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Environmental Concerns for a Server Room?
christian_thoma asks: "My company is currently in the preparation phase for building a huge new manufacturing facility. While reviewing the site plan, I've discovered that there is both a cell phone tower and high voltage lines within 100-150 meters of where the server room is going to be placed. Do I need to be concerned? Are there any special considerations when designing my server room that I need to be aware of? Has anyone else had to deal with a similar situation?"
Good prior planning
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I, for one, avoid using old-fashioned coal-fired Godbout and IMSAI servers in the server room. This keeps the IT operation "clean and green" and prevents global warming.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
No and no. Absolutely not an issue.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
You do have FCC part 15 tags on all of the equipment, right?
The CIA can spy on you using electromagnetic radiation from the powerlines to irratiate your thoughts which can be picked up from the cell tower. A tin foil hat may prevent this.
Seriously... get the server room shielded with wire mesh built into the walls and conductive film on the windows... like a Faraday Cage... then you won't get weird interference problems
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Junk science has shown that these servers will have quadruple the risk of developing cancer.
Make sure to have the company doctor check them out occasionally, although the servers should be aware that the company doctor does not work for them.
Inverse square law means the electromagnetic fields given off by both of those will have dropped right down to negligible amounts over the 100-150meters. You really shouldn't worry about it.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Shield your ethernet cables before sealing them behind drywall. That should be obvious to the installer, but you can never be too sure. Otherwise, it's unlikely that either of those will cause a problem, since they operate at far different frequency ranges.
Your servers are safe. Heck, all that EM will shield them from Tempest snooping.
However, if you have any fillings in your teeth, get them replaced with non-conductive material by a certified herbalist. Or do I mean certifiable?
Ever hear of the Inverse-Square Law? The cell phone on your belt clip pumps more EM into your precious racks (and obviously into you) than that tower.
I don't know why or the exact scenarios, but some of the older UltraSparc processors would have a problem of individual bits flipping in the processor's cache... talk about troubleshooting DB problems, the actual IDs for objects in the DBs changed!
I wouldn't be overly concerned with the RF interference being generated at the site, but you should review the matter.
First, I would suggest that you have the site tested for RF levels. The tests should be fairly inexpensive. From the results you can decide if precautions are required.
You still need to consider future RF issues in case the cellular company decides to upgrade. It would be prudent to have some RF grounding brought into the server room and extend the ground to the racks and cable runs. Well grounded equipment will minimize any RF issues.
Multiple grounding might actually cause issues if there is stray AC from the high voltage. You can check for stray AC by having some ground rods placed at the site and check for AC potentials between the rods. A single low impedance ground is the best solution, but some electrical contractors don't understand the requirements.
Also, the cell tower could easily cause interference with WiFi or other RF equipment. If your new plant is going to depend on low power radio IT connectivity for either the plant or for IT, you should have an interference study done.
machinator omnis sine licentia
So please, yes I'm aware that the effects diminish rapidly...but that doesn't really answer my question.
Our previous building was located just underneath high-voltage power lines. We had to buy laptops and later stand-alone LCD screens because all CRT screens were wobbling due to interference from the power lines...
I'm no electrical expert, so I have no idea how far this effect reaches, but I would be very prudent and try to measure/test the area for interference.
Inverse-square law not withstanding you're gonna have more noise floating around then other locations will. This won't be so much an issue in the server room as much as on long cable runs, or runs at just the right (wrong) angle. And yes, as irrationial as they may be folks likes and dislikes need to be taken into account.
Advice?
- Make sure your server room is getting clean power. Same for all of your closets. As this is a new facility that should've been a no-brainer by the electrical engineers but double check on the planning and then see to it that there are tests made to confirm. The lines and tower are probably swamped out by the junk coming off the manufacturing equipment but you don't want any of that, whatever the source, giving you gremlins.
- Likewise make sure all of your grounds are good and everything is properly shielded. That doesn't mean putting screening over every surface, just regular testing of electrical outlets and network drops. Invest in the proper test equipment and put this on your maintenance schedule, prioritize it in your trouble-shooting procedures, doing so should keep on top of any potential problems.
- Keep an eye on your neighbors. Seriously, if something goes wonky for them it might spill over to you. Have a standing order with the security crew that all activity regarding the tower & lines is to be noted and reports copied to IS. That way you folks can correlate any problems.
- As others have noted, wireless might take a hit. Before doing any mission critical wireless planning wait until the buildings are done, all of the equipment installed, and everything running. Only once the plant is in regular operation is it worthwhile to get a competent site survey done for deploying wireless. (Note: "Mission critical": The access points for the conference rooms and mahogany row are conveniences where iffy behavior is acceptable. Go ahead and roll those out as part of the move-in, they'll provide you with valuable environmental data should you later want to commit to wireless technologies.)
