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Hardware Technology

Cooling the Server Room? 61

Posted by Cliff from the if-its-above-freezing-its-too-warm dept.
kolchak asks: "As the Australian summer heats up, we are looking at a cooling solution for our computer room. We have 4 racks (almost all full) with around 40 machines, switches, routers, 2 UPSs and 2 monitors. Unfortunately, its located in the middle of the office with no windows available for ventilation. We can vent the exhaust into the ceiling space which in turn is vented outside. Also, since the room is so small, we need to install any cooling device outside the room (a store room backs on which will house the cooling unit and potentially pipe hot / cold air through the wall). All the units we've seen so far need to be in the room, we just don't have the space. Anyone come across and solved this? Any ideas on good cooling units we can install easily and cheaply?"
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Cooling the Server Room? More

Cooling the Server Room?

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  • We've got a similar problem, except that it's the winter time is the hardest to keep the room cool. During the summer, we run the air conditioner enough for the rest of the building that we can use the building's AC to keep the room nice and comfortable.

    During the winter, however, the room is near the furnace, and I have a difficult time getting rid of the excess heat.

    Our solution (such as it is) is to install a window unit AC in the room and vent the heat into the surrounding area. During the winte
    • I've seen this technique used before and it works well. A large standard-type air conditioner installed in the wall between the server room and that storeroom, and then a large vent fan in the ceiling of the storeroom, should solve the problem.
    • Mine is no problem I keep mine in a closet which I call the server room, just use a simple cheap box fan or two besides I only have to cool a k62-550, and my intel 330t express stackable hub, 1 monitor.

  • Not pretty but.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by n00bieriffic ( 732021 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:42AM (#7708628) Homepage
    one of the best solutions I have seen was at a local isp. They ran copper tubing just above the ceiling (hidden by the foam tiles) in a switchback layout similar to a radiator. They had a small pump just outside that moved water through both the internal and external radiators. It worked quite well and lowered the temperature in their main room by 20 degrees. Wasn't the prettiest thing with the tubing on the outside, but I'm sure you can find a way to hide it.

    • Re:Not pretty but.. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Water running above your servers real stupid idea. Water pipes can break and joints can leak. Why do you think Halon is used for fire control in computer rooms.
      • not to reply to cowards, but halon isn't used anymore, too many useless geek deaths when the fire and anything else close by is asphyxiated. there are newer human safe solutions for server room fire support.
        • 1) Halon isn't used anymore but other chemicals that do the exact same thing are.
          2) Halon was banned because it allegedly harms the ozone layer.
          3) Halon doesn't cause any harm to humans even if you're in the room when it goes off. Look up the MSDS. Halon is healthier than smoke inhalation or breathing a room full of carbon dioxide or being electrocuted by water spraying all over you and electrical equipment.

  • Once again... (Score:5, Informative)

    by R2.0 ( 532027 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:51AM (#7708663)
    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/20/23 59209&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=137

    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/22/ 05 45253&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=134

    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/14/ 13 9215&mode=nested&tid=137

    Or search for "cooling" in Ask Slashdot.

    I'll boil it down for you:

    1: Get professional help (arch, engineer, contractor)
    2: Repeat #1.

    • Re:Once again... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )
      Of course, that's always the wy to go.

      I *am* an HVAC systems engineer. And strictly off the record, this sounds like a perfect application for a ductless split AC system [enviromaster.com] (alternate link for comparison [acdirect.com]). The nice thing about these units is that all you need to run is two copper tubes: Typically a 3/8" liquid and 1/2" vapor line (plus insulation). That greatly simplifies and penetrations you have to make to the building. The condenser unit can also be up to 100' feet away (including a max. 30' difference in
      • Ductless splits are great for retrofits where you dont have access to the ceiling space, but they are much more expensive that a conventional fan coil based split system. As well the ductless split system max out at about 1 ton of cooling (3.4 KW), a conventional split will go up to about 5 tons (17.4 KW).

        In this case he seems to have access to the ceiling space so a conventional fan coil would probably be better and cheaper.
  • cut a hole in the ceiling to the roof. Pop one of 'dose babies in 'der. That shit will WORK!

