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Cost-Effective Server Room Air Conditioning?
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Aug 28, 2008 04:21 PM
from the what-was-it-about-penny-wise dept.
from the what-was-it-about-penny-wise dept.
at0mic26 writes "I am currently tasked with finding a cost effective solution to our 30+ degree Celsius server room. The only air conditioning currently provided is a single duct pipe from one of two air conditioner units. I was thinking of stealing air from the second air conditioning unit with some sheet metal work, but it likely will not be sufficient — and would not have tolerance for both AC units being offline for any amount of time. An ideal supplemental portable AC unit is what I am after, however I'm finding it cost prohibitive, with $600+ humidity controlled AC unit, plus 20 amp socket requirement, plus contract work to make a hole in the wall for outside drainage so that the unit does not flood the place. What sort of successful cheaper air conditioning solutions have you come up with?"
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Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
If you posted more information you could get a reasonable answer.
How much space?
How much heat is the equipment giving off?
What is your budget?
At what temperature do you want to operate the room?
How quickly is the heat output of the equipment growing?
How much excess capacity do you need?
If you can't answer those questions you won't get a workable solution.
Parent
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
How far is it from Antarctica?
Parent
HVAC design for Server rooms (Score:5, Informative)
1. What is your total kW consumed in the room.
2. What is the cooling strategy you want to employ?
Passive cooling - use a fan to dump the heat out of the building.
Active cooling - Install an air conditioner with an external condensing unit to dump the heat outside.
Alternate cooling - Dump the heat into the rest of the building during winter in order to saving on heating costs.
Any of these options have good and bad points: expense, humidity control, thermostat control, expense of use, required backups.
3. How is your server room arranged?
Is everything just thrown in the room?
Are you running a hot isle/cold isle environment?
Do you have a raised server floor so you can pump cold air into the bottom of the racks with a ceiling return?
Do the racks have fans to draw air from front to back?
4. What is your current cooling capacity that is dedicated to that room?
The last server room I designed was 500 square feet and consumed roughly 14 kw (28 watts/sf). That is roughly 4 tons of sensible cooling. To purchase a system capable of 4 tons of sensible cooling you will need to purchase a system capable of 5-6 tons of total cooling (Skipping the lecture on Sensible vs Latent vs Total cooling). So have you have just spent $4,000 in materials. Assume your costs will double for installation. Plus another couple of grand to have an actual engineer come in and design a system that will serve your specific needs.
The question is not one of getting the heat off the chips. The heat is making its way into the air just fine. You need to get the heat out of the air (and the room) and out of the building. If your room is exceeding 30C I would assume your racks are easily running 5-10 degrees hotter. That is getting into the range where your equipment is going to start shutting down.
Now onto your problem: $600 budget. Option: Throw a patch of your choice at it. A roll-a-way unit from Wal-mart or target where you can push a heat rejection duct out of the building, for example. This is a patch, not a solution.
Assume you are going to have to pony up $10,000 (USD) to solve this problem.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, you have to keep the temperature above freezing point, otherwise you'll have condensation and humidity problem.
Re:Antarctica (Score:4, Interesting)
And some of the Scandinavian countries are courting datacenters. They have plenty of power from geothermal energy and also have the colder outside air to make cooling more efficient and/or basically free.
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Re:Antarctica (Score:5, Interesting)
And before someone mods me down consider this: The original article lacks info about just everything one would need in order to give reasonable advice: Location (local temperatures), heat output (amount of systems and what kind they are of), size of room and so on. So don't blame me but the guy who failed to articulate his question in a way that one could help him (plus the one putting it on the front page).
Parent
Re:Antarctica (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but if he's running Windows the penguins down there will attack.
Parent
this article blows (Score:5, Insightful)
if you can't afford $600 to cool the room, you need to turn off your servers.
Turn off the servers (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the coward shitteth you not. If you can't afford $600 to cool the room, then consolidate your services onto fewer machines and shut the others off, because they're obviously not making you enough money to be worth running.
