Err... No, the network didn't even notice. There's so much noise in the hash rate that any signal is lost. See https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate and try to find the "disruption".
Wow, rate of increase there is crazy. I don't know a ton about the whole bitcoin ecosystem, but it's pretty interesting that in the past year, the hashrate has grown 100X while the value of a bitcoin has fallen about 66%.
Because the blockchain is awesome and the government is bad. They'd use bubble sort, efficiency be damned, if they could find a way to keep the bankers out of it.
I'm surprised at the severity of the fire; it doesn't look like bitcoin mining equipment would be comprised of much flammable material - it's mostly metal and silicon and PCBs. The former two are essentially nonflammable, while the latter usually being made of FR-4 is flame-retardant (UL94V0).
Agreed. Taking out insurance on expensive facilities requires a degree of intelligence and forethought that one doesn't really expect in the kind of person who builds said facilities with flammable tiles and doesn't include a fire-suppression system.
> But Gizmodo suggests it could have spread due to flammable acoustic foam and suggested that the facility probably lacked in a sprinkler system that most high-end data centers in the US would have as standard
Are sprinkler systems in data centers really the standard? How well does standard server hardware operate after contact with water from the sprinkler system?
I work at a company that runs a data center that has a nitrogen-based fire suppression system, so that the servers can continue to run uninterrupted. That sounds a lot more expensive, but also seems to make more sense to me.
Sprinklers are very common, mostly dry-pipe systems to avoid water leakage. There are some alternatives like HI-FOG, which uses less water and therefore may do less damage to the room's equipment.
It is very undesirable for the equipment in the room to get wet. A sprinkler activation generally results in partial or total loss of the equipment in the room, and even if you can get stuff running again, it's going to take a while. However, it's even less desirable for people to die or the building to burn down.
Fire suppression systems that operate by removing oxygen from the room (such as Halon) can kill people who are trapped inside. I haven't seen a facility with this type of system in a long time.
Also, most datacenters have very strict rules about flammable material (like cardboard) on the datacenter floor. Most sites aren't super diligent about enforcing it, but just having the rules shifts the blame onto you. Imagine being on the hook financially for tens of thousands of servers because something caught on fire in your cage.
