Emergency Cooling with Limited Power? 132
Nos. asks: "I work for a small webhosting company (I'm on leave from my Gov't job) and we've started having some power problems. Actually someone managed to blow out the substation powering the area so we're piggy backing off another one, and they're slowly powering more and more things off. Elevators, lights, etc. are gone. Since the building we work in has a few IT company's working it in, they're trying as hard as they can to keep the A/C running, but its not looking good. As such, the possibility exists that our server room could get very warm, very quickly. Since we've already powered off everything that's not essential, we're starting to look at ways to keep the room cool without using a lot of power. Generators an small A/C units are a last resort as it would mean holes in the walls. The only thing we've been able to come up with is dry ice and some small fans to circulate the air. Of course this is happening as we're heading in to a week of over 30C days. Does Slashdot have any ideas?"
Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:5, Informative)
No, seriously, I don't have any exceptional cooling method to suggest, so I'd focus on reducing heat production instead of dissipating.
1) Power off every non-essential item (You say you've already done it, but have a second look at what's REALLY essential. Got 2 firewalls in cluster configuration? Keep only one! Pull out that hot-swappable hard drive from your raid-1 array! - Warning: will have a long-term impact to your uptime)
2) Ventilation. As long as you're not in Saudi Arabia, air from outside is cooler than what the server room would be without air conditioning.
3) People! Humans give off a lot of bodily heat (Matrix jokes apart). Keep people off the server room unless it's really necessary
4) Lighting - Use compact fluorescent instead of incandescent (they run much cooler, too) and turn them off when it's not needed
5) Shadow - An incredibly effective way of bringing down room temperature by as much as 10 degrees. Might not apply to you, but if you are in a very exposed side of the building, or under the roof, you might benefit greatly from it.
6) (Illegal in many countries) Cooling with running water. Extremely effective, but a huge waste of water
7) (a bit extreme) Replace the less loaded and less critical servers with a couple laptops you might have lying around. I'm writing from a 1.6Ghz Centrino laptop with 512MB DDR - it's a lot more powerful than some of the servers I have at work. (and laptops tend to be terribly stable).
Its power supply is rated 65W!
8) - If all else fails, decentralization. Put the remaining servers farther apart (the heat in a single 42U rack filled with equipment is tremendous, while if you spread the content all over the room it will be more bearable for the hardware). Get a few very long network cables and take something out in other rooms, also (even if only the server room is ups-protected, it won't make a big difference when power goes down for a day).
btw fp
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:3, Informative)
About 10 years back we had a similar problem. The main AC unit failed and we were watching the mercury rise after we did most of the above. We were able to bring portable air conditioners which pushed the hot air though 1' plastic tubing to the cool outside air. It worked, no holes in the wall. The generator adds a little difficulty, but nothing long extension cords wont fix.
Don't forget to pull the ceiling panels if you can - assuming th
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:5, Informative)
I grew up in the tropics, most of my life without A/C. You'd be surprised what a box fan (that is what we called them anyway, 2 ft square fans that sit on the floor. They don't use a lot of power.) in the doorway can do. If you want to get really fancy, try and force air circulation: Find two openings to the outside world (ie, window and door or 2 doors). Open one and put the box fan in the other. If you put the box fan in a door put cardboard above the fan (ie seal the rest of the door), so the air doesn't simple circle around the fan.
6) (Illegal in many countries) Cooling with running water. Extremely effective, but a huge waste of water
Or if you don't want to run water, put a large pool of water (think kiddy play pool) in front of the fan. Water evaporating of the surface will act as coolant (same idea as running water, but requires more surface area and doesn't give a constant supply of cold water.)
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:2)
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:1)
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:1)
The only danger is that once they get power back, when the A/C kicks in cooling off that air that is near 100% humidity, it's likely to get kinda foggy in the server room, and water condensing out of the air could settle on things.
The solution would be to make sure the humid air was circulated out before turning the A/C back on, and bringing the temperature down slowly to prevent dew.
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:2)
That's not too likely. A/C units dehumidify very well. And when they blow cold air into the room, that itself will circulate out hot, humid air. And since A/C units don't cool a room instantly, the temp should come down slowly enough.
However, if for some reason this would be
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:1)
Usually at least. Inane anecdotes follow.
