A little bit of advice please on server room temp

daelo

daelo

daelo

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Hello one and all.

I work for a small door manufacturer with about 12 employees in a smallish portacabin style office with no A/c , so at the moment the temp is around 29/30c during the day time, fans ahoooy!!!

Anyway , we have a Microsoft CRM 4.0 based system that allows us to do quotes, track orders, make invoices etc... you are all probably aware of what crm is capable of. And herein the problem arises, the server , which is located in a small room about 10'x4' which also has no A/C.

The server isnt particularly power, i dont know the specifics of it (other than it has to power 12 pcs logged on simultaneously using CRM) , but what i do know, is that when it gets hot during the day the crm software can suddenly grind to a halt. Currently inside the server "enclosure" its 35c and the fans sound like nothing ive ever heard before.

Should all server rooms have air con? I suppose i could find out the core temp of the cpu's with my manager logging on as remote desktop connection and using coretemp or something similar to see if things are cooking, but i cannot just seem to get the point across the to the higher powers that servers rooms need to be air conditioned, especially when the aimbient air temp is between 30c and 40c!!

What are you thoughts guys and girls? Is it one day just going to give up the ghost and and set fire to us all or just shutdown in a blaze of glory. Also CPUS degrade over time due to excessive heat right, so it could just be getting slower... and slower... and slower...?
 
1 small vent about 6 inches wide, like the vent you get in a dodgy toilet. there is no airflow what so ever server case temp now just over 35c, are there any good problems for monitoring cpu temp over a remote desktop connection.

I think its a Intel Xeon 3.20ghz (presumably 4 core and not x2 of the processors) , and it only has 2gb of ram, which imo, seems a little low seeing as its trying to run 12 crm systems at the same time!
 
2gb is a little low but its a very small business so I wouldn't be concerned about that, what I would be concerned about is the temps, you need to get something sorted be it an extractor fan or a portable AC unit or something, but considering you have mentioned the very loud fans and the slowness when room temp increase I would concentrate my efforts there first.
 
10' by 4' is pretty luxurious compared to some wiring cupboards I've seen :p

Not all server rooms need A/C. It's great for places with very high densities of machines but costs in energy and monetary terms.

A large extractor fan (10 - 12") designed for 24/7 use would be fine for your needs (Ventaxia or someone?). The intake may be an issue though.
Servers are pretty good at looking after themselves these days, even in the event of cooling failure.
 
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I would be checking the logs first to see what the slowdown is. It might not be temp related at all.

I dont think 35 would worry me too much, as long as that was the peak temp during the summer months.
 
Have a look at Kell Systems - they make small cabinets which sound ideal for your requirements as they deal with the cooling side too. Not speaking from experience though - just something I've considered in the past for servers in remote offices.
 
Would have thought a large extractor fan running 24/7 with a few air vents in the server room door would be enough to keep that server running at an acceptable temp, and you may even be able to get the powers that be spend a £100 on a RAM upgrade to stop the server stopping in the afternoons ;)

If they balk at the cost of that then ask em what it would cost the company each day if it all went bang?
 
At my last job we couldnt afford aircon for are small server room housing 5 server. So what we did was drill 2 holes 1 at the top and one at the bottom out side. Put some extractor fans on them and it worked a treat.
 
The temp doesnt seem to excessive and for that room isnt totally confined, as already mentioned some sort of extractor fan really wouldnt hurt but i would be interested in checking logs and things for slow down issues
 
If there are windows in the room, especially if they are south facing, you probably want to get some reflective film to go over the windows.

What brand server is it? Many of the big brands have a system management webpage you could easily install and use to check the temperatures of components remotely.
 
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