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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.
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
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.
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
Homo = one
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.
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.
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.
Actually, I don't understand why electronics manufacturers don't do this all the time. It would make devices much more resistant against water.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
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!