If, on the other hand, your boss is a cheapskate then do something like I did before - moved the servers out to my desk and stuck a honking big fan at one side to blow air past them. It had the very big plus side of being obvious to everyone that we had to keep the servers cool, and reminded them every day that the alternative was buying some aircon.
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Re:Turn off the servers (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Turn off the servers (Score:5, Insightful)
It had the very big plus side of being obvious to everyone that we had to keep the servers cool, and reminded them every day that the alternative was buying some aircon.
Trying to re-educate the boss can easily backfire. When my company moved to a new building, ownership neglected to account for I.T. storage and workspace needs (workbench, shelving for spare monitors, PC's, cables, software, manuals, etc.) In protest (not wanting to turn my office into a store room), I stacked the stuff in the hallways of our nice new building. I thought this would give ownership the hint. Instead I got the evil eye from the owners and was outsourced shortly thereafter, despite seven years of service with consistently positive annual reviews.
Many owners/bosses got to where they are by persuading others that they know more than they actually do. When you show them up, you become an obstacle to their ambition and ego. To their thinking, you, not the item they were wrong about, is what needs "fixing".
Your boss refusing to pay $600 for A/C to keep thousands of dollars worth of servers running that (probably) contain data worth tens or even hundreds of thousands, is the real problem. But make sure you have calmly and unchallengingly made this clear to him/her. Use phrases like "The plant would be down X days if the servers fail due to heat. How much would that cost?"
As for trying to rig something up yourself, I wouldn't unless you're a certified HVAC technician. Make that clear to the boss too (again as gently as you can). "I'm not trained in this. I don't want to accidentally take A/C away from anyone else--they have work to do to and we can't afford to lower their productivity." Again, make the costs of the lack of $600 apparent if you can.
Good luck!
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Re:this article blows (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:this article blows (Score:4, Informative)
True, but condensation can't be an issue anyway. The compressor and condenser must be outside, or you'll just have a fancy heater that blows cold air on one side and drips water on the floor. See the laws of thermodynamics for details.
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Re:this article blows (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but condensation can't be an issue anyway. The compressor and condenser must be outside, or you'll just have a fancy heater that blows cold air on one side and drips water on the floor. See the laws of thermodynamics for details.
Nah. What you have is a refrigerator the size of the room. You just need to reject the heat out of the server room, not out of the building necessarily. Putting the condenser inside the building but outside the server room (as would be the case with a window AC unit installed through ain interior wall) will successfully cool the server room. The only downside is that it will increase the total load on the building's main cooling system. This may not be a problem.
Parent
woooooosh (Score:5, Funny)
Dry ice.
Just imagine the theatrics.
Not much you can do (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not much you can do (Score:5, Informative)
Dry ice and a fan?
This is not recommended:
Due to the health risks associated with carbon dioxide exposure, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that average exposure for healthy adults during an eight-hour work day should not exceed 5,000 ppm (0.5%). The maximum safe level for infants, children, the elderly and individuals with cardio-pulmonary health issues is significantly less. For short-term (under ten minutes) exposure, the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and American Conference of Government Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) limit is 30,000 ppm (3%). NIOSH also states that carbon dioxide concentrations exceeding 4% are immediately dangerous to life and health.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You realize that the GP was being facetious, right?
Re:Not much you can do (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Fund raiser and cooling at same time. (Score:4, Funny)
See! Problem solved!
Parent
do what CIHost does (Score:4, Funny)
I toured CIHost's Bedford TX datacenter a few years ago. I saw a boxfan blowing on a bunch of servers and a single power strip plugged into 4 or 5 of those servers that was stretched across to a wall outlet so that it was about 8" off the floor. Pefect to trip over nevermind the walmart quality parts.
tour was over after i saw that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually that's what we did at my last job.
We had a lab packed full of routers/switches/data generators for stress testing. There were issues with hot spots and equipment would randomly fail. Solution? buy a ton of box fans during the off-season at $10 each and place them in the lab to help with hotspots. Works great, and is an inexpensive solution.