My high school computer labs had a really screwed up HVAC system, they had to run standalone dehumidifiers all the time, and empty them every 2 hours or so. There were several times that there was actually a pretty thick hazy fog in the building.
Maybe I've just had bad experiences with HVAC. Where I work now, even the new upgraded HVAC system put in the server room has failed at least twice a year since
Re:Keep ordering icebergs off Ebay :-) (Score:1)
I'm a tech worker for a manufacturing company too, I've always thought we have a pretty unique experience compared to people working for tech companies, it would be cool to make some kind of chat room for people like us.
Why is this modded as +3, Informative? (Score:1)
The guy admits right up front that he doesn't have an answer, and he still gets modded up as Informative? That's just great.
btw fp
More evidence that he's just karma-whoring.
Re:Why is this modded as +3, Informative? (Score:2)
Sounds like an answer to me.
you might look for a portable swamp cooler if you have less than 50% humidity
found this on google
http://www.air-n-water.com/swamp-coolers-evapora ti ve.htm
When I was a kid , in the california central valley, one of the tractor repair
guys had a big one bolted to the back of his truck powered by a lawn
mower engine.
Pretty neat to have outdoor air-conditioning in the middle of a field in
105 degree weathe
Re:Why is this modded as +3, Informative? (Score:2)
I don't have a cooling solution but I do have a bit of advice which might make his heat problem a bit easier to cope with. I was not offtopic, trolling or making useless jokes so frankly I don't see any problem with that moderation (but I'm a little biased, be warned :-) )
btw fp :-)
More evidence that he's just karma-whoring.
Sorry to disappoint you, no need to karma whore. Be
Bigger Generators (Score:1)
Rent big truck generator & run whole building (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rent big truck generator & run whole buildi (Score:4, Informative)
AC onna truck (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, there are often companies who can provide air conditioning and/or generators on a truck. They'll block off a doorway or the loading dock and pump the air in through there. If you have a little more time (and appropriate permits, etc.), they're often willing to run temporary connections into your forced air system.
Whenever they do HVAC work on our building, they have the trucks set up and waiting. We have a few too many computers to even survive with "just the essentials" if the AC goes out.
Re:AC onna truck (Score:1)
Just found out as well, the power company can only guarantee the campus 3.5 megaw
Re:AC onna truck (Score:1)
Can you be more specific? You need to know exactly WHAT your central plant is supplying your building, because it's not cold air.
If they are supplying condenser water (between 60F and about 110F), then your building has local units cooling your server room - probably Lieberts (trade name). If so, you need to
1. power the leiberts from some temporary power source (your own generators with some t
Re:AC onna truck (Score:1)
Unfortunately, we can't really power anything from our own generators. They are at capacity already, though I believe they are preparing to upgrade them.
If they're that critical..... (Score:1)
If you use standard "Liquid Air", hopefully it's the 75% N, 20% O, 5% others so it would be breathable if you need to enter. You _could_ go with N2 canisters, but that'd be dangerous as it'd displace O2.
It would cost a lot for these cansiters, and you'd have to refill them every day. But that's why it's an emergency.
The only thing I can think of is pa
dryice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dryice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dryice (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite. Yes, if you displace enough Oxygen with CO2 then you can asphyxiate. However, what makes car exhausts so lethal is the carbon monoxide. CO actually has a much stronger affinity to haemoglobin than CO2, so rather than dying because there is no Oxygen, CO will actively displace Oxygen from your bloodstream, even if there is plenty present in the atmosphere.
Of course, this is not such a problem in modern c
Re:dryice (Score:2)
Re:dryice (Score:2)
It takes a big man to admit publicly that he is wrong.
It takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man. Hehe.
Just kidding. I took issue immediately with the dry ice thing
We are talking Canada for crime's sake - if 30 degrees C is the peak you are worrying about
Re:dryice (Score:2)
Turn off the computers. (Score:3, Funny)
If you're looking at dry ice and knocking holes in the walls, you're almost out of options. Save the hardware.
Nix the Dry ice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nix the Dry ice (Score:5, Funny)
But if you'r....say 6 foot three inches and your PHB is say... a dwarf.... well......
Invite him in, and when he falls over with his eyes bludging out.... run!
lots of air flow (Score:2)
Re:lots of air flow (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, with a fan and some cheap ducting you can have a similar effect. You'd need a much more powerful fan to do it though.
