If you didn’t know, this has been a tumultuous week for clients of Westhost, my internet service provider. Their Primary data center is located in Utah and they share that space with a sister brand VPS.net. The datacenter is a Tier IV center managed by Consonus. Saturday afternoon there was a yearly fire equipment/alarm/suppression system test. The third party technician failed to follow procedures and one actuator remained on the output system for the gas that is designed to suppress fires in the building. When the system was re-armed there was a sudden release of the gaseous fire suppressant. At that same moment hundreds of hard drives died. Now, Inergen is what was used and the gases themselves shouldn’t be a problem. In this case, and judging from what I’ve read, the problem was with the sudden and intense change in air pressure caused by the release. That point is somewhat moot though, the end result is hundreds of dead and damaged hard drives.