  • Split systems are the only good solution (Score:3, Informative)

    by zeitgeist77 ( 107700 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:58AM (#7708689)
    We have a phone closet and a computer room with a similar configuration (4 full racks, 2 UPS etc). We use a 12kBtu split system in our phone room, and are installing a pair of 24kBtu units in our main computer room. You can get a lot of types of them, the cheapest and easiest hang on the wall. They use a couple of pipes running outside or to the roof to the condensers. The condensers themselves are really small (compared to a single package unit). The systems we are putting in our computer room are about 6 grand apeice.

    In your situation, you just run the piping through the plenem to an outside wall. You can toss the condensers just about anywhere (tho you probably want to make sure there is room to fence in the slab so some smartass cant just walk up and turn off your AC.

  • heres an idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gmalloy ( 668764 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:44AM (#7708864)
    Here's a wild idea...Go hire some engineers.

    Apparently there are whole companies who specialize in heating and cooling.

    That will probably work out better than asking a bunch of geeks for a hack without knowing any of the details...
  • I suggest keeping your units a good distance away from the wall and floors so that the air you move will move freely and dissapate as much as heat as possible, keep backs of racks and cabinets off to help air move, should also help. Using a cardboard or tin plate on front ot you airconditioner, cut out holes to match the diameter of a clothes dryer vent pipe/tube (two or three, I think they are about 5-6 inches diameter), then lead the air wher you need it.
  • A/C hooked up to a set of vents that only run to the server room. Ideally to the base of the racks themselves.

    Be it jurry-rigged to a window-sill style A/C (with a fan in the system for circulation) or a proper ventilation system - that's up to you.

  • Let's make a deal (Score:5, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Saturday December 13, 2003 @02:14AM (#7708987) Homepage Journal
    See, I live in Wisconsin. And it's starting to get kind of cold. We'll let you run an air duct from here to Australia and take our cold air, if you put in another air duct blowing some of your warm air back here. Give us a call and we'll talk it over.

  • Split System. (Score:4, Informative)

    by fava ( 513118 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @03:06AM (#7709134)
    What you want is called split system air conditioning.

    Outside you have a condensing unit that can sit on the ground or the roof, inside you have a fan coil. The two are connected via 50-100 ft of insulated copper pipe.

    There is little ductwork involved, the fan coil sits in the ceiling space and simply recirculate and cools the air within the room.

    Typically a configuration like this would run up to 5 tons of cooling, which is about 17KW worth of heat removed from your computer room.

    If you need more cooling you can install more units.

    Contact a local refrigeration contractor or refigeration equipment supplier for help, they are generally quite helpfull if they think they might get a sale out of it.

    • mod up parent (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We have one of these and it works great. Had it for about two years, so far no problems. The internal unit is a fairly small and thin and sits high on a wall.

      If you want to get really fancy, the refrigeration people can install a system that monitors the temperature and can page you (or an engineer) when the temperature gets too high. Large food establishments have this sort of thing. I've played with this setup, however, and I can tell you that the stuff the refrigeration engineers will install for

      • Re:mod up parent (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        APC makes a nice rackmountable unit, with 2 temperature/humidity probes, and external contact switch connections. You can monitor if the server room door is opened and send a page, for example.

        Works nicely, you can communicate with it via ftp or snmp, for example.
    • Another alliterative that few people think about is to bury the outside coil 1-3 m deep. The temp of soil is about 10c at that depth year round. It can provide a much more efficient cooling effect. With a heat pump attached you can get even more cooling. It also works in reverse in the winter.
      And as every one keeps saying. Contract an HVAC pro.
  • Hire your friendly local HVAC mechanic to cut the condenser coil off a big window A/C unit, and install it with a fan in your server room. The compressor and evaporator coil go in your storage room. A couple little 1/4" refrigerant pipes going through the wall and you're set.

    You would probably be surprised how little a small custom cooling setup like this will end up being.
  • Some time after the company I work part time for moved into their new building, I noticed that the only vent leading into the server room came from the heater, while the rest of the office had air conditioning. Perhaps someone messed up the blueprints, I don't know. I got to explain to my boss and others why they need to stop closing the server room doors whenever they see them open. Hopefully they'll budget to get air conditioning in there by next summer.

