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A Micro-A/C for a Server Closet?
DiZNoG asks: "I work from home and run two businesses from there. Sick of server and switch noise in my home office, I've been thinking of taking an old hallway closet that used to house the furnace (since moved) and turning it into a literal server closet for my various servers and networking gear. I have 4 servers and various networking gear and even a system for getting everything in and accessible worked out. Bonus, the room already has power and is perfect placement for my access point (already secured, thank you!) However, I am running into problems finding a small air conditioner for the size of room. It's literally 15 sq. ft. and maybe 100-125 cubic feet total. By my estimates that's something on the order of 150-250 BTUs (or less) with the hardware. Does anyone on Slashdot know of micro A/C units to keep such a small area in server friendly temperature efficiently? I did see this homebrew action, but I'm looking for much less maintenance."
Yes but what happens to those poor servers when the real heater kicks on during those winter months and cooks the whole closet? You would most certainly need to have a one-way vent of sorts.
Of course, what if the heat stays on for a long enough period of time, and the closet can't vent... or perhaps over time, each time the furnace fires up and shuts down, the closet warms up 1 degree or so... could be disaster.
Better to just flat out vent it to a storage room or somewhere that is can freely blow, and feed cooler in from another source.
Wouldn't using a laptop largely defeat the purpose of having a server closet? ;)
I live in Florida and have a hallway closet serving as a server closet. Currently it has one PC (333 MHz AMD minitower with 4 HDs), my DSL modem, a router, and an access point. In the past it also had a 500 MHz Compaq Deskpro EN SFF (85W PS, I think) and an ancient 120 MHz full-size Compaq Deskpro.
I keep the house at 75-80 degrees, the closet has louvered doors, and heat has almost never been a problem. I ran into an issue once when something was wrong on the AMD and it would go to 100% CPU long enough to set off the alarm on the ASUS motherboard, but other than that, all 1/2/3 machines (at various times) have been humming along for over 3 years.
As for you, you might want to tap into the house's main AC and run a little 2-4" pipe for a bit of cooling, but that's as far as I'd go. I've had to replace a fan or two along the way, and one HD died, but that was an old (at the time) 6.8 GB IDE drive that probably had no business being in a 24/7/365 machine in the first place, so heat probably wasn't even the cause of that anyway. I haven't seen any more failures in that closet than I have with any other machine anywhere else in the house.
Laws of thermodynamics dictate that you can't put a window unit in there or anything (assuming this closet is not against an exterior wall)--that would heat up the rest of the house. IF you need cooling, run a duct from your existing AC. If you don't have AC at all, then a couple 6"-8" fans should move enough air. Assuming you don't have an airtight closet (louvered doors highly recommended!) you could have one or two fans drawing air up through the closet and exhausting into the attic.
Basically, think of the whole closet as being one giant computer case and plumb accordingly. And of course it wouldn't hurt to hit Radio Shack for a $20 digital indoor/outdoor thermometer to keep an eye on things.
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Conversion factor: 1 KWH = 3412 BTU
Multiplying the average (not peak) wattage by 3.4 will get the BTU's per hour of cooling capacity.
That will give you the average cooling requirement, which will be exceeded when the system load increases, or when the systems are upgraded, etc.
Go with the peak load, or bad things will happen.
A/C units do have thermostats, you don't want to run it at its maximum capacity 100% of the time.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
For some reason? Air Conditioners also do dehumidification, so you're just getting extra humidity from the hallway of course.