Data Centre Fire Risk Alarm Systems: Intelligent Protection for Mission-Critical Infrastructure

Why a standard fire safety system is not enough for data centres

The unique fire hazards in high-density IT environments

Data centre fire risk alarm systems are designed specifically to deal with fire hazards in areas with a concentration of high-powered electrical equipment. These can include thermal runaway, overloaded circuits, arc flashes, component failures and more. Unlike standard fire safety systems, data centre fire suppression systems are proactive in detecting and suppressing fire risks before they can progress and cause catastrophic damage.

The devastating cost of data centre downtime

Unplanned data centre downtime can cost thousands of pounds per minute. With the average recovery time stretching to as long as 17 hours, even for false alarms. If it is not detected early and contained effectively, a single fire-incident could easily result in losses of more than one million pounds.

Outdated systems increase operational risk and compliance burden

Due to delayed detection and potentially damaging fire suppression methods, outdated data centre fire safety management systems can increase operational risk and place a bigger burden on compliance. To ensure that your business isn’t affected by these issues and can keep running smoothly, it is best to have an intelligent fire risk management platform that can anticipate risk before it becomes a problem.

Fact: UK fire and rescue services attended 133,072 fires in the year ending September 2024, the lowest level on record, but regulators now treat data centres as part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and are introducing minimum resilience standards that explicitly cover fire and outage risks.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fire-and-rescue-incident-statistics-year-ending-september-2024/fire-and-rescue-incident-statistics-england-year-ending-september-2024

Centralised Critical Alarm Management Manage all of the alarms across your portfolio with one intelligent fire risk assessment software.
Instant, Clear, and Actionable Fire Event Data Receive real-time data that can predict fire risks and provide actionable solutions.
Full Integration With All Leading Fire Panels and Suppression Systems Our solution is fully compatible with fire panels and suppression systems from all the leading brands within the industry.
Predictive Maintenance To Eliminate Pre-Alarm Faults Easily monitor the alarms in your portfolio and anticipate the need for any maintenance to avoid faults before they occur.
Early Identification of Faulty Detection Devices Our intelligent fire risk management platform identifies any faulty detection devices early. Allowing for early intervention to avoid costly risks.

Seamless Integration With Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA) Connect our solution to VESDAs for monitoring of data centres easily without any complicated steps to its integration.
Aspirating Smoke Detection (ASD) For High-Airflow environments Catch potential fire risks earlier with an ASD system which detects smoke significantly more quickly than traditional smoke alarms.
Aspirating Smoke Detection (ASD) For High-Airflow environments Catch potential fire risks earlier with an ASD system which detects smoke significantly more quickly than traditional smoke alarms.
Eliminating Nuisance and False Alarms Consistent and active monitoring of your fire alarm systems helps to avoid unwanted manual maintenance tasks and counterproductive false alarms.

Compatible with over 50 fire alarm manufacturers

Stop the fire event before it causes a catastrophic outage

When it comes to data centres and fire risk, the biggest factor in how much damage is done is time. The quicker you can detect and prevent a fire, the less damage it can do. That’s why our data centre fire risk alarm systems are designed to catch and avoid fire risks as quickly and efficiently as possible. This helps to avoid downtime of critical connections such as uninterrupted power station monitoring.

Faster emergency response through real-time data

By providing constant access to real-time data, our data centre fire safety compliance software allows facilities managers to instigate emergency actions prior to a potential fire risk becoming an actual problem. Anticipating a fire risk and acting quickly helps to avoid any actual damage and reduce data centre fire downtime across the whole portfolio of locations. This helps to protect critical infrastructure from fire-base interruptions.

Incident forensics and reporting for insurers and regulators

Our data centre fire safety management system compiles a complete audit trail of critical alarm data from all of your alarms in one place. This documents all fire events including testing and false alarms to keep you fully compliant with British regulators. These reports can also be used to provide information to insurers quickly and easily when required.

Total asset visibility and accountability

Whether you need to monitor fire alarm systems across multiple sites, a single site, or manage multiple fire alarms across one building, our solution can provide in-depth insights from multiple alarm systems in one easy-to-use dashboard. It has been engineered to integrate with over 50 fire alarm manufacturers, allowing your fire alarm systems to be fully interlinked, and can provide effective fire safety across a number of sectors.

Data Management Our alarm management software provides a comprehensive overview of critical alarm data from all system types in one central database. There’s no need for time consuming manual data input or collecting of data from different silos.
Predictive vs Reactive Rather than waiting for a fire event to happen before generating an alert, our intelligent data centre fire risk alarm monitoring constantly checks for potential risks and predicts potential fire risks before they happen.
Compliance Instead of relying on manual paperwork that can lead to errors and delays in the compliance process. Our solution saves records of all fire events across every alarm within the network. This allows for an easy way to provide regulators with the required information quickly and easily.

Ease of Use The majority of fire safety management platforms only provide a part of the system and require multiple additional softwares and systems to function effectively. This leads to multiple instances of integration and training for each new system that is used. Our solution provides a single fully integrated system that is simple to use.
Recovery Times Traditional reactive data centre fire suppression systems have long recovery times that can leave data centres offline for several hours. This results in lost time and money that could have been avoided. By predicting risks and providing actionable guidance, our alarm management system can help to avoid serious fire events, reducing data centre downtime.

Drax Technology

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Data Centre Fire Risk Alarm System FAQs

What makes fire safety in a data centre so challenging?

One of the biggest challenges for fire safety in a data centre is the need to detect any potential fire risks early. In order to do this, it is recommended that a fire safety system should include Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA), and Aspirating Smoke Detection (ASD).

Why are gaseous suppression systems the preferred choice for data centres?

Traditional water-based fire suppression systems would cause catastrophic and irreversible damage to a data centre that would defeat the object of protecting them from a fire. Gaseous suppression systems can extinguish a fire without leaving any damaging residue behind.

How does Drax Technology help with data centre compliance?

Our solution stores a complete audit trail of critical alarm data from all interlinked alarms in the system. This documents all fire events across the network, and notifies of any non-compliance with British regulations.

Can Drax Technology integrate with my existing fire alarm panels?

Yes, our fire risk alarm system allows you to integrate with multiple fire alarm manufacturers. It is compatible with over 50 popular fire alarm manufacturers.

What is the benefit of 'predictive' maintenance for my data centre fire system?

Predictive maintenance is our version of prevention being better than a cure. Instead of waiting for an alarm to stop working or become faulty, our technology uses early identification to proactively identify them for replacement. This prevents a small unnoticed fault from developing into a larger issue that could cause real damage or trigger disruptive false alarms.