OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no power cut-out

Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by londons_explore on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @05:30AM (#30764189)

In a datacenter fire, the risk to human life is very small (has anyone ever died in a datacenter fire, apart from being suffocated by a halon system?).

It's just property risk, data loss and service downtime. Therefore, it's a business decision.

I have worked in a business that, during a fire, prioritized maintaining service uptime over putting the fire out. The end result: They had to buy more new servers, but customer workloads were migrated away within 15 minutes and saw no outage. For them, it was the right decision.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by michaelt on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @07:00AM (#30764678)

Well, most fires involve risk to human life if firefighters have to enter the building to extinguish it.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by mannykannot on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @11:15AM (#30767067)

Indeed, and they also often enter buildings to look for people who are in harm's way. OHVcloud's omissions did not amount to a good business decision, it was an irresponsible one.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by Nextgrid on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @12:02PM (#30767725)

Did this one involve said risk?

Maybe risk to life was eliminated by a combination of low occupancy, trained staff and adequate escape routes so that there's no reason for firefighters to enter it, and the building was essentially designed to be disposable should the worst happen?

I don't see this as a particularly bad thing - if risk to life and neighbouring properties was correctly managed (and it seems like it was here), why not allow this?

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @07:12AM (#30764738)

I have to imagine that smoke from the burning computing equipment isn't the healthiest thing for anyone downwind of the fire.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by jeremyjh on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @06:43AM (#30764571)

Except the fire damaged other buildings and spread lead all the way to Germany.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by jeroenhd on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @06:58AM (#30764673)

"All the way to Germany" doesn't say much if the building that's on fire is practically on the German border.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by 0xbeefbeefbeef on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @06:53AM (#30764635)

The datacenter is about 100ft from the German border.

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Re:OVHcloud fire: SBG2 data center had no extinguisher, no p... by jacquesm on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @07:41AM (#30764866)

Fire suppression systems have risks all their own:

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/11/06/work...

That was still under construction.

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