Our daily troubles solving disk failures or typical user problems can take up a lot of valuable time.
But the necessity to protect our infrastructure must come first. So let us talk about does and don’ts as you are responsible for your systems availability.
What can happen?
STEP 1
The might be a fire in your server room? or some mad guy could detonate a bomb close to your building and burst all your windows.
Do you really think that you’ll only have to repair your windows?
Wake up lad.
The flying glass will rip your open any unprotected cable or land inside your racks destroying components like memory (HDD, RAM).
What if the lorry explodes? Server Room will be …
Burst monitors can be replaced easily as they are not required for a server to run. But a server needs cables, power, memory, …
Then think about that scenario!
Place server away from the street.
You might reply:
we’ve got roads on all 4 sides of our building!
Rearrange the Server Room
Of course you could …
Try placing the server room in the cellar if you are not endangered by flooding (rivers close to??)
Or place it in the middle of the building with extra strong walls.
Break up your server room into several sections placing each section with a separate fire protection and alarm.
Protect in sections
By breaking up protection you make sure flying objects do nor rip the complete infrastructure and any faulty fire meter does not fill your entire server room with fire killing fluid.
An insurance can pay for such faults but the results for your business are often not covered. Medium business can often not afford such a costly insurance.
If you have made a bomb or blast emergency plan and have set up protective elements you should jump to step 2.
STEP 2
Have a look at the stuff you have placed in your server room.
Are you mad?
What’s that printer and those pallets of paper doing in your server room?
What do I see?
Please do not place such material like pallets of paper in one of the most valuable rooms! Designate a room for your printers and a secure room for paper if you still need to print a lot.
Paper and a cigarette love each other but your server does not smoke so get those pallets out of your room!
STEP 3
Where do you stand unpacked servers? In your server room? Not there!
Unpack the newly delivered systems in a separate room and if there is not enough room move them to a separate room.
Protect in sections
Have you heard your security consultant saying this:
I forgot to tell you that that lift in the middle of that server room has to come out!!
But why?
Let me explain. If a fire evolves one floor further down the heat and other gases will collect and suddenly rush through that lift shaft. That is you in case of a fire you are told to use the stairs.
Depending on your building you could place the lift like in the picture above. Take time to consult a specialist as every building is different.
STEP 4
If there is a fire how can the fire fighters access your server rooms?
This article should make you think about protecting your infrastructure from classic dangers.