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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.
"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. [...] With non-calibrated systems, this sound can get very loud [and destroy-non burnt-equipment]"
...actually, that person may have zero job now.
You had one job! (Directed at both the system itself and whoever was supposed to be in charge of calibrating it.)
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>> this sound can get very loud, a big no-no Jeezzez Crisco. What did we do now to get SlashDot editors talking down to us with one syllable at a time?
Would you prefer "the aforementioned audible emanation attained a decibel level detrimental to the proper operation of the installed data storage mechanisms"?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I herd SSDs are silent and mostly immune to vibration.
How can you herd them if they are silent?
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?
No seriously, I can't find the video atm but many years ago there was a guy from (Sun?) showing how susceptible they are to sound vibrations. His test literally was yelling at them while watching dtrace.
Update: Found it. Was Brendan Gregg - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
* (headphone warning)
You herd them the usual way---with dogs. The dogs can see them and smell them, so they don't need to hear them.
From a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
It's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This sounds like an Inergen type system... the two failings are the particulate matter it stirs up and the vibration caused by the sounds of a freight train rolling through...
https://youtu.be/yM80eBR_b2w
I herd SSDs are silent and mostly immune to vibration.
How can you herd them if they are silent?
Just gather them up in a coral. A sheep dog can help with that.
That won't work either. All the coral is dying.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
For most common materials to burn, you need an oxygen content of 12% or higher. On the other hand, a human can maintain consciousness down to something like 5%. As such, inerting systems are designed to drop the oxygen content to something like 8%. Too low for combustion to take place, but high enough not to kill the occupants. Nitrogen type inerting systems will actually often include a small amount of CO2 in the gas mix; this causes any remaining occupants to breath harder, thus allowing them to work better in a low oxygen atmosphere.
reference: I worked on a small power plant with a two compartment FM-200 fire suppression system. One of the things that the design Engineers needed was an accurate measurement of the room volume so that they could calibrate the amount of agent in the tanks appropriately. However, just in case, before an agent dump there is a 30 second siren and several large "Cancel dump" mushroom switches.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
At a previous employer, we lost an entire row of servers in a DC after a water leak (somehow) triggered the suppression system. The 'explosion' was strong enough to knock the doors off cabinets, bend 2 cabinets, and cause a couple hundreds drives to be dead. Thankfully our service was spread out far enough to survive the loss of a row for a few week while we waited for all new disks to arrive from IBM.
The pictures were crazy, it looks like a bomb went off.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland