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I think he's saying that datacenters would not have water sprinklers and would instead use Halon fire extinguishers.

He's wrong and you/Wikipedia are right, BTW. Halons were banned in 1994, before datacenters became commonplace. Argon and other inert gas fire suppression systems (of which Halon is one, but a banned one) are used instead.




> Halons were banned in 1994, before datacenters became commonplace.

The article is talking about 1971, long before Halon was banned. It was commonplace to find Halon installations in computer rooms in the 1980s.


> Halons were banned in 1994, before datacenters became commonplace.

The 90s called and would like a word with you.


when that call is over, the 60's, 70's, and 80's are on hold.


Halon used to be the standard for data centers using gaseous fire extinguishers in the mainframe era. See: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/dinosaur-pen.html

The op's a bit outdated, but not completely wrong. Even now a lot of data centers use various halon replacements rather than Argonite, though there are a number of different gaseous fire suppressants used in data centers these days.


The last data centre I worked in certainly had water sprinklers too.

The gaseous system was one-shot. If the fire continues or restarted, or another fire occurred before the system was recharged, water sprinklers would save the building.

Redundant systems. Of course, some data centres probably have redundant gaseous suppression too.




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