  • Don't go with the portable 10-15,000 BTU units (Score:3, Interesting)

    by schmaltz ( 70977 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @04:00AM (#7709309)
    They generate more heat than they take away, and you'll have trouble exhausting away all the heat they produce.

    1 watt-hour == 3.41 BTUs. Say your typical rackmount PC, without monitor, draws around 100 watts, that's 341 BTUs. 40 machines plus two monitors and UPSs, plus some odd heat from lights and whatnot, call it about 14,000 BTUs. All that heat rises, and the best thing to do with it is duct it away, then replace it with cold air.

    DO NOT SIMPLY DRAW IT INTO THE DROP CEILING, unless there is predictable airflow beyond the ceiling tiles, or a duct, with negative pressure relative to the server room. If there is not a definite exit from the ceiling, or if you're just pushing it up there and hoping it ends up someplace else, forget about it, it just lingers.

    Portable AC-on-wheels: they generate decent BTUs removal, but their exchaust is ferocious. If you must use one, cut a hole in the wall for the exit hose, or mount it in a nearby window, just get it away. Don't even think of emptying it into the walls or drop-ceiling, it'll linger and boost the ambient temp.

    If you have a window within 50 feet, you could mount a 20-25,000 BTU AC unit, and send the output through an insulated duct to the server room. If the duct runs more than 20-25 feet, you should put a draw fan on it to reduce back-pressure at the AC. Back-pressure can cause all sorts of trouble, so don't force through a tiny or too-long pipe.

    Eh, if any of this seems confusing, hire a contractor!

    The most important thing to do is monitor temperature in the room. If any of your PCs is recent, it'll have both "system" and "cpu" temp monitoring. There are temperature logging apps for *nix and Windows.

    More beer please.

  • I would submit that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maunleon ( 172815 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @04:25AM (#7709379)
    ...you don't place your servers and build the server room around them. You build the server room first, then you place your servers. ...
    so, for future reference, you put the cart before the horse.

  • Whatever you do... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jarndt ( 553380 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @04:30AM (#7709399)
    ...don't do this [kuro5hin.org].

  • Until you start planning for IT, IT will not be up to par. First thing I thought about was,"Who the hell even put the room there? If you have the investment involved in that many computers, why not invest in some planning?

  • If only these [coolchips.gi] were popular...

  • Redundancy (Score:3, Informative)

    by JetScootr ( 319545 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @08:59AM (#7709976) Journal
    One thing is an absolute necessity: Redundancy. Make sure you have two (or more) completely separate units. Each unit should run at NO MORE than 50% of its total cooling capacity. Each has a completely separate power source, all the back to the utility hook up. Run ALL AC units, all the time. Don't plug one in and leave it turned off until you need to use it as a backup.
    AC units will break down. You know this. When it happens, you will discover you have far less time to react than you think.
    And if you don't have redundant cooling, you're gonna fry a lotta expensive hardware.
  • You can purchase a 15 ton unit that is mounted in the ceiling. I just bought 2 of these.

    It's made up of three 5-ton cooling units that can be individually controlled. If you can't vent into the plenum (ceiling), you're looking at putting in a glycol loop up to a condenser on the roof or outside.

    Resource-wise, call Liebert [liebert.com] and similar companies and have a rep come in and do a dog and pony show. Also check with local contractors, as they frequently know about palleted and sold units that never got instal
  • This suggestion needs a second opinion as it's fairly wack:

    In supermarket size freezers they use a fanned unit that cools the cold room. Have this on the outside of the building blowing in? (turned down/whatever)

    The copper piping idea sounds good, especially to combine with others.

    Since you need to cool a whole room I'm sure there should be a proper solution out there.

  • This Is Easier Than You Think (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ONOIML8 ( 23262 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @09:55AM (#7710112) Homepage
    First, it has to be said that when you built your server room you should have planned that before the equipment ever went in. Hindsight.

    I'll pat myself on the back here. In my 911 PSAP and dispatch center we have a room that houses the phone system, servers and radios. I have to imagine that this room generates far more heat than what you're dealing with because of the transmitters. There was no environmental control, not even vents. Systems would die or reboot without warning all year round but the problem got worse in the summer.

