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."

Comments

Re:Damn you Slashdot

[Ava3ar]

a site can be /.'d before a single comment due to the subscribers, damn you paying people

Fuck you you have full blown AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been so many cases of AIDS in recent years that few of us have failed to think about the dangers it poses to ourselves or to someone we know. In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which keeps track of infectious disease around the country, reported the 500,000th case of full-blown AIDS since 1981, the year the disease was first recognized. According to World Health Organization estimates, by the year 2000 some 40 million people worldwide may be infected with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), and those who are infected but show no symptoms will continue to infect others. In light of what you now know about the strategies that enable our bodies to resist illness, it is appropriate to review current information about this plague of the twentieth century.

AIDS, short acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is caused by a retrovirus identified as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A retorvirus is one of a group of RNA viruses that use an infected cellís DNA to reproduce, destroying the host cell's functioning in the process. For many years, retroviruses have been know to cause concern in humans and animals. HIV is one of the first infectious retroviruses to be discovered. Once inside the body, it attacks and destroys the helper T lymphocytes, thereby severely impairing the individuals ability to combat infection. AIDS victims die from a host of opportunistic infections that would pose little threat to individuals with healthy immune systems.

HIV is transmitted through infected blood, semen, or vaginal secretions. A person infected with HIV may be asymptomatic or develop a brief flulike infection, including symptoms of fever, fatigue, headache, and swollen lymph nodes. These symptoms disappear rapidly, however, so that the person is unaware that he or she has contracted a deadly disease and is potentially dangerous to others.

From 2 weeks to a year or longer after the initial infection, the person's immune system reacts to HIV by producing antibodies that are detectable by blood tests. Antibody levels arise initially, but then fall as the immune system gradually begins to falter. For most people, the first sign that they are infected with the virus is the development of chronically enlarge lymph nodes, usually at several sites in the body. Severe fatigue and fever are other common systems.

As the helper T cell population continues to decline, the person moves on to the next level of HIV infection call AIDS-related complex (ARC). The most likely and dramatic visible expression is an extreme weight loss. Contributing to the weight loss is diarrhea, accompanied by a chronic low-grade fever, general fatigue, and a lack of energy. Hairy leukoplakia (white lesions in the mouth), thrush (mouth infection with candida), and night sweats are other symptoms associated with ARC. At this point, the helper T cells are declining rapidly and losing both their ability to secrete lymphokines and to activate some of the nonspecific defense mechanism.

As the disease evolves into full-blown AIDS, the helper T cells are severely weakened and eventually completely destroyed, keeping them from stimulating production of killer T cells and B cells. Without the killer T cells, the system is vulnerable to other viral infections; without the B cells, the system cannot make memory cells or synthesize crucial antibodies. With no ability to synthesize specific antibodies, the entire immune system slips into total chaos. Symptoms at this stage are the same symptoms seen in ARC but intensified; added to them is chronic cough, spots on the skin of the legs, fuzzy speech and in the late stages, dementia.

Once the virus steps up its cellular attacks, the victim is extremely vulnerable to any infection that takes advantage of dysfunctional immune mechanisms. Such pathogens are called opportunistic. (The secondary infections that attack the weaken immune system are what first alerted the medical community to the presence of AIDS. When exotic diseases that were unusual in the general popula

Cooked Books

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks for your patriotic cost-cutting work. FYI, though, with a $2.5T budget (not counting Iraq, covert operations, and other budget lies), some of your fellow agencies are not cutting costs as well as you are. In fact, you're providing cover for those agencies (*cough*Pentagon*cough*) which have produced the $45 TRILLION in debt to which Bush's budgets have committed us. That's a lot of hot air blowing from Capitol Hill, down your neck, along with some actual smoke up some other parts of our anatomy.