Server room cooling

[Dominic Mitchell]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 11:09:15AM +0100, Tim Wiser wrote:
> Well, after repeatedly informing our managers that our server room is far
> too small and doesn't have adequate cooling (this is a brand new site that
> has been built to specification, howerver the specification that was put
> forward by us was blatantly ignored)....  the ambient temperature in the
> room is now knocking on 40 degrees celsius.  The only ventilation that the
> room has is a sucking fan that pulls air out of the corridor, through the
> room and then outside.  However, this is failing to make any difference at
> all as far as we can see - probably because the air in the corridor outside
> is warm.  *sigh*
> 
> Anyway, does anyone know of any documentation/websites that I can put under
> the noses of the managers to coerce them into doing something other than
> lipservice to I.T about this problem?  I've got a feeling that things may
> start going bang unless this is rectified soon.

Sorry, I don't have websites, only experience of just this happening.
We have a rack full of servers in our offices, with no particular
cooling arrangements.  Then, in January, we saw a lot of disk failures
due to the heat in between the machines.  Now, finally, we have proper
air conditioning installed.

Your best bet is to use something like healthd from the ports collection
to monitor the server's internal temperature.  That, combined with
motherboard and disk drive specs from the manufacturer should do the
trick.

Oh, and don't forget to do backups!

-Dom