A serious suggestion? Generators and portable AC units. I've seen them used by a former company when the AC was inadequate in the server room. They were about 1.3m tall and had large white hoses coming out of the top to make them about 2m tall
Re:lots of air flow (Score:2)
Re:lots of air flow (Score:2)
Re:lots of air flow (Score:1)
Re:lots of air flow (Score:1)
And won't that just end up with all the heat in the air anyway? I mean, you can't make heat magically disappear, so it seems like all that would do is put a thin layer of water on everything, which would then evaporate, which is great for cooling people down, and might even work on the equipment if you don't short it out, but it's not going to actually cool the room down, so you're just delaying the inevitable.
Re:lots of air flow (Score:2)
Re:lots of air flow (Score:2)
Actually no. Turning water liquid into water gas is an endothermic reaction... it actually
Humidifier (Score:2)
A danger
window? (Score:2)
Besides, if they had a window, I don't think they'd need to punch holes through a wall to put in any kind of localized A/C.
They might be able to spread some of the heat into th
Re:window? (Score:1)
most important of all -- (Score:4, Interesting)
But seriously -- be sure to consider the relative risks of keeping your server room up versus taking it down and waiting. If you take it down now, you're guaranteeing yourself downtime, but you can come back online as soon as the substation comes back.
If you try to stay running, you're not guaranteed to have downtime, but if you do it'll be intense, because you'll have damaged hardware to deal with.
rent a generator.. that's the usual way at farms. (Score:2)
and then theres the wet towels & etc..
besides... 30c isn't that much if you can have massive ventilation(keep it that 30c), it's 33c in here my flat now and the couple of computers that are here run fine..
Emergency where I work (Score:3, Informative)
They have a Dryer hose like outflow pipe for the hot air which we can connect at various points to the sent system...you could probably micky mouse it to your vents with some cardboard and Duct tape....
Dude. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you host at a place without dual power companies providing power?
Why do you host at a place without dual redundant A/C on EACH power provider?
Why do you host at a place without dual redundant power generators?
Just how "essential" is the stuff you're hosting?
How is it important that you're "on leave from [your] Gov't job"?? That's no excuse (if it was meant to be) for not jumping on top of that HUGE MASSIVE INSANELY rediculous situation your servers are in right now, and taking the steps to fix it the very first day you started at that job.
in fairness maybe you started today, but i think somehow that you've had time to fix this before now.
Re:Dude. (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do you host at a place without dual power companies providing power?
Why do you host at a place without dual redundant A/C on EACH power provider?
Why do you host at a place without dual redundant power generators?
Because some of
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
Bullshit.
How did they get to the point that this became a problem? I mean, what tipped them over the edge? I seriously doubt this happened instantly overnight - it's not like some hosting customer comes to a small webhosting firm and says
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
How did they get to the point that this became a problem?
The unexpected total failure of the substation suplying their power grid probably had something to do with it.
Let's face it, there exists multiple levels of service in this world, and there is always a risk analysis to be done. Sure, all colo customers want a zillion nines uptime, but most won't actually pay for it.
A great many colo spaces would be ill prepared to deal with a protracted failure of external power, and would be scrambling for an
Re:Dude. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of things that were out of whack when I started here about 6 months ago, I'm working on it. Redundant air was just not something I considered
Why do you host at a place without dual power companies providing power?
Because we don't have two power companies here. I live in Saskatchewan (Canada) and we only have one power company
Why do you host at a place without dual redundant A/C on EACH power provider?
The office is located on the Univer
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
Your systems will be just fine if you can keep them at 30 degrees C, and you can secure (brick up) the windows later. Hell, just remove (neatly) a few bricks for the duration and put a fan or fan w ductwork in there,
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
Why do you host at a place without dual redundant power generators?
We have natural gas generators, however, they only power certain things within this building, not the A/C for the campus.
---snip
Get the campus electrician to move a circuit from one of the generator backed circuits (say, heating, which is not terribly critical to you during the summer, even in Canada) to a circuit where it could do some good to alleviating this little crisis you have (your cooling system).
