Air Conditioners,humidity control fire prevention..

[chuego]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this:
I'm putting up a room with a wiring closet, 4 or 5 Servers, AS400, and other stuff.
I wanted to know if there is somenthing that can regulate the temperature, humidity.
Also i've heard of special fire prevention that is used in these kind of rooms...
Can someone help me find these products?
Thanx...



If you can't convince'em confuse'em

 

[jeffbouldin]

Don't know much about the air conditioning part,but I install fire alarm equipment so I may help there.

It is possible to set up a room completely sealed off from the rest of the building and in that room you put in a fire suppresion system that will dump an inert gas into the atmosphere causing the fire to die from lack of oxygen. These systems are very expensive. Usually only used where the cost of replacing the equipment and time to restore the network is much greater than the cost of the system.

The other issue is life safety. Anyone caught in that room is dead without a self contained breathing unit. Usually an alarm sounds for a bit before the system goes off to allow time to escape, or get to an air tank.

Look up fire Protection Services, Equipment & Supplies in the Yellow Pages. You could also call the local fire marshall and have him look at your building and see what local regulations would require. You may only need a good fire alarm system.

 

[Grenage]

Aren't the inert gas/Halon systems illegal now ? in the UK at least.

 

[mattKnight]

Grenage, I think is partially correct. HALON is now not available for use (CFC pollution control?? in the UK, but there are other alternatives.

Good luck

Matt

 

[jeffbouldin]

It is not the inert gas that is banned, just the Halon. As I understand it, in the USA if you already have a system with Halon you can keep it. If you are installing a new system they use a different gas, I'm not sure what though.

 

[NickFerrar]

We always use at least two air-con units in server rooms in case one fails but with the relatively small amount of equipment you have listed then one air-con is probably OK. Air-con units also regulate humidity as well as temperature (at least everyone has we've ever bought).

We don't have any special fire prevention system in our server room, just make sure the normal building sprinklers aren't in that room and you have the various appropriate fire extinguishers in the room.

We also have a cheap environmenttal monitoring system which is just an APC UPS with a humidity and temperature sensor attached. If the power goes down, or the humditiy/temperature levels go out of pre-defined limits the PC attached to the UPS has a modem and dials our mobiles to warn us. You can get much more sophisticated systems but this all cost about £500 (not including the PC).

 

[jeffbouldin]

Before you do anything to your existing sprinkler system check with your local Fire Marshall. He\she will have to OK any changes to the system. Once you have permision get a fire sprinkler company to do the work, not a plumber or your maintanance department.

If you don't, you may find your building shut down or being sued.

Also I found out that a properly installed fire suppresion system does not completely get rid of the oxygen. It only puts about 7% level of the inert gas into the room, so it will not smother a person. The gas reacts at the heat source to bond to the material burning instead of the oxygen thus preventing the burning process.

 

[Mturner]

about 3 years ago we had our server room kitted out by unisis!, no not the servers the fire and power systems!, yes i did say unisis, i dont know if they still do it but our room is totaly air tight, air is pumped in though the air conditioning from the outside, so the air is clean an pure, we also have a system that takes samples of air permently from the room, it analises it for any smoke etc, there is also a system which monitors the levels of oxygen etc, so it will spot smoke a mile off. if smoke is detected the system checks with the access system to see how many people have swiped their cards to get in, then the alarm is sounded in the room and for a radious of 30 meters, the system doesnt do anything untill everyone has swiped out, the doors will open but people must swipe their cards outside to tell the system they have left, then the alarm gets louder and is then spread over the whole building, all the air is then sucked out of the room, thy killing the fire. this system cost over £1.5 million but we are Government and the system MUST stay up.

hope this helped Marc Turner
Network Manager

E-Mail: Mturner@turnerm3.fsnet.co.uk

 

[kcbell]

Following is my experience of Data Center design:

HVAC: The spec is normally 68 degree F and 40% humidity. Most Data Center has dedicated HVAC for the center. They are most likely installed inside the Data Center. The Data Center that I am responsible to maintain has 2000 square foot of space. It has two Liebert units in the Data Center to maintain the temperature and humidity. It has dry cooling towers outside of the Data Center and located at the roof of the building.

Fire Suppression System: FM200 is the agent that commonly used in the US. It is colorless and odorless. Check MSDS for details of this gas. It is used to displace oxygen to extinguish fire.

UPS: You must also design adequate UPS to sustain the computer systems for shutdown. For 24 by 7 operation, you may want to have the UPS to tell the servers to shutdown gracefully when the sys admin is not around; like after hours. The size of the UPS is entirely up to your requirement. The calculation of the size of the UPS is based on number of hour of sustaining during outage.

For a “closet”, the only thing I would make sure is adequate cooling and UPS. Fire suppression would be over killed.

Hope this help!