Oh, and be sure to have a monitor on the A/C, so when it breaks on a weekend, you won't fry your equip.
Re:do what CIHost does (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Simply this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simply this... (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you have more time than money. If you can't afford the cost to beef up the A/C, you can use some of the techniques used in server room design. If you can, take the cold air and put it directly into your hottest (or most expensive to replace maybe) and add partitions to channel the cold air where it will do the most good. Simply mixing a stream of cold air with the warm room air is not efficient. Put the limited cooling where it does the most good, don't let the cold air mix with the hot air, try to channel the hot air away from everything. As an added thought, and exhaust fan somewhere where it is hottest might do considerable good.
Parent
Simple answer is don't mess around (Score:5, Insightful)
Never try and just make do with the cooling.
The cost of doing it right pales in comparison with not doing it right and something happening.
How many servers? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the room averages a temperature of 86 degrees (sorry I'm american) and I wanted to get it cooler there are a lot of options, however what size room are we talking about and where is it located (room, ground floor, basement?) Lots of different options and choices depending on lots of variables that weren't in the post.
I'm not trying to be a dick, just wondering because cooling a room for a small business like the one I work in that houses all of 3 servers in a room a little larger than your average walk-in closet is a lot different than trying to cool a room with 100 rack mount servers lined up in rows.
A google search though brings up a lot of places like http://www.ptsdcs.com/ [ptsdcs.com] - might just be worthwhile to google for what you need.
insulation (Score:5, Interesting)
You can use standard window units - but the key is insulation - you have to have a very well insulated and sealed room. I built my own server room by adding two additional layers of insulation on to the existing sheetrock (styrofoam with a plastic vinyl 4x8 sheet paneling and then putting silicon on all the seams, then using window units (with a backup unit). I can keep the room at a constant 61 degrees F with two full height racks running with a 8000-12000 btu 220 window unit.
F/OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
...You can use standard window units
Maybe he has a F/OSS shop. Geeze!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's really no reason you need to keep your server room that cold, and you're probably wasting a lot of electricity doing so. You could set that thermostat at least 10 degrees higher and still be fine.
Remove the heat (Score:5, Interesting)
The best idea I've seen is to use enclosed racks, sealed with weatherstripping except for vents at the bottom, and put a duct in the top that leads to an exhaust fan on the roof. Now you're not trying to cool the hot air produced by the servers; you're removing the hot air produced by the servers. Cool air from the already-air-conditioned room will be sucked up through ventilation at the bottom of the rack to keep the servers cool. And since your existing AC doesn't have to cool all that hot air, it should be able to keep the room temperature down to 20C.
Note that this is a long-term solution in terms of lower energy costs. I have no idea what it would cost up front to implement.
Re:Remove the heat (Score:5, Informative)
Your solution *sounds* nice, but in fact, may drive cooling bills UP.
Where I live, it's routinely over 100 degrees (Yup. Ima 'merkin!) outside, today is expected to hit over 110. In order to provide a net savings, the hot air coming out from your server rack has to be even hotter than that, otherwise you're venting 90 degree air outside, then having to compensate for this by cooling down 110 degree air as it gets sucked into your building.
And this problem is exacerbated if there is relatively high humidity. (EG: Florida) Then, not only are you cooling down the air, you're pumping water out of the air, and since OP mentioned water drains and "not flooding" the place, this may well be him.
Now, if you're in an area where high temps are the exception, this may not be much of an issue. But it sure wouldn't work where I live.
OP: Here's what you do: Go to three reputable contractors. Get three quotes for the job. Get references for each contractor. Present this information to your boss.
If he/she can't handle that, you need to move on anyway.
Parent
Holy crap! you're complaining about that cheap? (Score:4, Informative)
You have less than $2500.00 in cost there. Cripes the Libert unit in the server room here cost me $15,000 to have complete. $600 is dirt cheap $2500 is dirt cheap for what you are looking at.
Even if you did the Half-arse way and put 4 window air conditioners in the wall you still need the electrician to run wires.
You'll still come out the same price.
