. They are, effectively, a giant fire hazard that requires continuous cooling and monitoring. Additionally, they are often sited at remote locations and even when not, human access is generally kept to a bare minimum. This makes both fire detection, device maintenance, and tackling a blaze, more difficult.
And it’s not just a large blaze that data centre operators need to fear. On the one hand, even the smoke from a smouldering electrical element within a data cabinet can damage many other delicate components, especially due to the rapid airflow characteristics of the HVAC system. On the other hand, uncontrolled, wide-ranging shut-downs or suppression activation due to false alarms will also have a serious effect on data availability. Planners therefore need to find a way of offering both very early and exceptionally reliable fire detection – ideally with easy maintenance. And the server racks are just one of many fire hazards in a data centre.
Further areas of concern are the very back-up systems designed to ensure continued operation in a power outage: generators and battery banks. Additionally, the power distribution network, the HVAC system and cabling in suspended ceilings and raised floors are all hazards posing challenges to early and reliable detection.
Performance-based design for a holistic solution
Fire regulations generally aim to protect lives first and foremost – and that’s as it should be. However, businesses, especially those providing a critical service, should be aware that fire protection designed to meet regulations is often not enough to save their premises and equipment. When designing an advanced fire safety system to protect mission-critical facilities in the datacom industry, planners therefore need to go beyond prescriptive building and fire codes. This means applying Performance-based Design (PBD) methodologies to safeguard business continuity through bespoke risk and situational assessment.
For example, powerful smoke detection using aspirating smoke detectors (ASD) can be designed to work with the airflow in the server aisles, detecting the earliest traces of smoke from a smoldering element to activate suppression systems and launch an integrated site incident and emergency response. The ability of ASD to sample the airflow from the cooling system turns a fire detection challenge into a strength: conventional point type detectors are simply not able to detect smoke that is rapidly diffusing in the forced air flow; while heat detection methods will naturally flounder as the servers will undoubtedly be generating heat.
Aspirating smoke detectors are amongst the most effective methods for reliable early detection of a fire, and because a single unit can draw air for sampling from a wide area via a tube system, they don’t require access to difficult locations for testing and maintenance. In data centres, they are also ideal for monitoring cabling in concealed floor spaces or suspended ceilings; and for return air grilles.
“Data centre providers must go much further than is currently stipulated by regulations, which are generally concerned with preserving life. In this industry, sounding an alarm once flames are visible and having staff calmly walk to the exits while critical economic infrastructure goes up in flames is just not good enough.”
However, heat detection is more effective around generators, and in power distribution cabinets where heat can manifest a problem before smoke forms. Battery rooms are a hot topic because of the use of lithium-ion technology and its potential to ignite: a combined of off-gas and heat detection in the battery racks, and ASD in the room potentially creating an airflow that can also be utilised by the off-gas detector, is the optimal solution. That’s a lot of detection power, but it’s worth it to stand a chance of controlling and containing a battery room fire that would otherwise devastate the entire facility.
This holistic approach using multiple state-of-the-art technologies offers the best guarantee against a fire incident getting out of hand and causing a lengthy and very expensive service interruption, with all the consequences that entails. They can naturally be linked together with a modern fire alarm control panel which will also provide suitable suppression activation.
The data centre boom is showing no signs of easing, with especially high growth is expected in parts of Africa where the economy is rapidly modernising and digitising. Fire safety consultants and contractors who can offer a complete fire safety solution to this industry and have a valuable opportunity to establish themselves as a major supplier of a key safety feature which helps guarantee the smooth running of critical infrastructure.