Depends, of course, on th
I'm not sure how well it would work, but .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Buy two big high output fans, the biggest and most powerful that will fit in the door to the server room. Stack them one on top of the other in the door. Face the one on the bottom in to suck relatively cooler air from the floor into the server room, and the one on the top out of the room, to suck the relatively hotter air at the top of the room out. This will work better if you can get the one on top all the way to the top, and seal the rest of the space in between. Also, this isn't going to be as effe
Low tech, often overlooked (Score:2)
Seriously, get a few big fans, set one set in the door blowin in, one set in another door blowing out. DOnt have two doors? Make a hole. Drywall cuts easily, and also patches easily.
How much does water and sewage cost? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bring a hose into the room, and use a car radiator or cheap, large coil of copper tubing, and run the water through that and into a drain. Blow air through and you've got a fairly inexpensive way to cool.
Water is not expensive, but you could go through hundreds of gallons a day. Limit your water usage by watching the temperature of the incoming and outgoing water, and placing a valve in the outlet. If the temperature difference is great (60 in, 80 out) then let the water through a bit faster.
You could even set up several of these in series so you can cool different portions of the room. Think about how the air circulates - if you can get the air to go clockwise around the room the fans will use less energy, and the whole room should reach the same temperature.
Of course, it goes without saying that you need to be careful not only of leaks but condensation. Place buckets under the coils, and connections/transitions - make sure you have no leaks, and dump the buckets occasionally.
If the cooling isn't great enough, put a set of coils just after the inlet into a trashcan of water and dry ice.
Note that it may take several minutes of water running before you actually get the cooler water, depending on how much of the building it has to travel through to get to you. If it goes through a lot of the building, you may not have very cool water at all, as it'll attain the temperature of the building. Give it a good half hour or hour at full blast and measure it to see what is possible.
-Adam
Re:How much does water and sewage cost? (Score:1)
Our old server room (as well as the Phone Switch Room) were water cooled, although we had actual Cooling units.
The Server room was cooled by a large Air conditioner style unit, and the Phone room was cooled by a portable one (although this 2nd room was only about 5x5, but contained a Meridian Phone switch that took up half of it, it worked pretty well. See If you
Re:How much does water and sewage cost? (Score:2)
ObKarmaHit (Score:3, Informative)
The proposed idea isn't a bad beginning.
If a person is already going to go the route of car radiators and fans, why not spring for a cheapo (so-many-gal/min) electric water pump at TehH0m3Dep07 or the like. A car's cooling system theory is already engineered for you. All you have to do is apply different temperature gradien
Re:ObKarmaHit (Score:2)
Re:How much does water and sewage cost? (Score:2)
Yes.
"but this is an egregious waste of resources"
Already noted.
"Why would you consider using FRESH, potable, treated water to cool your room?"
As I've already explained, it's cheap, available, and can be set up quickly - it meets the poster's needs.
"Many parts of the world are under water shortages, so it seems to me that you would want to conserve water and find other alternatives."
Ah. So you are suggesting that by saving water here, shortages will
Re:Illegal (Score:2, Interesting)
move (Score:2)
Get rid of excess heat in the first place (Score:3, Insightful)
"So, when Transmeta Corp. came along in early 2000 and announced a processor that was 85 percent to 90 percent of the mobile Pentium's performance with a fifth of the power consumption, it was a no-brainer," Hipp said.
The result was the RLX System 324, a blade configuration that packs more punch into a smaller space than any other server on the market?up to 336 blades in a single, 42-unit, industry-standard rack (..)
It goes without saying that a box that necessitates 80-90% less power than an equivallent Intel or AMD, produces less heat. (from an older but insightful eWeek [eweek.com] article.)
Water Ice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Water Ice (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
It doesn't work that way (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It doesn't work that way (Score:1)
So what, run the servers at home and get free heating, is that the idea?
Re:It doesn't work that way (Score:2)
Re:obviously (Score:2)
Re:obviously (Score:2)
Yeah, I know...-1 didn't get the joke...your point?
Reduce/remove the feedback (Score:2)
Swamp cooler (Score:2)
Re:Swamp cooler (Score:2)
Water down the roof / brick walls outside (Score:2)
Re:Swamp cooler (Score:1)
The air becomes cooler with the water into the air. It also releases charged particles from the the water vapor and dust particles in the air reacting together. This could possibly short your systems.