Cost of doing business (Score:5, Informative)
Bite the bullet and get what you need right the first time, because the repair and replace if it isn't done correctly will make $1500 seem like a drop in the bucket...
A Big fan. (Score:4, Interesting)
Really I have been wondering if one of those big fans like I see on some restaurant kitchens would help our server room.
Suck the hot air out and draw cold air from the rest of the building in.
Honestly a better solution is to reduce the heat.
How many servers are you running? How many are old PIV class machines?
How many could you replace with say new low heat Intel or AMD based systems.
Have you looked at building a few BIG boxes with new CPUs and running Zen or VMWare on them. Cut the total number of servers down.
It maybe cheaper to get new more efficient servers than to upgrade the AC. Not to mention the down time you may have when they install the new AC.
You may want to look at making less heat before you spend money on better cooling.
keginator (Score:5, Funny)
Cut a hole in the door to let the cables in and seal around them with that expanding foam stuff in a spray can.
Sounds like that would max out your budget.
Re:keginator (Score:5, Funny)
If the room is that hot with only one server in play, the room is probably the garage of a house, in which case he just needs to follow this simple procedure:
1.) Get a large cardboard box. Poke holes in the top for ventilating hot air out.
2.) Cut a big hole in the side of the box.
3.) Wrap box with insulation.
4.) Put computer in box.
5.) Knock big hole in wall between garage and main house with a sledgehammer.
6.) Place the box with the hole in its side flush against the hole in the wall.
7.) Place box fan in the house, situated to blow air into the hole.
And Voila, cheap cooling. Alternatively, you could put the server in the main house, but seriously, that's just a cheap hack of a solution.
Also, he should ask for his pay in cash in the future, because the company clearly has no operating capital and will probably be bouncing checks very soon.
Parent
Re:keginator (Score:5, Funny)
I remember now, Andy Samberg did a how-to video about this on SNL.
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There's nothing you can do except open the windows (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're talking about concern over $600 price points, then all is lost. It sounds like you don't have the money to provide proper A/C to a residential home much less a commercial server room. I suggest you look into co-locating your servers to a real data center and pay a monthly fee. You'll have lower up front costs and your PHB probably isn't smart enough to recognize the long-term implications.
Good luck.
Can't just add ductwork (Score:4, Informative)
In your posting you talked about adding ducts to steal A/C from a second unit. To work decently you would need to not only add a new output duct 'run', but also a new return 'run' (that is, unless the 2 units share a network of return ducting).
Do it right (Score:3, Informative)
What sort of sucessful cheaper air coniditoning solutions have you come up with?
You've already found the cheap option. Your best bet is to not skimp (unless you like cooking hardware, assuming a reasonable growth rate in computing power under your care) though some of the steps you can take (e.g. hot/cold aisles) are really just rearranging your existing kit and adding some sheet metal work. But that doesn't allow you to skimp on getting adequate cooling. (If you want to know what "adequate cooling" is, ask a real expert; the answer depends on lots of facts you've not revealed.)
Be aware that in large datacenters, the cost of keeping them cool will usually dominate. Really. Be prepared to be your A/C salesman's good customer...
What are you really trying to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're trying to make the actual server room a more pleasant place to be, you really do need to look into additional A/C capacity, and that's just not gonna be cheap.
But if all you're trying to do is keep your servers from overheating, there may be other ways of doing this. It could involve dedicated A/C units, but needn't necessarily. Non-A/C options include installing fans (not Wal-Mart box fans, something more permanent; talk to a local HVAC contractor), opening windows, installing specialized vent ducts, etc.
Either way, you're probably going to want to get HVAC in there. Proper cooling for computers, especially servers, is something like proper insurance for driving a car: the question isn't whether you can afford it, it's whether you can afford not to have it.
Here's a tool to help you out (Score:3, Informative)
OK, here's a way to approach the problem.
APC sells racks with integrated cooling. [apc.com] They have an online configurator program. Run the configurator, fill in your info, and you'll get a rack design.
