The Darmstadt data center is equipped with indirectly free and thus particularly environmentally friendly cooling. The electricity used to operate the data center is ecological. Various processes and trades of the DARZ are designed for environmental compatibility and energy saving. For this reason, the data centre received the German Data Center Award (DRZP) in 2015 in the category "Overall Energy Efficiency in the Data Center".
The physical security of the building is very high due to its metre-thick walls, bullet-proof bulletproof glass panes as well as the earthquake and explosion-proof vault area. DARZ GmbH invested in comprehensive conversion measures in the form of installing new redundant building technology as well as a high-quality data center infrastructure (TÜV Level III+/Trier 3+).
DARZ GmbH has been offering full-service provider colocation / housing, managed services and other data center services since 2010. It is located in the immediate vicinity of the world's largest Internet exchange node: DE-CIX in Frankfurt am Main.
Sustainable Fire Protection Systems from a Single Source
A FirExting® gas extinguishing system from WAGNER with nitrogen as the inert gas was chosen for the Darmstadt data center. The gaseous extinguishing agent can fight a fire efficiently and without leaving any residue. In combination with the highly sensitive TITANUS® aspirating smoke detection system for fire detection and supplementary point detectors, fires can be detected early and fought quickly.
When using conventional nitrogen extinguishing systems, the extinguishing gas flows into the area to be protected at high pressure. This is necessary to extinguish the fire effectively and safely in the shortest possible time. However, the sound pressure released during the extinguishing process generated vibrations that caused damage to the noise-sensitive hardware. Data damage or even losses were the result. WAGNER has developed special silencers to protect servers and data during deletion in the data centre: FirExting® SILENT. The silencers are mounted on the extinguishing nozzles so that the sound pressure is reduced.
Another fire protection solution for DARZ is gas extinguishing via soft flooding. To minimise pressure peaks at the beginning of the extinguishing process, flow regulators were mounted on the extinguishing agent tanks. This soft flooding device means that only one opening is required as pressure relief for the extinguishing area in the first basement to the outside. This keeps the structural safety as intact as possible.
The use of a gas extinguishing system is not possible due to the required pressure relief areas for the vault, as this is hermetically sealed according to its original purpose. Therefore, the active fire prevention system OxyReduct® is used here by means of oxygen reduction. Due to the oxygen content in the atmosphere of the vault being continuously reduced, the ignition limit of typical IT materials is undercut and a fire can no longer develop or spread.
Sergey Mirochnik, Founder and Managing Director DARZ GmbH
Our concept is to avoid dangers before they arise. This is also associated with enormous costs. However, we are convinced that our customers appreciate our efforts and investments in these dangerous times, especially for data.
More Impressions of DARZ
TITANUS® air sampling smoke detectors detect any smoke development early and reliably.
The nitrogen required for possible extinguishing is stored in extinguishing agent containers and fed into the data centre as required.
For gentle gas extinguishing, flow regulators were installed on the extinguishing agent tanks.
FirExting® SILENT provides sound-attenuated fire extinguishing in the DARZ data centre.
The OxyReduct® fire prevention system actively protects the vault in the DARZ GmbH throat centre from fire
