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Managing Servers In the Frigid Cold
1sockchuck writes "Some data centers are kept as chilly as meat lockers. But IT operations in colder regions face challenges in managing conditions — hence Facebook's to use environmentally controlled trucks to make deliveries to its new data center in Sweden, which is located on the edge of the Arctic Circle. The problem is the temperature change in transporting gear. 'A rapid rate of change (in temperature) can create condensation on the electronics, and that's no good,' said Facebook's Frank Frankovsky."
This isn't anything new, anytime you take something from the extreme cold and bring it inside you risk condensation. This is usually dealt with by simply letting something sit at room temperature for several hours before powering it on.
In the middle of January if you take a freezing cold delivery and power it on right away and fry your new (XXXXXX) you deserve to void your warranty. There is no excuse for stupidity. Why is this on slashdot as news?
This is nothing--years ago I deployed PCs at Alaskan oilfield installations. Extreme cold makes everything brittle, kept having problems with things like cracked motherboards, just from setting the PC on a desk.
Sincerely, Finland.
Been pretty shitty weather all summer here. Oh and I remember vividly when we were kids and we were coming down from a family trip in the winter, we couldn't play the new games we had bought before the next morning since the 8mhz bugger wouldn't boot until the "computer room"(porch thingy, badly insulated) heated up. And many many times we were playing games with our winter jackets on, maybe our parents were trying to discourage from being such nerds but they failed.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Why would you need an "environmentally controlled truck"? What about just using some basic insulation? Shipping in cardboard boxes would slow the temperature change near the electronics enough to prevent condensation.
Transport all non-moving parts (everything except hard drives, fans, optical drives) in mineral oil. Completely avoids condensation problem.
Cold drive bearings don't want to spin up / SMART fail from drive motor overcurrent.
Happens to cooling fans too. Fan can't spin so equipment overheats.
I've never knowingly had a voice coil bearing seize up, which is interesting because its probably the lowest power actuator in the system yet probably the highest precision / smallest tolerances.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Back in the day, I had to go to my data center when it was around 100 degrees out side so I was of course in shorts, t-shirt and sandals. I was there for 18 hours. Temperature inside was like 50 degrees. Yeah, that doesn't seem cold, but after 18 hours I felt like I had hypothermia.
http://www.lpsind.com/SilicaGelDesiccant.htm
But Steve obviously does not work there anymore, which makes it again a possibility that everyone there actually is homosexual.
But Steve obviously does not work there anymore, which makes it again a possibility that everyone there actually is homosexual.
While highly unlikely, given the sheer number of people working there, I have to say it is a possibility. Very very slim chances but hey, if that makes you happy...
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Northern Sweden is hardly a place for "extreme cold" - transporting equipment like that is simply waste of resources, just as many posters have already pointed out. Let the hardware warm up before unpacking and no condensation.
The main problem compared to hot climate data centers is the climate difference between summer and winter. During the summer, the weather can be almost tropical, while in winter it gets cold. This puts some pressure on cooling equipment. Cold in itself is not an big deal, although it helps a lot in cooling equipment emergencies when plenty of cold air is available - care has to be taken to avoid heat shock if raw winter air is used for cooling.
A few years back while doing Tier 2 level support for a major Canadian telco, I started seeing overheating alarms from some Nokia DSLAM's. The odd thing was that it was -40C outside at the time. It turns out the fan's on these DSLAM's froze solid and the devices thought they where overheating and throwing alams left right and centre. We had to put a tarp over them with a heater during the winter to make sure they kept going.
Today I learned that a rapid rate of change (in temperature) can create condensation on the electronics, and that's no good.
Thanks slashdot! I knew I was really smart before, but now I feel totally smart! lol wut? I'm going to head over to slashdot B I to get the latest news on business intelligence so that I can maximize my status quo.
Move to Texas.
It wouldn't take long for a bundle of twigs to burn in hell...
Luleå has to have one of the most extreme temperature ranges anywhere. Summer temp is quite consistently 15-20C with occasional peaks of 30C and winter temp is zero to 40C below. So the range is nearly 90C (130F)! This of course seasonal variation and not "rapid change" so data centers should not be affected by this. The fastest changes there are probably in winter when the temperature in rare cases can go from -40 (and zero humidity) to zero (and damp) in a day or two. That kind of change, especially the other way round, could mean trouble (condensation in air in/outlets etc.)
In fact, if google just wanted cold/dry climate, there has to be better locations. Northern sweden is mild, and has quite warm summers. Arctic inland climate further from the gulf stream atlantic would be more logical. Border between Russia and Finland for example. But there are probably logistical reasons (huge cargo airport, good port, good roads, railroads, lots of good technical people, ridiculous backbone connection) that placed the datacenter there.
Plastic bags. Look into it. You can even reuse them if you're so anal-retentively inclined.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
summer storms can drop the temperature 10-30F in 1 hour or less.
being dense appears to come naturally for you
Just like sucking 3 cocks at once for you.
Steve did have children, and seemed happily married to a woman till the end.
Um... So? What does that have to do with his sexual orientation? There are plenty of homosexuals with heterosexual marriages and children.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Homo = one
What they did was work with frozen foods (shipping them all over the country in frozen trucks, trains, etc./et al) - the warehouse was a "Blast Freezer" (so cold you'd die if you didn't have proper clothing, and not many skinny guys could last through the job - especially considering it was in Atlanta Georgia for the home office, which is hot)).
The PC's that were on the forklifts ran DOS (this was back circa 1995-1996) & had INSULATION in a "cold weather hardened case" on them (these were used for your std. "parts picking inventory system" basically, using barcode scanning).
That was so they did not TOTALLY "got nuts" due to said extreme cold (so cold it made your nosehair freeze), and keep running.