Good luck! At least you aren't 106 degrees F!
Re:Swamp cooler (Score:2)
Would you have a link for this assertion? Air with a high moisture content is actually LESS likely to hold a charge, not more.
Granted, wet air + dust can leave mud on your systems, which can be CONDUCTIVE (not charged), but if your server room air is that dirty you are going to have other problems.
Since a swamp cooler is drawing air through a filter media, it is more likely to be cleaner than d
Exhaust heat from the room (Score:1)
I'm thinking what you need to do here is.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm thinking what you need to do here is.. (Score:1, Redundant)
How the fuck is this redundant? (Score:1, Redundant)
heh, fire department comes to the rescue (Score:1)
I am a volunteer with the local fire department, and we use a 5 gallon cooler with ice water and a fan on top of it. It can truly cool the room immediatly. Its a special design what basically pulls water into the fan, and acts as a mister. It can immediately cool the room, you'd be surprised at how fast you'll cool the room. I would maybe setup two of these in the center of the room, with extra fans to keep the air circulating, low power, and work great. Can probably find them at Sams.
Umm... Condensation? (Score:1)
Won't condensation be a problem if the humidity of the room gets too high? I would imagine that having the water vapor condense on the rack mounted equipment won't be a good thing!
Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:2)
Heat rises. So you can keep the tempature of the room close to the ambient tempature of the rest of the building by getting enough airflow, and creating a way for the heat to escape up out of the room. Not sure
Re:Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:1)
And, frankly, it's an okay way to cool a room as long as you don't have people hanging out in there. Just dump the whole damn container on the floor, or possibly into a pan of water. (Note you don't want too much water, as that will make everything humid, but something like a cookie sheet might be okay.) Then you grab a box fan and aim it over the dry ice.
The danger is that most people can'
Re:Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:2)
Re:Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:1)
Ummm... Most computer equipment is rated to 70-80C == 158-176F. If it were only rated to 80F it'd already be melting down at 27C, or just when someone touches a vital chip (body temp == 98F).
Re:Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:2)
Re:Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:1)
Re:Heat Rises, and airflow.... (Score:2)
CPU component
I would invest... (Score:1)
Wow this is what i my job! (Score:1)
Cooling is difficult as you have to dump the heat somewhere....Do you have any extract grilles in the office? Any windows?
Without knowing anything about the situation. I advise: Get a ASHRAE certified (you are in america, i assume) engineer to look at it. Say you're looking for cooling that runs off a bac
Elevator shafts (Score:1)
but, the real answer, like others have said, is that if it's so critical
Evaporative cooling... outside (Score:1)
I'm no HVAC expert, but it seems to me that the most efficient way to get rid of the heat and achieve a temperature lower than the outside ambient would be an open-loop phase change.
But having either CO2 from dry-ice or excessive water-vapour in your server room is a bad thing, so you need to get the heat outside.
Also the description of your situation makes it sound like you may be in a place without so much commercial services, but posssibly with a lot of local inginuity. Otherwise you'd have either re
Re:Evaporative cooling... outside (Score:1)
Sorry, I see from annother of your posts that you're from Saskatchewan, which is hardly a 3rd world country.
It does, though, have low humidity, which is ideal for an evaporative cooling system... just remember, if the evaporation tank is inside, the PPh2O will quickly rise and cooling effectiveness will plummet.
Fans FANS FANS!!! (Score:2)
Lay out an air flow in the room (with an "in" and an "out"). If you only have one door, put the "in" on the bottom and the "out" on the top. Place additional fans to force the air to circulate. Set a box fan blowing air into the bottom of each rack. You want airflow you can feel exhasting from the to
ummmm (Score:2)
Re:ummmm (Score:2)
shields are failing? (Score:1)
in that line
Best combination of solutions (Score:2)
2.) Call Caterpillar and see how fast they can get you a large portable generator -- large enough to power the center, servers, lights, A/C and all. 3.) Keep tabs o
Reroute the water supply (Score:2)
Find a home heating/air conditioning guy to run a heat pump to the roof or outside the building. Then put the exchanger/fan/etc. inside the server room. One room only.
The building owners have to conserve at the "building" level. In your case, you can claim this unit is critical to your business operations. Its
Re:Reroute the water supply (Score:2)
Assuming he can keep the ice coming.