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Server Cooling Solution for Small Business?
An anonymous reader asks: "What cheap yet effective cooling solutions are available for servers for a small business? Keep in mind, I don't mean a small 100 employee business but rather 10 full time employees. The place is based out of an ex-residential unit, outfitted for the business. As with any small business, there wasn't any real consideration for IT needs when the place was built. The organization is getting its first real in-house server and all rooms within the unit are already in use, meaning the server must live nicely in office space, with humans, where the existing switch is. The organization follows a policy of turning off PCs and air-conditioning out of hours and in the Australian summer, the unit easily heats up past 35 degrees Celsius, exceeding the maximum operating ambient temperature for the server. Now, I can convince them of leaving the air-conditioner on, but the humans may not want the room as cool as I want it for the server and it's difficult to ensure that no one has turned it off. Are there any other cheap yet effective cooling solutions for a small business where the budget is extremely limited?"
Portable Air-Conditioner.
Stick the server in it's own closet. Use a portable air-conditioner to cool the room as low as you want. Have the heat exhaust into the rest of the building.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
i run several servers in Panamá, a humid tropical land, with 15 to 20 users (mail, firewall and samba server, + development server) very similar to your server, and just a few extra fans on the server case. the systems run fine, just try to blow some extra air to the hdds, and keep it clean (monthly cleaning).
35 isn't -that- hot, even if it is marginally outside spec. Point a floor fan at it or something if you must. The important thing is to clean the carpet fuzz, dust, wallabys and wombats out of it frequently so the heat sinks can actually work.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
as to cooling it, the answer is Yes.
More practically, you want to seal it off by itself (heavy curtains or folding partitions may be enough), the turn an AC on inside the mini-room, and threaten anyone who turns it off. I went through years of this at a former job, where the U maintained that cooling wasn't infrastructure, so our cluster's cooling was our problem. We used a portable unit for a while (and just vented the heat into the ceiling tiles, so the people above us had a warm floor), but eventually the answer was take over controllable space, and install a Liebert cold-water recirculating unit, as well as having the building airflow modified. Expensive, but we needed that headroom. Your situation is much smaller, so a closet with its own chiller and guaranteed air-circulation should do it. (Presuming, of course, that by 'server' you mean '1 to 2 proc Intel box pulling 500W max', rather than, 'I'm sharing an office with an E10K because we have nowhere else to put it.")
Rule 1 of Offices: the most expensive member sets the temperature
Rule 2 of Offices: the business data is more expensive than even a bunch of employees.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
I live in Australia too. 3 computers I look after are located in an small room. The temperature monitoring software on the computers was warning us that things were getting to hot. So after trying a few different things we settled on putting an air conditioner in the room. This is then set on a timer controller which turns the air conditioner on for several hours, a few times a day to keep the ambient temperature in the room to an acceptable level.
In the winter we don't need to use it air con at all, in fact we are just starting to use it again now that the weather has heated up.
The other thing I have done is set up Motherboard monitor and SNMP Informant - Motherboard Monitor Edition. I then use MRTG to graph the temperature of the motherboard and cpu. With this information you can use it to only turn the air con on when it is really needed.
I've been running servers in my livingroom for years now. Your bigest problem is going to be dust in the fans and cooling fins of the heatsink. Make your server with positive air presure inside to keep the dust bunnies out of the CD/Floppy/USB and Other holes. Use a big filter on the intake fans and change it on a regular basis. I use store bought A/C filters and cut then to fit my cans fan intakes. You can make a bracket to hold the filters or just duct tape them to the case.
Use GOOD FANS(dual ball bearings) AND HEAT SINKS! If you don't know whats good then readup on heatsink design. Don't be fooled by fancy cooling systems. Heat disapation is not a fancy problem. Basic rule is bigger is better. Water cooling is NOT required! It will just leak and make things hard to repair and bring up the cost.
Hard drive fans in the case are a must. Drives get very hot under server system loads. Space you harddrives 1/2 inch apart and blow the fan air thru them. I use a case with 5 CD bays and mount the drives there. Then I put a 12cm fan where the CD cover face plates would have been. Cut and stuff a little hard foam in the space around the fans to seal the case. This configuration leaves room for just one CD/RW drive for backups.
Oh and I've never had a 12cm fan fail; even with the added drag of the filter.
Use a closet to put your server in. Drill 4 or more 4 inch holes in the top of the door and cut a 10x15 inch rectangle in the bottom. Put four 40mm fans blowing out in the top and easy flow filter across the bottom. Change this filter every six months or more as needed. Waaalla! Server closet.
Don't use a window A/C for your closet! You will have condensation problems on your servers! If you must use A/C's to cool; then put the A/C in the window in the room the closet is in. Duct tape the switch on or super glue it. Put a big sign on it that tells of the last person that turned it off and how he's now flipping burgers at Mc Donalds!
With a little thought and crafting work you can have very reliable servers made with (as my friend put it) "junk computer parts."
Good luck...
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
I was thinking the same thing. A restaurant near us has a large fan for the kitchen that sticks out the side wall. I was thinking that could work in our server room. Set it with a thermostat and have it come on when it get too warm.
Honestly I really don't see the problem. For a small company run out of an old house we are talking about just one or two servers max.
I would suggest they spend a little extra money and get a good Intel or AMD server that support the vanderpool or pacifica.
Put Xen on it and use virtualization to divide it into as many virtual servers as you want. Within reason that is.
The new systems don't put out that much heat.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I live in Brisbane, Australia - it can get a bit warm here in Summer. During the summer of 2004, on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd of Feburary, it sustained at 41 and 42 degrees centigrade on those 2 days respectively. Don't ask why I remember the dates - I just do. There were 2 PC's in the non air-conditioned part of the house. My brothers and mine. Mine was higher spec'd with more HDD's and "a single case fan". His had no case fan. His would freeze after running for 30 minutes when the temperature in the room was over about 38 degrees centigrade. Mine worked fine. Air-flow is the key.
I think the best thing to be done is to purcahse a half height rack - with at least one, possibly 2 shelves in it - and place the server/s in that. Make sure the AC is left on and that there is adequate air-flow through the rack and the noise should be OK - as long as the server in question isn't an Enterprise level device. If it is a full rack mount monster - with multiple high speed fans and 15 000 rpm HDD's - then you actually are going to need a dedicated space with dedicated cooling - and some sound proofing.
Just a note on closets - in Australia these are a relatively new idea and are generally referred to as "Built-ins" or "Built in Wardrobes" - and are only really found in bedrooms. Other "closet" like cupboards in a house will be referred to as a "linen cupboard" or "extra storage" or just as a "cupboard". If the "ex-residential unit" referred to in the post is more than about 10 years old, it probably won't have any sort of "built-ins" at all - and if it does - it will proabably be a "linen cupboard" style "closet" with fairly closely spaced shelves from top to bottom. This would required some modification to retro-fit a server and some adequate cooling - thus possibly needing to be restored back to original condition if the property is rented.
Also - the speed of Nework links in Australia generally precludes off-site hosting for "most" systems/applications - a business grade ADSL link running at 1.5MBit/sec (seriously, this is the most you can get in most places that even have DSL) is about $120 a month with 40GB of data include - capped at $999 a month if you exceed the 40GB (5c per MB for excess data). Let's not even discuss a 2Mb/2Mb SHDSL service - they start at about $350 a month and go up rapidly for any decent data allowance - if you happen to be near the 200 or so phone exchanges in the country that have a DSLAM that can do this (or is turned on).