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Loud Sound From Fire Alarm System Shuts Down Nasdaq's Scandinavian Data Center (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: A loud sound emitted by a fire alarm system has destroyed the hard drives of a Swedish data center, downing Nasdaq operations across Northern Europe. The incident took place in the early hours of Wednesday, April 19, and was caused by a gas-based fire alarm system that are typically deployed in data centers because of their ability to put out fires without destroying non-burnt equipment. These systems work by releasing inert gas at high speeds, a mechanism usually accompanied by a loud whistle-like sound. With non-calibrated systems, this sound can get very loud, a big no-no in data centers, where loud sounds are known to affect performance, shut down, or even destroy hard drives.
It's a fire SUPPRESSION system, not a fire ALARM system.
At least this time, it's the article (on Bleeping Computer) that is wrong, not the summary on /.
It's apparent the author of the article didn't bother to read the article (on Motherboard) that she cites about a similar incident in Romania at ING Bank. It clearly states that incident resulted from a "fire extinguishing test".
The sound BTW comes from the release of the gas, not some alarm. In both cases, the pressure was set too high. It was basically a - very loud - over 130db - hissing sound!
The second article cites a study about the effect of this sound done by Siemens. Siemens has a vested interest. I guess neither of these data centers were equipped with the Sinorix Silent Nozzle.
When my Ex-Wife let out loud, obnoxious sounds my hard drives didn't self-destruct. My mind did, but not my hard drives.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Another site without replication, redundancy and automatic failover, similar to when British Airways' entire computer system collapsed because of a power surge when someone turned it off and on again.
It's not possible to test all scenarios ("Right, now we're going to see how our network would cope if someone took an axe to that cabinet. Derek, when you're ready") but someone should have planned for a data centre failure. Is this lack of resilience common in big networks?
From a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...