University of Twente NOC Destroyed 483
JanJoost writes "Around 08.00 CET today the University of Twente Network Operations Center, which amongst other things hosts a SURFnet PoP as well as security.debian.org and non-us.debian.org, caught fire.
The UT, which hosted the HAL in august last year is completely unreachable and is not likely to come back up any time soon. The fire department has given up every hope on protecting the server area and is now trying to protect the surrounding buildings.
More information can be found at the Telegraaf,
Planet Internet and Twentsche Courant.
Pictures can be found here and here.
It's a shame to see a great infrastructure go down in flames like this."
More info (Score:5, Informative)
I predict... (Score:2)
OS people learn quickly from mistakes like this.
Re:I predict... (Score:3, Informative)
It's not as if the debian project didn't have the domain properly setup with 3 diffrent nameservers in 3 completely different locations.
They may even have a working mirror...
Re:More info (Score:5, Informative)
He's now probably busy setting up klecker.debian.org as the next security.debian.org host. Don't get yourself trojaned, please people, don't panic and just wait for the official Debian announcement that everything has been fixed again. Or play around with inofficial mirrors like [tu-clausthal.de] these [xs4all.nl], and there are more. But I feel a bit stupid myself, because - unlike Wichert - I have done nothing myself except forwarding the news and act like a karma whore.
Re:Class IV construction (Score:3, Informative)
Well Damn... (Score:3, Insightful)
After that, I wish them luck getting back online.
Re:Well Damn... (Score:2)
Funny, I was in this building a few times during the buildup and cleanup of HAL2001 [hal2001.org]. Feels strange now.
Photo's (Score:5, Informative)
In other news (Score:2, Funny)
The cause of this is thought to be a steadily decline in warez/divx/mp3 traffic. The underlying reason for that is still unknown.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
now the engineers come out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:3, Insightful)
I had no less than 1000 companies call asking how to handle licensing and DRA's.
I'd be surprised if they didn't have one, it's pretty much standard practice comercially....
Yo Grark
- Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:5, Interesting)
These are for small fires that can be contained within a data centre, ie. a computer catching fire or emitting smoke. Really good systems are very localised (racks or cage specific). A big fire just isn't going to be stopped by such a system.
I haven't read too much into this particular incident (ie. not at all), but my initial thought was that something more serious must have happened (well, duh!), perhaps a fire outside of the main suppression system (outside of the raised floor area?). Or perhaps the paint on the walls/carpet wasn't fire resistant and just took hold very quickly.
Or a large initial fire (gas leak?) that just didn't die down when the supression system kicked in. Maybe the type of fire (again, gas? oil?) didn't die down because Data Center supression systems presumably focus on electrical fires.
A well, just my 2p's worth.
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:3, Interesting)
When I worked for DEC they actually had sprinkler systems in their data centers (I couldn't verify first hand that every data center had sprinkler, but I was told so).
The reasoning was, that even if they was one big, bad, evil, wicked water damage in a data center, that the company considered this to be better then one killed employee by gas extuinguishing systems.
That was in the early 90ties
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm not too sure of this route. I can understand it, from an environmental and human-safety perspective (the gasses eat the ozone layer, and you *really* don't want to inhale stuff that ties up oxygen at those rates), but if it ever happens here, it's going to be an awfully hurried mess to get everything back up and running in a reasonable timespan, even if the fire is only a small one that doesn't destroy the building.
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:3, Funny)
And, as we all know, there's nothing more calming than being in a room that's on fire and having some funky gas poured into the room that makes it harder to breath
Do NOT stay at ground level with HALON! (Score:4, Informative)
Halon (or at least most of the Halons used for fire suppression; not sure about all of them) is non-toxic, though it'll get you a bit high, like nitrous oxide or most solvents, so being stuck in the stuff won't injure you quickly (except from flying objects that were blown around by the gas pressure.) However, it's no substitute for oxygen, and you'll probably be wanting some oxygen real soon now. If you can remember not to breathe in the stuff, try not to breathe deeply, because there's more oxygen left in your lungs than the stuff you'll be breathing in, and unfortunately, while your body can generally figure out not to breathe in water or hot smoke, it's not as good at realizing that near-room-temperature inert gases aren't very useful. Mostly, don't worry about it - find a safe door to run for and run for it, and do some deep breathing once you're outside, and try to close the door behind you.
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you breathe that air out and breathe oxygen-less air in, you will pass out very fast. Most people have the misconception that you can do without oxygen for a minute or two before dying. That's not true - your body needs to consume fresh oxygen at a continuing rate just to function at all, it's just that your lungs can HOLD a small supply of oxygen to supply this need for a minute or two. Get rid of that oxygen by breathing it out and replacing it with oxygenless air, and you're going to pass out in just a few seconds, and be dead shortly thereafter.
And the worst part is you won't FEEL like anything is wrong. Your body is unable to measure the level of oxygen in your lungs. Instead your body senses the level of carbon dioxide in your lungs. As the by-product of normal breathing, when carbon dioxide has built up enough, that indicates you've converted a lot of oxygen and it's time for another breath. This is what triggers the automatic involuntary breathing that takes over when you stop thinking about it. This is also what triggers the panic feeling that you get when you know you need air. Your lymph nodes detect too much carbon dioxide and start sending the panic signal to your mind. What this all means is that if your body isn't exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide, your body doesn't even realize it's asphixiating. If there's no oxygen in your lungs to start with, then there won't be any carbon dioxide building up in the lungs, and you will feel no sensation of needing a breath at all. You'll feel just fine for a few seconds and then *poof* you're gone as the blood going to your brain runs out of oxygen and your brain activity just plain stops.
So if you're ever in a halon gas system when it goes off - DO NOT BREATHE. Just hold whatever breath happens to already in your lungs and get out. The instinct is to hold your breath by first inhaling your lungs full and THEN holding it, but that's the worst thing you could do, as explained above. The tricky part is remembering to override that instinct.
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, they came in to do the test, everything but actually spraying water, and managed to flip the breaker. It was interesting to note, that only a few of the machines actually powered off. Some are on smaller single machine UPSs, so those stayed running. The most expensive piece of equipment in there, a Nortel Telephony Switch which handles 6 PRI lines (almost 150 ISDN lines) is on battery backup, and kept running.
All in all very little powered down. In the even of a real fire, we would have had sparks flying everywhere. What did management do when I mentioned this to them? That's right, nothing.
Re:now the engineers come out... (Score:2)
After all is said and done, the U still has to deal with insurance companies, getting specs for colocated equipment, etc. It's not an easy process (if you've dealt with your insurance company not wanting to pay for a dent in your car, imagine telling them that the dent would cost millions to repair) and I doubt that they will be up and operational in less than 6 months.
I just find it ironic that they put all of their fault-tolerant redundant systems in the same building, only to have it burn down. Distributed computing should mean more than just two computers sitting right next to each other.
Vunerability (Score:5, Interesting)
This shows the vunerability of putting all computers in one building. To have a safe network one needs to spread (duplicate) the information over several computer at several locations. How far apart these locations has to be is depending on how important you data is.
It is a shame that a building hosting so many good initiatives should be the one to go, but as always: there is no excuse for not have a backup. By that I don't only mean that tape that always seems to go missing when needed, but multiple sites (or at least buildings) that provide redundancy.
Re:Vunerability (Score:5, Funny)
What a stunning idea. Perhaps they should call it the internet...
Re:Vunerability (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a shame that a building hosting so many good initiatives should be the one to go, but as always: there is no excuse for not have a backup.
Uhhh, yes there is... I suspect you either know nothing about IT or are fresh out of college. DRP (disaster recovery planning) factors in things such as criticality of data, cost, and acceptable downtime. A university payroll system may need to be back up within 12 hours of a major incident, so in addition to tape backups you might have a failover site. Contrary to your simplistic post, even the richest corporations rarely have failover sites of their own. They simply contract out to a DRP vendor who have these types of machines lying dormant in a glass room, waiting to cut over. On the other hand a university FTP site is probably classified as low risk, low impact. So you would rely on off-site backup tapes and perhaps only restore when you've arranged for an alternate site and taken delivery of new servers. You don't pay millions of dollars to have two glass rooms just so you can have uninterrupted FTP service...
Re:Vunerability (Score:5, Insightful)
I just hope they're well insured....poor colleagues...
On the upside: they may get a squeaky-clean start when this blows over
Re:Vunerability (Score:3, Informative)
1) Sending tapes off-site too early -- TSM allows you to have multiple "storage pools" within one library. Basically, you backup your data into one storage pool (set of tapes) and then duplicate it to the off-site copies. Then the DRM (Disaster Recovery Manager) scripts automatically eject the tapes from the library for packaging to send off-site. You don't ship off your on-site copies, so when you need to do a restore, it's always here.
2) Partly full tapes -- TSM has a concept of "migrations" where it moves data between tapes to better utilize them. The internal DB automatically knows where the data is, so you don't have to worry about which tape has which days' backups -- it doesn't matter.
3) Full backupset -- TSM 4.2 introduced "portable backup sets" -- basically, you backup your data into the TSM server as normal, then "generate" a backupset -- takes all the files for a particular node and writes them to a series of tapes which you then eject and store off-site. When you need to recover from those tapes, the server component isn't needed -- locally attached tape on the server and the client piece of TSM is all you need --- speeds up recovery by a few hours!
TSM's a great product. Does lots and lots of great things that other vendors are only now trying to figure out.
Sure, it's pricy, but how much is your data worth?
A good reminder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A good reminder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A good reminder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A good reminder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Details on the recovery:
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,
Some information on the scale of what eSpeed handles:
http://wstonline.com/story/mag/WST20011
Even Cantor Fitzgerald mentions it in their Q3/01 results summary:
http://www.cantor.com/articles/article1
About as good as it gets with only two sites... (Score:5, Insightful)
The lesson should be: Primary back-up is a very good start, but secondary/tertiary back-up is the thing if it's that critical.
Kjella
Re:About as good as it gets with only two sites... (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, not having your backups in close proximity to the data center IS good policy.
Re:About as good as it gets with only two sites... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that there's been lots of study of this, but I suspect that a good distance is 1-2 hours drive. Far enough to avoid most of the impact from things like a big chunk of the city being shut down for weeks, close enough to get to (with some inconvenience) if necessary.
In the Chicago area it might be something like downtown Chicago and Schaumburg, Naperville, Aurora or even Rockford (at the 2-hour mark).
Re:About as good as it gets with only two sites... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only [gag] good [retch] reasons to have the backup in the other tower are spelled "lazy" and "stupid".
You mean HiveCache (formerly MojoNation)? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A good reminder.. (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I use Kazaa to keep backups of my pr0n all over the world!
Re:A good reminder.. (Score:4, Funny)
Hopefully the other me's in the other dimensions aren't counting on me to keep backups. Those idiots.
So much for server areas never burning down (Score:5, Interesting)
What a shame.
Re:So much for server areas never burning down (Score:2, Insightful)
I.E. "See, if they would have had a fire suppression system, this would have never happened."
Re:So much for server areas never burning down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So much for server areas never burning down (Score:3, Interesting)
In a related announcement... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In a related announcement... (Score:3, Funny)
You're thinking of that Linux distro with a BSD style ports things aren't you? What's it called again, Gentle, Gentool - Gentile Linux!!! Thats right!
Maybe.. (Score:4, Funny)
(and this isn't *flame*bait
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
If not, was anyone hurt?
If not, do they have insurance?
If they do... well, I'm sure someone just lost their masterpiece pr0n directory, but otherwise, things like this happen. (ask Hemos) You have to make it through such things. In this case, it was a commercial (educational) building and no one is homeless, so it's less of a tragedy than usual. Let's hope that they rebuild with something better and newer.
That said, I get the feeling that those plumes of smoke really are millions of dollars floating away in the wind...
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Informative)
The university doesn't insure itself agains this kind of disaster because they are able to set aside enough money to cover the cost themselves and don't have to pay the insurer's profit.
Now how they are going to deal with this and their financial troubles (they're almost broke) is another issue...
last syslog messages from SURFnet routers (Score:5, Interesting)
few seconds later on the local side:
lo0.cr2.amsterdam2.surf.net 1146: Nov 20 07:20:56.458 UTC: %CLNS-5-ADJCHANGE: ISIS: Adjacency to ar5.enschede1 (POS2/0) Down, interface deleted(non-iih)
Re:last syslog messages from SURFnet routers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:last syslog messages from SURFnet routers (Score:4, Informative)
Hope they ... (Score:2)
If the actually have backups it's only a matter of money/time before sites will be up'n'running again.
Re:Hope they ... (Score:2)
"Hi, we need a quote for a few hundred new servers and a couple dozen new routers and switches. Oh, and we need them *now*. Hello? Hello...? Dammit! Another sales rep fainted!"
Halon dumps? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope Debian practices good management principles by having offsite backup.
Re:Halon dumps? (Score:2)
Re:Halon dumps? -- not if the whole building is in (Score:5, Informative)
Now, I would *love* to see a halon system capable of stopping that...
Owh, and the fire seems to be under control by now, as evidenced on http://webcam.traserv.com/
(which you can contrast to http://www-infstud.sci.kun.nl/~arthurvl/ispy.jpg (taken at about 09:40 CET this morning)).
Re:Halon dumps? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most scenario would only require a less than 8% of concentration to take out the fire. Under 10% and you can still breath.
Problem of Halon is when over 900 degree C, it breaks down into hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen bromide and bromine - stuff that are toxic. So, run!
Debian Security mirror (Score:5, Informative)
You can use debian.essentkabel.com to download the latest security updates (in case you haven't already). Please note this is NOT an official mirror.
security updates mirrored worldwide. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Debian security updates are usually also added to the proposed-updates section, which means that they are available on nearly all Debian mirrors worldwide.
Something like /etc/apt/sources.list should work well.
deb ftp://ftp.XX.debian.org/pub/debian/ proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb ftp://ftp.XX.debian.org/pub/debian-non-US/ proposed-updates/non-US main contrib non-free
(replace XX with your ISO country code) in your
You can find mirrors on Debian [debian.org]'s website.
Re:Debian Security mirror (Score:3, Informative)
Debian haven't released a security advisory since yesterday, so it's deeply unlikely you'll need an update before they get a new security.debian.org online tomorrow.
OK, folks, admit it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OK, folks, admit it! (Score:3, Funny)
More Pictures from the webcam (Score:5, Informative)
Also, here's what seems to be the only close up I could find of the fire. pics [traserv.com]
Oh Dear.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there anything that could cause this naturally? I mean, judging from the pictures it looked fairly large and out of control...I hope no one caused this purposefully. I've never had to deal with a catastrophe like this, luckily...I send my best wishes of luck and hope to those involved and pray no one got hurt. =(
Re:Oh Dear.... (Score:2)
Dangerous server rooms (Score:4, Funny)
Dangerous server rooms [theregister.co.uk]
Update from SARA (SURFnet NOC) (Score:5, Informative)
It must have been Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
LFS mirror affected too (Score:5, Informative)
Last news is that HP (Who supplied most of the UT backbone equipment) is on its way with emergency equipment to have things up and running somewhere tomorrow.
Oh, well... (Score:2)
PGP Keyserver root was hosted by SURFNet (Score:5, Insightful)
BACKUP!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
BACKUPS BACKUPS BACKUPS Off-site! I've had enough of people who are talking about RAID-5 because 5TB tape drive arrays are too slow. Always keep your BACKUPS!
Translation of the Twentsche Courant Tubantia (Score:3, Informative)
The burning building contains the IT department and a part of the faculty of Business Administration [Closest I could come up with: Bestuurskunde]. The building has three storeys.
The university fears the loss of its network facilities and is trying to save the main computer. According to a spokesman this network is amongst the fastest in Europe. Most classes are expected to resume as normal today. [According to other sources, this is an exam week, meaning few classes anyway. This is also a reason that few students were around so chances were that this also reduced potential casualties]
The fire department is fighting the fire with 25 firefighters and expects to need the entire day to extinguish the fire. No dangerous materials have been released by the fire at this point. At the moment nothing is known about the cause of this fire.
Disaster Recovery plans (Score:3)
The NIH Computer Center Disaster Recovery Plan is available online somewhere in pdf format and provided a good deal of insite.
Does anyone else have good hints on texts and outline for good disaster recovery plans?
___________________________________________
Re:Disaster Recovery plans (Score:5, Insightful)
Do full backups weekly, store copies offsite. Incremental backups daily, copies offsite also. If you can afford it (or can't afford any downtime), have emergency backup hardware (enough for minimal operations) in an offsite storage facility. Old hardware that would otherwise be thrown out is good for this (remember, it's for an emergency). Have a supplier who can get replacement hardware to you in a hurry (so you can get off of those old 90 MHz Pentium servers).
The most vital part of the plan, after backups, is good insurance. If the building burns to the ground Monday morning, you want to be able to call the insurer Monday Noon, and have the check in hand Tuesday morning at the latest.
These recommendations do not cover disasters such as 767s flying into the building and killing all the sysops. Earthquakes dropping the building on the same. Etc. The people are the most important part of any company and, if too many of them are lost at once, the company probably is lost too.
Unless you have really good (and expensive)insurance which can provide enough funds for you to hire new people, get them trained, and keep the company solvent while you do so.
Just a few translations (Score:5, Informative)
There is a complete backup of the data, so no ireplaceable data-loss. Still, several tens of millions of euros worth of damage.
An emergency network will be constructed, that will take several days. Please do not post a link to the new network on slashdot, the emergency solution will not have a very high capacity...
The exams for today were mostly cancelled, internet and e-mail for students and teacher will be down untill the emergency network is in place.
Kind regards,
Maarten Sneep from Amsterdam
PS. This is the same town that a few years ago was struck by a fireworks disaster. See www.volkskrant.nl [volkskrant.nl] for pictures.
Re:Just a few translations (Score:3, Funny)
The world's most warped error message... (Score:5, Funny)
'lp1 on fire'
Ah HAH!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Oops. (Score:3, Funny)
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Debian is working on recovering (Score:5, Informative)
At around 8 this morning (local time) a fire started in the computing facilities of Twente University. This affects Debian, since one of our servers (satie) is hosted there. At this moment it seems very likely that the machine can not be recovered from the fire.
The following services are currently down as a result of this:
security.debian.org
non-us.debian.org
nm.debian.org
qa.debian.org
We are working to restoring these services on another machine and hope to have things in mostly working order by tomorrow. Security advisories are still available at http://www.debian.org/security/
Wichert.
it was the printers!!! (Score:3, Funny)
(sorry, couldn't help myself...)
Students! (Score:5, Funny)
Twente's high-speed network was originally constructed to provide students with access to high-speed Internet access for their studies. It soon became one of the major hubs for peer-to-peer exchange programs like KaZaA. This perceived misuse of Internet resources caused former Dutch education minister Loek Hermans to comment: "It would be nice if the students at Twente University would use their fast connections for information and education purposes, instead of downloading huge amounts of porn."
Phil, just me
Sad (Score:5, Funny)
Other sad jokes will no doubt follow.
translation.. (Score:3, Informative)
"University network down from fire"
"ENSCHEDE - A fire in the computing center from the university of Twente (UT) in Enschede has caused a few 10's of millions of euros damage on Wednesday.
The fire, which broke out about 8:00am, has disabled the universities network. There were no injuries. The fire department has cleared out several buildings in the nearby facinity. The IT departments of the UT and a part of the business studies department were housed in the building where the fire broke out. The building was three stories high.
The fire department fought the fire with several dozen people and estimated that they would need the whole day to get the fire under control. There are, until now, no dangerous substances released. The cause of the outbreak is not yet known.
According to Van Vught, a backup of the network's data has been made. "All data have been safely stored". Because of exams, there were no classes at the time. There were also few students on the campus on wednesday. Exams on wednesday have been cancelled.
Staff at the UT want to set up a temporary network, which can take several days. Thousands of staff and students can not make use of the campus network until a temporary network has been installed.
One on-looking business studies student is shocked (?): "incredibly sad. It means that I can't do my assignments. Doubtless, a temporary building will need to be set-up to help the situation". The Saxion Polytechn in Enschede has made room available.
The web-site from the Enschede city council is not available because of the fire. The council used the servers from the UT. The Saxion Polytech is also without internet access for the same reason."
Okay, this translation is a wee-bit too literal, but it's understandable.
Michael.
The cause of the fire? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The cause of the fire? (Score:5, Funny)
They should have just let Milton have his stapler...
They Needed Low-Tech Fire Protection (Score:4, Insightful)
Critical stuff is spread between the file rooms, with metal conduit, etc. protecting the few small holes they added for wiring.
Steel & reinforced concrete aren't quite obsolete.
Things are being restored slowly (Score:3, Informative)
Debian is restoring the lost services on klecker. At this moment qa.debian.org is up and running and the non-US and security archives are available as well, although their backend systems have not been restored yet.
Valuable lessons have been learned though: it is very useful to have machines on standby where you can switches services to when needed. Having backups of important data is also really useful (and we could have done a bit better at that. UTwente apparently has good off-site backups of its own data though). And having good insurance is also definitely useful.
Re:why does this matter? (Score:4, Informative)
"which amongst other things hosts a SURFnet PoP as well as security.debian.org and non-us.debian.org "
security.debian.org and non-us.debian.org are GONE (well, burning, hopefully data can be recovered). Yes there's mirrors, but it still sucks.
Re:why does this matter? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:why does this matter? (Score:2)
However, any fire destroying the building is a *bad* thing and if it's arson I hope they pin his nuts to the wall. I hope the data in the NOC is restored quickly.
Re:why does this matter? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:why does this matter? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:why does this matter? (Score:3, Funny)
Halon is probably illegal today (Score:4, Informative)
Halon systems aren't illegal, but.... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I wouldn't want to have to fill out all the paperwork involved with a discharge! We had an accidental discharge (a leak, I believe) and they decided it was enough impetus to remove the system.
I think they are using CO2 now. The advantage of Halon is that you can breathe quite comfortably in an atmosphere that will not sustain fire. CO2 works just about as effectively but will not sustain life.
OTOH, more recent studies have shown that just because you can still breath in a Halon infiltrated environment doesn't mean that there are no health effects!
I expect there are more CO2 systems going in now, with lots of alarms to make sure people get out before the atmosphere gets unlivable.
Michael
Re:Halon systems aren't illegal, but.... (Score:4, Informative)
Both gasses extinguish fire by excluding oxygen... which isn't good for people either.
The difference is that one cannot comfortably breath CO2, an involuntary physiological reaction makes it impossible. (next time you open a bottle of Coke, try sniffing the little cloud of CO2 that forms in the top of the bottle)
Halon, otoh, is perfectly comofortable to breathe in and out, but will provide no oxygen. This is similar to breathing helium (recommended as the nicest way to commit suicide, after N20) in that one would be quite comfortable right up until one passed out from hypoxia. Death follows soon after.
Also, i've read in boating magazines that undersized Halon systems used in engine compartments can be dangerous. Apparently, if the diesel engine is running when the system fires and there isn't enough Halon to kill the engine, the burned Halon/air/diesel mixture produces some really nasty toxic gasses.
Anyhow.. enough rambling!
Re:Halon systems aren't illegal, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does it need to provide oxygen? The air provides oxygen. How come you're not worried that air is about 80% nitrogen, which also provides no oxygen? See, humans don't need to breathe 100% oxygen... we do fine with much less. The advantage of Halon over CO2 is that it does not extinguish a fire by displacing oxygen. It will put out a fire [tpub.com] at concentrations of about 5%, leaving plenty of oxygen to breathe.
the burned Halon/air/diesel mixture produces some really nasty toxic gasses.
And a fire doesn't? If you have an undersized system installed, you're gonna have problems in a fire anyways. With a proper system, the small quantity of toxic gasses produced by the Halon decomposition before the fire is extinguished (which is a fraction of a second--Halon systems have been used for explosion suppression) is much preferable to the large quantity of toxic gasses and heat produced by a fire.
Breathe Quite Comfortably? (Score:5, Informative)
You've obviously never been in a Halon dump. Either that or you consider burning in your lungs to be "quite comfortable". Not to mention that if you're standing under one of the discharge nozzles at a dump you can get a nasty case of frostbite.
I've personally been through two 1211 dumps and had to enter a computer room and drag staff out after an FM200 dump. It takes about two days to completely stop coughing.
Re:No Halon? (Score:3, Informative)
Moreover, Halon system are no longer installed (globally) since 1987 (Montreal Protocol) due to its CFC damaging effect. Most systems already installed are replaced by FM-200. Water, Argon, FE-13, Inergen and a few others are all possible replacement.
Re:Lazy commie bastard (Score:2)