Crowdsourcing Ventilation Ideas

[WaistDeepGroomers]

How did all you clowns look past riser's comment? Listen to the man and at least offload the storage to Amazon. This assumes you've got good pipe to the world. No worry about backups, data integrity, capital expenses. Price gets cheaper every year. For longer term/seldom accessed data, consider Amazon Glacier service. Too cheap to mention.

Great to know, but our pipe BLOWS. Internet in the area generally is on that level. However, there is fiber going down the main road in front of the office, so I pray to the gods that we link up with that this summer. Then hopefully this problem resolves itself, and we can just stock the closet full of 2019 DPS's and Dynafits .

[spook]

http://www.tjernlund.com/airshare_ventilation.htm



The simple answer to this is to contact your local HVAC professional.

- I see someone posted that already. Something to think about, and I'm sure your local fire code will dictate, is what happens in the event of a fire? If the server catches on fire, potentially you can be dumping toxic smoke downstairs.

I ran into this issue with a residential application.

Also, your server room (that presumably holds lots of important data) is potentially overheating and spending a couple of thousand on a solution is blowing the budget? Penny wise, pound foolish?

lonely planet is planning to outsource to india

[spook]

No way... tech talk is for GEAR ONLY so this thread is appropriately located.



Har har.



We have one in the back as the temporary solution.

Lesson learned it seems is SPEND THE REAL MONEY. I get a pittance for my own budget so looking at $7K for a single purchase scared me off... but then again, I'm not the guy invoicing for heli time here.

fire the gimp for fucking up the setup (right) and use her stipend to resolve your closet.

[spook]

p.s. lonely planet said to shut up about your budget or they can build a bigger closet

[powtario]

p.s. lonely planet said to shut up about your budget or they can build a bigger closet

Lulz

Move em to the basement.

[Stikki]

What Would Daniel Do?

[Danno]

Put a case of peppermint patties in there. Problem solved.

genius

[Pow4Brains]

An easy solution but you have to plumb in a drain or drain the pan daily. Not cheap for what you get:

http://movincool.com/applications/computer-cooling

This thread brings the funnehz. But this is what you should do. Craigslist for ~$1000

[guroo270]

This assumes you've got good pipe to the world. No worry about backups, data integrity, capital expenses.

I've got good pipe for the world... but no one here believes my stories... sniff, sniff.

I'll let Taylor know you all say hi.

[Alaskan Rover]

I'm presuming those server racks are for your vid editing. WTF?? Did Advres set that up for you??

Easiest....move those servers downstairs (there's got to be a closet somewhere down there with an exterior wall...or like someone mentioned...a basement would be even better. if you have one).

You can then run your OWN fiber optic I/O cabling down to them. This makes sense, since you say you're thinking of hooking up to main trunk fiber optics down the road anyway.

You need an exterior wall for the server room coz yer going to be running a simple active vent to the outside that is thermo-regulated. Problem solved.

Venting the server heat to a human work area would NOT be good, as someone mentioned, in the unlikely event of a server fire. (That CAN happen,though). There is a host of caustic compounds in server equipment that you don't even want to know about!

EDIT: Pertaining to the active exterior vent, you can even switch the fan blades around (or switch the wiring on the motor??) twice a year so it's mostly pulling outside cold air in the winter, and exhausting hot air in the summer...assuming global warming doesn't kick yer patooty.

Try it without individual server chassis ducting at first, then if you find you need STILL more cooling, call a HVAC guy and have him put in a simple ducting manifold on the ceiling (they're cheap....just a long sheetmetal box with duct holes metal strapped to the ceiling), then just send individual flexible ducting to each server chassis fan. Sounds complex, but it's actually quite simple and inexpensive HVAC work.

Damn...now I'm REALLY going to bed!!!!

[Tuckerman]

I'm presuming those server racks are for your vid editing. WTF?? Did Advres set that up for you??

Easiest....move those servers downstairs (there's got to be a closet somewhere down there with an exterior wall...or like someone mentioned...a basement would be even better. if you have one).

Normally we do not put data rooms in a basement because of flooding, water leaking from above, humidity etc..... The Amazon idea is a great one if you have a reliable "pipe" and power at your location. For me in central NH we have interruptions due to weather on occasion and when it happens my users can still work because of the local storage, large batteries and on demand generators.

[WaistDeepGroomers]

I'm presuming those server racks are for your vid editing. WTF?? Did Advres set that up for you??

Easiest....move those servers downstairs (there's got to be a closet somewhere down there with an exterior wall...or like someone mentioned...a basement would be even better. if you have one).

You can then run your OWN fiber optic I/O cabling down to them. This makes sense, since you say you're thinking of hooking up to main trunk fiber optics down the road anyway.

You need an exterior wall for the server room coz yer going to be running a simple active vent to the outside that is thermo-regulated. Problem solved.

Venting the server heat to a human work area would NOT be good, as someone mentioned, in the unlikely event of a server fire. (That CAN happen,though). There is a host of caustic compounds in server equipment that you don't even want to know about!

