On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 09:12:19AM -0400, Jason Healy wrote: > We're a school with a small server room that we're trying to keep cool (about > 4 racks, plus some telco gear). We have a dedicated AC unit in the room > right now, but it isn't able to keep up with the load in the space we have > (the airflow isn't great). Room is hovering around 75 F with AC on full > blast 24/7. On hot days it gets worse, and if the unit were to fail we'd go > over temp pretty quickly.
Now, what you do, I think, depends a lot on budget and what the cost is if the servers go down. First, figure out if it's possible to dump it in a data center somewhere. I mean, you might need low latency from these things to local desktops, which could get expensive if you want the servers off site. But, in my experience, if you can dump the servers offsite, that is often the best answer at your scale. But sometimes you can't. Personally, before I would depend on a comfort A/C, I would set up venting such that the data center was the same temperature as outside. (read: really big, powerful fans. Several of them. Research "whole house fan") Sure, board those up and run the comfort A/C if you want, but put a thermometer on your pager, and be ready to run down and turn on those fans if the A/C fails. I mean, the problem is that if you design a system without much by way of ventilation, even when it's cold outside the servers will cook themselves if the A/C dies, and I mean, my house A/C doesn't always work. We open a window and turn a fan on and we're okay; but if you are in a room without ventilation, that might not be an option. Most of the time, outside temperature is okay for servers. I mean, even on days in the low 100s; I'm not saying it's good to run servers at that temperature, but it's a lot better than what a room without ventilation will look like when the A/C croaks. Sure, if you go and buy a proper data center A/C with support, the things are designed to deal with this situation; you are paying to go from one or two days of downtime a year on a comfort A/C to one or two days of downtime every ten years on the data center A/C, and that's expensive, but if your servers will cook without the A/C? probably worth it. But, it all depends on where your data center is. I've worked in offices that converted an office to data center; it sucked, 'cause they wouldn't even let me put aluminum foil over the windows, so it was always over temp, and we only had two chest coolers, but the good thing was that we could open nearby doors or windows and run giant fans to cool the place to outside temperatures. If that place didn't have windows and doors that could open, it would have been really harsh. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
