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Keeping a Data Center Cool on the Cheap
jedimaud writes "You've heard of bubble wrap, and the boy in the bubble -- now, here's a datacenter in a bubble. I work for a government agency that, like most, is trying to cut back some costs, and one of those costs is a REAL datacenter. So, we decided to wrap the whole thing in plastic (including two 1.5 ton ACs). The room hovers about 83 degrees, however, the racks in the bubble (ok, more like a termite tent) stay about 10 degree cooler. Here's some pics to check it out."
Clean dry cold air. Self sufficient oil. Great physical security
First off, a "real" data center needs a little more than 1.5 Tons of cooling
I'm pretty sure 3 (2x1.5) is considered a little more than 1.5 but perhaps I'm not using "real" math.
Your 3 computers must be built with awful components. At my former employer we were keeping the entire server room cool with a $200 window air conditioner. The server room had 2 HP servers, a handful of 1U IBM x336 servers, 3 workstations, 2 racks of networking equipment, and a variety of other smaller devices. The window unit ran about once an hour for 5 minutes in 85 degree weather and kept the room sufficiently cool.
The key is to move your UPS out of the temperature controlled area, since that's the biggest source of heat in most server rooms. Then we were gradually replacing the multitude of old HP servers with the IBM servers. Each IBM could to the work of 4 HP's easily, and ran much cooler than a single HP.
Your 3 computers must be running 1000+ watt power supplies, multiple 6800 vid cards, and a ton of hard drives if your home a/c is having trouble cooling that room.
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...like we do.
25 watts per CPU, 50 watts per system.
Period.
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Having recently faced a similar problem (though on a much smaller scale), we came up with almost the same solution.
As one suggestion, though, cardboard (in 4x8ft sheets) proved a lot easier to work with than plastic sheets. For starters, the plastic requires attachment at the ceiling, and will eventually come loose under its own weight; cardboard, with a single fold in the sheet, will stand upright and support its own weight for years, assuming not too high of a humidity level. For another, cardboard won't flap around and potentially block air intakes nearly so easily as plastic will.
Believe it or not, though, what we found the most effective way to make use of barely adequate AC - Don't treat the room as a closed system. You've basically used the plastic sheets to build giant chimneys - Now take advantage of that fact, and along with a high volume fan above each rack, just exhaust the air at the top outside rather than recycle it back into the room... Think of it this way... You spec your cooling to work to perhaps 110F ambient, right? At the top of a full rack, with 50-60F going in the bottom, you probably have 120-130F going out the top. Does it take more work to cool 130F, or 110F, back to 50F? Not to mention, your normal ambient shouldn't come anywhere near 110F...
I don't get all of the attacks about this not being a "real datacenter." Sure, I wouldn't want any of my things run from his DC, but he did say that it was a government datacenter on a budget... Surely all of us have dealt with cheap government / school people at some time who refuse to put money where its needed.
Scott Swezey
I've thought about alternate methods for keeping computers cool, and I started to wonder about just feeding cold air directly into the intake of the computer itself, rather than trying to surround the whole computer with cold air. Then the computer's hot air output is not polluting your cold air with hot.
What I had in mind is a sort of a system that would supply cold air through ducts (similar to the tubes that are used for hot air exhaust on a clothes dryer) at positive pressure. It'd then be a matter of just hooking these up to your fan intakes on the computer, and you'd have very cold air flowing straight through the system.
One could easily supply the required cold air through ducts by putting a big cardboard box (or wooden box, etc., etc.) on the front of a window unit, then cutting holes and attaching hoses where required.
I've wondered if anyone has tried something like this. The disadvantage is that you have to run new ducts every time you install a piece of new equipment. The advantage is that the computers are being fed with cold air directly after it passes through the air conditioner's evaporator coil while it's still cold, instead of reaching the computers after it has had a chance to mix with hot air in the room. Kind of like standing right under the A/C vent when you go indoors on a really hot summer day.
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Sorry, I don't understand. Are you saying there's a server room with a (non pentium) heater going into it? I've never seen anything like that. I would imagine that if it's not on a seperate zone (ie it's own thermostat) you could just block the airflow from the furnace to that room and have an HVAC guy rebalance the airflow to other vents in the zone.
But, I've never seen a room intended for servers, that had an actual furnace attached to it.
Other posters on this thread have suggested that having datacenters in Siberia or Alaska might be a good idea. This is not new. Alaska advertises several secure datacenters that were started with public bonds. Uninteruptible power takes on a whole new meaning when you're within pipeline distance of a natural gas field and wire distance of a coal plant. And at least for the one that I read about the entire facility was normally heated from the heat stripped off the server spaces by airconditioning (heat pumps). Connecting a heater to a server room would be a bad idea imo.