We are setting up a “Comms room” at my workplace, which will be an access controlled, air-conditioned room - at least, that’s the theory, as we are now embroilled in a dispute with the people who started building it, and (although the servers are already located there) there is no air-con and no access control. :rolleyes:
Anyway, the question has come up as to what temperature the servers should be kept at - I have done a little bit of looking on Google, and people seem to be saying 60-65[sup]o[/sup]F (15 to 18[sup]o[/sup]C) which seems a little warm to me…
Yes, 60°F is fine. Probably, 65°F is fine, too. (Actually, our server room was up around 85 for a couple of weeks when the AC went down, and we didn’t lose anything major. I think two hard drives burnt out, but they were in a RAID array, so no biggie.) The important thing is that the AC needs to be able to keep the room at that temp.
15 to 18 Celsius is fine. I believe our data centre operates at 17 degrees. Humidity should be below 50% also.
I presume you are building this room with a raised floor and introducing the AC from below?
I’ve heard stories of rooms retro-fitted with AC in the ceiling, as the warm air rises from the servers it meets the cool air from the AC causing condensation… not good.
flairgun, that must have been some really cold air. Typically in the US the cooling air runs about 55 degrees F. Typical dewpoint in our office buildings is around 50 degrees F, so no condensation. Where I work we aim for a room temperature around 70 F. Sixty to sixty-five F seems a little cold, especially if somebody is going to be working in the room for any length of time.
And as Davebear pointed out, servers will work into the 80 degrees F range with little or no problem. But, again, you might get into a human comfort issue.
There is also the added problem of having one room at a substantially different temperature than adjacent rooms. It makes everything work a little harder. Better to shoot for a consistent temperature throughout the building.
How many servers are involved here? If more than a handful, give some thought to monitoring the room temp, and have a plan of action in event of A/C failure.
Reason I say this is a few months ago, the A/C failed at night in a server room at Compaq, and nobody knew anything was wrong until the fire alarms went off when the air temperature hit 135 degrees and the Halon discharged to put out the fire that wasn’t there. Just some blisteringly hot computers. A lot of time was wasted while building security tried tracking down people that knew what to do. Finally, someone said “Jesus Christ! Get down there and open the damn doors and find some fans!” Dumbassed security said “But someone might get into the building if we leave the doors open.”
Just to pile-on a bit - a lot of servers these days can report temperatures. Tie a cron-job to a script & have it page and/or e-mail if the temperature rises too high.
