Raised Floors

[Jim Manley]

No firefighter in their right mind is going to knowingly pump a drop of
water anywhere near or in the direction of a data center, let alone into
it.  That's why they're equipped with Halon or other oxygen displacement,
cooling, and flame suppression systems, and the FDs are equipped with
appropriate Class 2 (Electrical) firefighting equipment.  FDs conduct
periodic inspections of all on-site fire-fighting equipment and the local
station shifts do walk-throughs to review their procedures.  If any
hazardous materials are present (guaranteed in a DC), they're also taken
into account.

The FDs that serve industrial sites are equipped to fight fires where the
fuels can range from paper through plastics, up to actual petrochemical
fuels.  I worked in the last semiconductor fab still operating in Silicon
Valley and worked with the City of Santa Clara FD on their plans, which had
to deal with the presence of extreme toxins and corrosives such as
hydrofluoric acid used to etch silicon wafers. They used to be responsible
for the Intel fab next door until it was shut down and the fab in
Hillsboro, OR, took over all R&D production.  They said it was a nightmare
waiting to happen because of the volume of extremely hazardous chemicals
used on-site.

Someone should be sued and go to prison for signing off on permits that
would allow water to get anywhere near a DC - it's a violation of the
National Electric Code, for starters.  If anyone sees something like that,
it should be reported immediately, and not within the organization, since
the facilities people are either incompetent or complicit in keeping quiet
about it.  That's what anonymous.hotlines are for, and the media, if no
action occurs with the hotlines - we're talking about the possibility of
serious injury and death here.


On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 11:12 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On 5/21/19 5:33 PM, Craig Ruff via cctech wrote:
> > The NCAR Wyoming Supercomputer Center has raised floors of about 20 feet.
>
> Did the support posts go all the way down?  Or was there some sort of
> grid work that supported the raised floor above an open area that
> contained the PDUs?
>
> I ask because the PDUs in the DC in my office are wider (and longer)
> than a floor tile.  As such, it would require some special
> accommodations if the support posts were 20 feet tall.
>
>
>
> --
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die
>