    Nobody knew what to do. Like your situation, this room is in the middle of the building. Every amateur carpenter, electrician, HVAC tech in the police department looked at it and scratched their heads.

    Then I came into the picture. Rather than wasting time thinking about the problem or asking Slashdot, I picked up the phone and called the local HVAC shop. In minutes I had not one but two qualified technicians with over 30 years of combined experience at my disposal. Two hours later I had a quote. Three weeks later the temperature and humidity in the room are constant and within tolerance. And we haven't had a single equipment failure since.

    The system they installed uses the building water supply to cool air in a machine down the hall. The cool air is vented into the room and exhaust is vented up through the roof. That vent work is amazing, none of us non HVAC techs would have guessed it to be possible.

    Do yourself a huge favor and call in a pro.

    • Do yourself a huge favor and call in a pro.

      And not just because they know what the options are and can design and install the system properly. They'll know what building codes apply, what permits you need, what inspections the various governments will require, etc. At least here in the US, failure to do things properly can lead to nasty consequences: fines if the local fire marshall finds out you haven't done things right, or your insurance company failing to pay if the non-code work contributes to a f

  • Cooling systems need service, call someone who does this for a living, and get it done right.

    I remember one time, on the coldest (-10f) day of the year, the repair guy was on the roof fixing the AC for the computer room. You need to keep something like this in mind, be sure it can be serviced.

    And don't forget humidity in the winter, you want a machine that maintains 68f and 50% humidity year round. Air filtration is also good.
  • A window A/C unit, which is stuck in the server room, with the outside end in the office or warehouse or where ever, and set HIGHER than the normal temp for the room, serves a backup to the primary cooling.

    It should never run, if it does,it indicates there is a thermal problem in the server room, and tries to save the equipement, in the event the main unit fails.

  • YAGAEC (Score:1)

    by pci ( 13339 ) *
    Yet Another Get An Engineer Comment

    They best quick guess formula is 500BTU/RU, so when you call an HVAC engineer in you know he isn't going to totally over sell you.

    So (4 Racks * 40RU) * 500btu/U is 80,000 BTU.
    (12,000 BTU = 1 ton, the engineer you get may use that term)

  • Outsource your servers to Canada for 6 months (Score:3, Funny)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:39PM (#7711204) Homepage
    Here in winter, we've shut down our rack fans, turned off ACs and are looking at ways to make ourselves warmer. We could use some aussi machines to help in this time of need. Canada has enough electricity to export
  • Hey there,
    Where I work we ran into the same problem this summer, over 40 new systems in our server room, plus Ottawa's ability to have some crazy hot and humid summer days.

    Our HVAC supplier mounted a Trane conditioner unit in the ceiling, and ran all necessary ducts to the elevator shaft only 20ft. away. Could this be a solution that fits your criteria?

  • book (Score:2)

    by martin ( 1336 )
    This is quite a good book on data centers..

    http://www.sun.com/solutions/blueprints/books/dc de sign.html

    Of course you prob should have read this first, along with the Practise of System and Network Admistration.....

    Just a thought though..
  • No?

    Then don't do the same thing for your HVAC system.
    • ...exactly right. the thermal inertia in a room full of kit is huge and what you don't want is an aircon system where a sysadmin can tinker with the settings: these things take time and experience to set and temps can take 2 days to settle after a tweak. get HVAC to put it in and lock the controls, otherwise you'll have people turning it up because they forgot their coat, turning it off because it's noisy and they can't concentrate etc.
  • When our cooling redesign for our new server racks was being considered, we went and talked to the reliability pros: the phone company (say what you want but they really avoid equipment failures!) and the guys as AT&T told us that they don't chill their equipment rooms, but keep it around 80F, which is pretty warm for people, but well within the range for equipment.

    This is A) cheaper (smaller unit and less electricity) and B) causes less problems if the HVAC fails (less delta-T)

    Remember, unless people

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Rather than calling you to host my e-services (you are obviously a pro), I think I'll ask Slashdot to tell me how to do it myself. After all, I shouldn't need your training to do it right, your experience to do it quickly, or your expertise to fix it when it doesn't work.

    Really, if you expect people to call on you for your professional services, why don't you call on professionals in other fields for their services?

    On the other hand, maybe you are asking Slashdot readers for solutions that have worked for

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