Try changing the "watts per rack" number. Watch what happens as the configurator adds air conditioning units and fans. Note that as the power density goes up, the cost goes way up.
This is where they start to ask questions like "Do we really need a Web 2.0 web site?" Now you're starting to get the picture.
I'm not partticularly recommending APC. They just happen to have a useful online tool, one which can give you something to take to your bosses to give them a sense of the costs as you add more equipment to a rack.
Dual Air Conditioning Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Steven Wright has a line about "I bought a humidifier and a dehumidifier and put them together in a room to fight it out." That was what happened with our dual A/C system in the first computer room I helped build, back in the early 80s to support our VAXes. We had a couple of chilled-water Liebert units that were bigger than the computers, and management had decided to get two of them so we'd never lose cooling. Turned out we couldn't actually run them both at once, though I don't remember if they were fighting more about temperature or humidity - one unit would be pushing a bunch of cold dry air under the floor, which would blow into the sensors of the other unit, which would push a bunch of warm wet air under the floor, etc. And any time there was a power failure, the A/C wouldn't automatically restart, but the VAX would, so if this happened overnight or on a weekend, the room would reach 130 degrees (F), at which point the power system would decide their might be a fire and shut everything down until the room got cooler - which would take a while, since it wouldn't let us use the A/C. So we'd get in on Monday morning, have to open the back doors to the lab and go steal desk fans.
My late-90s lab had much smaller equipment - a bunch of routers and PCs in an enclosed office - but it still generated enough heat that we needed extra A/C. We didn't own the building, and the A/C unit that the landlord put in the ceiling would occasionally ice up and start dripping water onto our desk, but fortunately it usually missed the rack. For a couple of weeks during one of the A/C repairs, they gave us a big standalone thing that blew cool air into the room and warm air out through the ceiling ductwork. It had enough room in the top to chill a couple of bottles of wine, so our winetasting that month did whites.
Two good resources on cooling (Score:4, Informative)
The Hot Aisle [thehotaisle.com]: Great blog from Steve O'Donnell with practical ways to implement hot-aisle or cold-aisle containment and economizers.
Data Center Knowledge [datacenterknowledge.com]: Recent articles look at "roll your own" thermal monitoring solutions and using excess heat in swimming pools and greenhouses.
Go Geothermal! (Score:4, Interesting)
I once had to do essentially this in a slightly unusual situation: the server room was by an outside wall, and on the other side of the wall they were about to put in a new lawn. We just dug down extra deep (about 4 feet) and got about 100 feet of 6' diameter corrugated plastic drainpipe (intended to be buried, the corrugations make it somewhat flexible), covered it with dirt+lawn, and finally put a fan on one end and recirculated the server room air through this. Only had to buy a fan and the pipe, and the long-term power bills were almost zero (just the fan). And it's incredibly reliable.
Get a Better Job (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I'm all for maximizing economic efficiency, but you can't cool for free.
"Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
There are some great options for minimizing the ongoing costs of cooling:
But any of those are going to take some investment. Remember, server acquisition cost is 1/3 of the total budget, the other 2/3 includes electricity and cooling, more than maintenance costs, on average.
Like others have said, virtualize, slow your CPU clocks, take unused disks offline, replace your power supplies, all good, but if your servers aren't worth $600 to cool (and therefor keep operational), how the heck do they justify your salary to run them? (hint: maybe they don't)
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Funny)
"Let the room overheat and replace all the computing hardware. So what if you're down for a week?"
Don't forget the BOFH option. :)
Back everything up.
Wait until meltdown, then be the hero for restoring the new systems.
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Re:Celcius? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but it's a good rule of thumb that if the language has evolved at the hands of a business consultant, they're just trying to make an ordinary, everyday job description sound sexy and exciting through deliberate obfuscation and complication of syntax. "I've been tasked with getting a tiger team to think outside the box vis-a-vis their normal operational paradigm with regards to proactively seeking out new-media revenue generation through forward-thinking distribution channels" sounds a lot sexier to the average suit than "We need more money. What ideas do you internet nerds have?"
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