Making the decision to purchase top of the line rack computers and install your own onsite server room can be extremely beneficial for your business. With complete control over your IT needs, you can set up a great website, build an effective digital store that can help you take advantage of growing eCommerce spending, and protect your company’s digital assets in the process. That’s not to say hosting your own servers is without risk.
There are the cyber-security risks to consider — hackers, viruses, and the like — but one of the greatest threats remains in the physical world. Take a quick second and Google the phrase “server fire.” You shouldn’t be surprised to find stories of Bitcoin centers or other businesses that were completely destroyed when their server rack enclosures started on fire. That doesn’t have to be your business. By taking sensible steps to fireproofing, you’ll likely never have to worry about this nightmare coming true.
Three Steps You Can Take to Fireproof Your Clean Room
- Keep an Eagle’s Eye View of Your Clean Room at All Times
- Remove as Much Oxygen as Possible from the Server Room
- Play It Cool
Tech Republic suggests that by installing surveillance cameras in your clean room, you can kill a number of birds with a single stone. Regular surveillance means you can catch anyone who is trying to toy around with your setup, but more importantly for our purposes, it means being able to see a spark or flame in your server rooms before it gets out of hand.
To win the war against server room fires, you have to ensure no shots are ever fired, if you’ll forgive the metaphor. Tech Target writes that by installing an inert gas system, you physically remove any ability your server rack enclosures have to combust. Gas suppression systems remove oxygen from the air, while simultaneously replacing it with inert gases that choke out flames before they ever get started. They’re an expensive investment, but it’s money worth spent when you consider the safety benefits for your server setup and employees.
The main cause of server room fires, as you may have guessed, is heat. Running server rack enclosures around the clock generates a ton of thermal energy. If that energy isn’t controlled, it leads to overheating components and, in extreme cases, fire. The University at California-Davis’s IT department suggests that by keeping your servers in the optimal temperature range of 66 to 74-degrees using an industrial air conditioning setup, your chances of having a fire become very slight.
Don’t make the same mistake other businesses have made to their own peril. Yes, server room fires are relatively rare, but unless you want to lose everything, you need to take immediate steps to safeguard your server rack enclosures against this threat. It could mean the difference between a healthy, successful business and a complete failure.