* It used the actual heat generated by the machine itself to keep it from dying from what I understood.
APK
P.S.=> Those things kept on & on too, I never heard of one failing... then, from what I remember also, they never came out of the warehouse (unless they needed work)...apk
Every time you move something from a cold place in to a warmer one (higher humidity in the air implicit, since higher temperature means higher point of saturation)
Actually that is not implicit. Up here in the frozen wastes of central Alberta in the winter the indoor humidity drops to incredibly low values of 10-20% because there is no moisture in the outside air because it is at -40C and even then has low humidity. This means that condensation is never really a problem - you might get a bit of it but it very quickly evaporates because of the incredibly low humidity inside. In fact the humidity gets so low that our data centre has a humidifier to bump it up to the safe operating range of machines.
Conversely in the UK where there is no extreme cold weather (yes I know the beeb goes nuts if London drops below -5C but sorry, that doesn't count!) but lots of humidity. As a kid I used to have far more problems with my glasses fogging up when I came inside during the winter that I do in Canada.
What about the use of conformal coating on the motherboards? This would help mitigate the effects of condensing humidity. One of the issues would be that repair of the board becomes difficult, especially if the conformal coating is thick, but I don't think most people are repairing motherboards these days. They probably just buy a new one.
Circuits must be specifically designed and qualified for low temperature operation. Common low-cost ceramic capacitor dielectrics (Z5U) are rated only to +15C and are useless by 0C. Y5P/Y5V are rated to -30C. X5R / X7R will get you to -55C. Aluminum electrolytics are useless at low temperature; tantalum is required.
Yeah.... and? What's your problem with homosexuals?
Then it would have been well-known in that area already. I have been living in that area earlier and the issue of low temperatures and condensation was not one of the major concerns.
What people tends to forget is that when the outdoor temperature goes down the relative humidity indoors also drops considerably and that means that the condensation issues aren't that big. And the most sensitive parts are the hard disks, just wait to unpack them from the ESD bag until they have been up to room temperature. Same for other media transported - keep them in their innermost packaging until they are up to room temp, which takes an hour at most.
What's really a big problem in that climate is actually ESD issues caused by static electricity.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It used a hosts file filter list to block the known cold ranges and redirect them somewhere else. Then redirected the heat to 127.0.0.1 using the hosts file.
"It used a hosts file filter list to block the known cold ranges and redirect them somewhere else. Then redirected the heat to 127.0.0.1 using the hosts file." - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07, @09:53AM (#40904811)
Wrong - see subject line above, & this: Since custom HOSTS files block off adbanner servers (who are a HUGE cpu killer in scripts, sometimes even infected ones!), and between hosts and noscript?
Well... you are NOT eating up as much parsing time on the CPU
(Especially string parse which is VERY CPU intensive, and script processing)
So - & thus, you eat less electricity, cpu cycles, AND generate less heat!
BONUS!
By using custom hosts files, You also:
---
1.) Go faster (since you can hardcode in your fav sites which accesses locally, far faster than calling out to remote DNS servers roundtrip, which MAY be redirected poisoned... AND, by blocking out banner ads - dual bonus!) - saving you money too, for bandwidth/speed you pay for: Triple bonus!
2.) Go safer (blocking out both maliciously scripted infested banner ads, AND, known sites/servers/hosts-domains that serve them up plus malware or other malicious content exploits), & more reliably online (less chance of DNS redirect poisoning here))
3.) More "anonymously" to an extent (vs. DNS request logs).
---
& more... see details, in depth, below!
AND?
For a custom hosts file generating program, both 32 & 64-bit? Well - I wrote one here:
http://securemecca.com/public/APKHostsFileInstaller/2012_06_01/APKHostsFileEngineInstaller32_64bit.exe.zip
(You simply extract its files to ANY folder you like (usually one you create for it, doesn't matter where, but you MUST run it as administrator (simple & the "read me" tab shows how easy THAT is to do))
* The malwarebytes/hpHosts site admin another person/site hosting it (Mr. Steven Burn, a competent coder in his own right), said it's "excellent" in fact and has seen its code too...
(Write him yourselves should anyone doubt any of this -> services@it-mate.co.uk , or see his site @ http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download )
A Mr. Henry Hertz Hobbitt of securemecca.org &/or hostsfile.org can also verify that this program is safe - write him @ -> hhhobbit@securemecca.com
It'll be releasing soon to sites that host 64-bit programs (even though it also has a 32-bit model, line for line the same code except for 32 in place of 64 in its help file & user interface)!
What's it do for you?
It's a custom hosts file mgt. program that does the following for end users (Calling it "APK Hosts File Engine 5.0++") after it obtains custom hosts file data from 12 of the reputable & reliable sources listed below:
---
1.) Offers massively noticeable increased speed for websurfing via blocking adbanners
2.) Offers increased speed for users fav. sites by hardcoding them into the hosts file for faster IP address-to-host/domain name resolutions (which sites RARELY change their hosting providers, e.g.-> of 250 I do, only 6 have changed since 2006 - & when sites do because they found a less costly hosting provider? Then, they either email notify members, put up warnings on their pages, & do IP warnings & redirectors onto the former IP address range to protect vs. the unscrupulous criminal bidding on that range to buy it to steal from users of say, online banking or shopping sites).
3.) Better "Layered-Security"/"Defense-In-Depth" via blocking host-domain based attacks by KNOWN bad sites-servers that are known to do so (which IS, by far, the majority of what's used by both users (hence the existence of the faulty but for most part working DNS system), AND even by malware make
Again, you are correlating marriage and sexual attraction. Homosexuals can and do marry people of the opposite sex, and have children with them. That doesn't necessarily mean they are in any way attracted to the opposite sex. All that it means is that, for whatever reason, they are willing to cover up their gender preference with a more socially acceptable relationship.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!