- However unreasonable its true most folks don't like being near high voltage lines. It could be the scale, the humming, suspicion of ill effects, it doesn't matter don't try and fight it. Don't bother putting the picnic tables near the lines, don't ask folks to park near 'em if you can avoid it, etc. Indeed the side of the property closest to the tower and lines is probably the best place to put tractor trailers, storage areas, and other unpopular activities.
Yeah, your cellphones on average put out more energy into your local environment then the tower and lines do. However the tower and lines are there 24/7, they're big and ultimately pretty powerful, and strange interactions do sometimes occur. Its legitimate to undertake a little proactive planning and just make extra sure electrical systems are properly configured, cable segments are well shielded and grounded, etc.Lose sleep over any of this? No. Make sure you do everything right? Extra-yes.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Build youself a hugeass induction coil and suck the power right out of the air! Free electricity for your servers!
The book The Practice of System and Network Administration has a few excelent chapters covering everything you need to think about when planning a data center. It's a great book.
Gustavo.
Great oogly-moogly, I own this book...well, I'll be danged Chapter 17, p. 325. THANK YOU (somebody mod him +1 for me please)
That means that when you replace the out dated equipment, the new servers will require more power and cooling than the older equipment. Follow Moore's law (double X every 18 months) and you can't go wrong.
I only know this, as it what happened to us.
P.S. The weight will increase too.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Sun will go to major pains to keep from changing out the processors -- they'll even strip out the center plane on a 4500, just so they don't have to change out the processors.
I've heard rumors that you have to sign an NDA to get the processors replaced, as they don't want people knowing that it's a processor problem. [but of course, it's one of those 'friend of a friend' type situations, so take that with a grain of salt].
I've seen more that one 4500 go flaky for no apparent reason -- I had gotten out of the Sun shop I was in before I had any significant experience with the x800 line.
Oh -- but Sun does have at least one book on data center design, and some documents online
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
We have one sprinkler directly on top of the perforated server cage in the smallish computer room. The whole office's sprinklers are interconnected, so if theres a fire in the kitchen,we're down till IBM brings us new machines. If our disks go bad too, I'll have to start browsing dice.com again.
Considering one full days downtime will cost us an estimated 80,000 $$$, the sprinklers have been high on my priority list to push for change.
I dont think other companies on our street are in less hazard. Someone wardrove the street and could browse NetBIOS shares.
insert into invoice_payable values ('myname','address',9000.00,USD,'urgent');
This wont work against MY OpenBSD firewall.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
What a waste of an Ask Slashdot. You idiot.
I've got a Synchrotron on the other side of the road from my new data center. I know I'll be wishing I had put more shielding in place at some point although I don't know how noisy its going to be.
One thing to consider for small data centers (mine holds 3 racks) is that modern building construction assumes that the walls go where they build them and the fancy floor gets adjusted to the walls. That turns out to be very nasty when your in a room with 4x7 computer room tiles that are exactly the same size and don't cut easy. In large data centers you will find that you can't remove most of the tiles around the edges of the walls since they were all special cut. Our solution was to make sure the floor supports and a few tiles were in place before two of the walls went up.
"Are there any special considerations when designing my server room that I need to be aware of?"
Um, yes. If, say, your servers are maintained by a third party, they'll have all sorts of environmental requirements (security, hookup to BMS fire alarm, aircon of sufficient quality/performance/with a good maintenance contract) etc etc. Likewise, if your business is insured against the costs (both material and in terms of lost productivity) of damage, then the insurers will want to know you're not keeping the boxes in a broom cupboard under the hot water pipes.
If not, then I guess it depends if you want to keep your job should the balloon go up.
On our site we put them above the water table, for example.
If you have a *really* crappy environment and can't do the building work, you can buy something like a Lampertz cabinet: basically a large bombproof/radiation proof/waterproof safe that surrounds your racks.
If you're not sure, get someone who specialises in this to do the work.
It's no secret, UltraSparc II's at 400 and 450 MHz had bad cache modules. Initially Sun blamed it on cellphones, particularly Nextel's because they do such a good job of creating sympathetic noise in unshielded speakers. Eventually enough info came to light and Sun was able to find the real problem. They instituted a program to replace all effected modules if requested. I know because Cisco had a LOT of them and it became routine to replace them during any scheduled downtime on affected systems whether there had been any indication of the fault or not.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I normally don't respond to trolls, but I wanted to clarify for the sake of people browsing this thread. The book in question is great on the generals of building a data center; it does not, however, go into detail on what the original Slashdot question was, i.e. cell phone and hvpl proximity.