Flood Protection

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

Does anybody happen to know if there are any particular guidelines relating to the minimum height a server should be raised off the ground?

 

Just curious but thank you in advance if you have the answer.

[elsiegee40]

I have never heard of any. It would depend on the geographical location of the building really. If you were in a riverside building in York, I would suggest 2 metres from street level. At the top of the hill where my school is, there is more danger from a leak through the ceiling than flood water.

[FN-GM]

Something to keep in mind, you should rack stuff in a rack with the heaviest at the bottom. Lots of times these are servers.

[twin--turbo]

Ours were on desk tops , meant they were about 70cm Above the high tide in our flood. We still went into work and moved them to the first floor for safety though.

 

Now our server room is located in an area of the building where the floor level would probably be 70cm lower... And they are in racks so the UPS's and the bottom of the blade center could well have been a bit damp...

 

Hopefully the flood defenses will prevent another flood.

 

To Be reasonably safe.. Go for 1st Floor.

 

Rob

[twin--turbo]

It's difficult to imagine it can happen until you have had it 1st hand.....

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=2005+flood+carlisle+photos&client=ubuntu&hs=eT&channel=fs&gl=uk&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=B6qoUobCHsiQ7AaUhoGABA&ved=0CDIQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=574

[dhicks]

Does anybody happen to know if there are any particular guidelines relating to the minimum height a server should be raised off the ground?

 

There's a whole Wikipedia article on the design on raised floors for server rooms, suggesting a minimum of 15cm:

 

Raised floor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Most people's use for raised floor is to allow for wiring and possibly cooling vents to run underneath, although I bet Google and Facebook have a couple of designs for datacentres in flood-prone areas.

 

From the point of view of putting the UPS at the bottom of the rack as it's the heaviest item, that makes sense, but bear in mind that it'll potentially be the first thing to get shorted out if there is a flood, quite possibly making any puddle around the bottom of your server rack live. I think there are some cirumstances where a UPS can start to emit noxious fumes, too - a flooded UPS might not be the kind of thing to approach.

[FN-GM]

From the point of view of putting the UPS at the bottom of the rack as it's the heaviest item, that makes sense, but bear in mind that it'll potentially be the first thing to get shorted out if there is a flood, quite possibly making any puddle around the bottom of your server rack live. I think there are some cirumstances where a UPS can start to emit noxious fumes, too - a flooded UPS might not be the kind of thing to approach.

 

That assumes you have a rackmount UPS. Our UPS for server room and switch rooms are whole room UPS's and do not actually sit in the server room.

Edited December 11, 2013 by FN-GM

[twin--turbo]

2.5FT Minimum based on updated experience....

 

Realisticaly I would say go 1st floor, although that does present structural issues if your loading a few hundred kilos per rack.

 

TT

[ITGURU]

One of our server rooms is on a single floor building, the other on the ground floor of another building. One houses a rackmount cabinet which the floor flooded twice due to the air-con.

 

The other one also had an air-con leak, went all over the desking but luckily shorted nothing out and didn't get to the floor although they too are about 4 inches off the floor,

[twin--turbo]

lol leaky aircon...

 

Last time I had that was in 97, used to dump water over a Data General Aviion unix box in winter..

 

That was untill this year when I found one of our coolers at our DR site blowwin water drop into our DR Citrix cluster due to silting in the bilge pump. We have upgraded our moisture ingress monitor to cover the whole of the DR server room perimiter.

 

 

 

TT

[ITGURU]

lol leaky aircon...

 

Last time I had that was in 97, used to dump water over a Data General Aviion unix box in winter..

 

That was untill this year when I found one of our coolers at our DR site blowwin water drop into our DR Citrix cluster due to silting in the bilge pump. We have upgraded our moisture ingress monitor to cover the whole of the DR server room perimiter.

 

 

 

TT

 

Ours were either because the air con couldn't cope with the heat demand in the summer or blocked drainage. Came back in after 2 weeks off one summer when found the leak! we were lucky.

[jimmy_2k]

mines on the first floor and it was handy when the toilets in the room next door flooded and the water flowed though the ceiling below and only soaked the carpet :-)