EDIT: Pertaining to the active exterior vent, you can even switch the fan blades around (or switch the wiring on the motor??) twice a year so it's mostly pulling outside cold air in the winter, and exhausting hot air in the summer...assuming global warming doesn't kick yer patooty.

Try it without individual server chassis ducting at first, then if you find you need STILL more cooling, call a HVAC guy and have him put in a simple ducting manifold on the ceiling (they're cheap....just a long sheetmetal box with duct holes metal strapped to the ceiling), then just send individual flexible ducting to each server chassis fan. Sounds complex, but it's actually quite simple and inexpensive HVAC work.

Damn...now I'm REALLY going to bed!!!!

Great idea. If we were able to get creative we do have potential spaces for that downstairs. Appreciate the insight from knowledgeable HVAC mags.

[guroo270]

Great idea. If we were able to get creative we do have potential spaces for that downstairs. Appreciate the insight from knowledgeable fry cook mags.

FIFY......

[iscariot]

If your servers were cooler would the search function start working ?

No. But the tags would.

[riser4]

So with these suggestions for direct and forced inletting of outside cold winter air onto hot objects, I still can't get past the fact that that's a bad idea. Tell me why you won't end up with fried electronics?

[jgb@etree]

Only read a couple of the suggestions on page 1, but the outside air idea isn't that great. One of the carefully controlled variables in a data center (besides temp) is humidity.

A self contained rack as someone already suggested is probably the best bang for your buck - even though it isn't cheap. I honestly can't imagine that so little equipment is generating such a significant heat load though...

The first step would be calculating the energy consumption/heat production, and once that is known you can actually start looking at solutions.

If you're really that limited, you should look to colo the equipment in a proper data center. If you're looking to do things cheap, perhaps you guys have some friends or friendly businesses that would be willing to rent rack space or share the cost of building out something to better meet your needs?

[PNWbrit]

Only read a couple of the suggestions on page 1, but the outside air idea isn't that great. One of the carefully controlled variables in a data center (besides temp) is humidity.

A self contained rack as someone already suggested is probably the best bang for your buck - even though it isn't cheap. I honestly can't imagine that so little equipment is generating such a significant heat load though...

The first step would be calculating the energy consumption/heat production, and once that is known you can actually start looking at solutions.

If you're really that limited, you should look to colo the equipment in a proper data center. If you're looking to do things cheap, perhaps you guys have some friends or friendly businesses that would be willing to rent rack space or share the cost of building out something to better meet your needs?

^ this.

And these are the servers hosting the data from the shoots. Not forum stuff or love solutions.

You probably want to double check that whoever came up with the "well just leave the door open" policy has some system of backups* in place?

* by which I mean not in the same room.

[neufox47]

Normally we do not put data rooms in a basement because of flooding, water leaking from above, humidity etc..... The Amazon idea is a great one if you have a reliable "pipe" and power at your location. For me in central NH we have interruptions due to weather on occasion and when it happens my users can still work because of the local storage, large batteries and on demand generators.

Your insurance policy may exclude equipment stored in a basement. And what JGB says. He seems to know a bit about computers.

[-Devin-]

If this is for web hosting, use the cloud or colo. It is for company stuff, use the cloud or colo.

[Tye 1on]

fwiw, the first floor is pretty sweet. It's worth dropping by just to check out the dope 3 panel mural by bryan iguchi next to the merch.
As i've proven time and again, i don't know shit about tech.

[danadog]

Surprise no one has commented on what appears to be a stack of back up tapes sitting on the top of rack. For starters start an offsite rotation plan for your tapes or get a couple of larger USB drives and rotate them.

[frozenwater]

I am really embarrassed to have to admit this, and frankly when I threw the chair away I was sure I had dealt with the situation - but from the picture you posted I can see it is still an issue. so you see the chair with the armrests falling apart and the foam sticking out? Yeah - I had one to many and just shat myself silly whilst sitting nude in it. Sorry about that.

[andrew]

I should point out that we have our web stuff colocated. All of this is production storage.

Surprise no one has commented on what appears to be a stack of back up tapes sitting on the top of rack. For starters start an offsite rotation plan for your tapes or get a couple of larger USB drives and rotate them.

Just because you see a stack of tapes there doesn't mean that there aren't copies of them off-site. (yes we have an offsite rotation plan)

How did all you clowns look past riser's comment? Listen to the man and at least offload the storage to Amazon. This assumes you've got good pipe to the world. No worry about backups, data integrity, capital expenses. Price gets cheaper every year. For longer term/seldom accessed data, consider Amazon Glacier service. Too cheap to mention.

Not practical. Those boxes store over 100TB of video content. This is mostly for production's use. Most of our editing bays have GB or 10GB connections to these boxes. The only thing I could see us doing is scrapping our tape backup system for Amazon Glacier, but even that's a stretch with our current office internet connection. Maybe if Google Fiber came to Wilson someday...

[andrew]

Surprise no one has commented on what appears to be a stack of back up tapes sitting on the top of rack. For starters start an offsite rotation plan for your tapes or get a couple of larger USB drives and rotate them.

Also I believe those tapes store 3+ TB each. USB drives would not be much better size-wise and more prone to failure.

[iceman]

What Would Daniel Do?

he would solve the problem, one way or another.