I was surprised when I heard that the recent telco massive disruption was caused by sparks at the distribution rack in the data centre, which caused the gas suppression system to discharge gas and a water sprinkler to be set off, causing damage to one of the mobile network switches, resulting in the service disruption.
First question that comes to mind. What is the water sprinkler doing within the data centre?
A data centre's fire suppression system is usually the gas suppression system because the electronics within the data centre will all be ruined if water is used. What makes the situation more surprising is that the data centre housing the switches do have a gas suppression system and yet, the sprinklers were also activated together with the gas suppression system.
In usual cases, water sprinklers are not built within the data centre, or the pipes have been emptied so that the sprinklers will only be activated in areas surrounding the data centre. They do not activate at the same time as the gas suppression system. In some cases, the architects might put in place a 2-phase system where the water sprinklers are only activated at high temperatures, which usually will not be activated unless the fire is too big or the gas suppression system failed.
In any case, someone screwed up.
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