working in the server room

[DSapseid]

We used to work in the server room here two of us with rack full of servers it was ridiculus as the bench meant that the other person had to go outside the server room for you to get past! We then campigned and stole an office of the IT teacher as he taught D&T at the same time and had both offices. We are now in a huge new office which was built when the new ICT suite was built. IT used to be the D&T techs workshop. The server room is now through a sliding door from our new office so its nice and close incase of any problems.

Definately use the noise, heat, cramped card as thats what we did. Also say that if you get a delivery of new laptops where are you supposed to store them? I said this as we were due a delivery of 10 new laptops and no way was there room for them all in the office, they ended up on top of the server racks!

Suggest the corridor and you could run a book as to how long they would be there!!

[witch]

I work in the server room with no natural light and it wasn't too bad until I complained about the fact that as I am in a room within a room, and outside my door there is a huge photocopier and reams of paper between me and the outside world, I couldn't get out in case of fire- either the server or the photocopier, and the room was a bit hot for the server.
H&S sort of listened and now I have a non-opening, reinforced window into the adjoining IT suite (" are you happier now you have light" - I didn't know that I had a problem with light!) and a very loud fan, which combined with the server noise gives me a headache every day.
The server will no longer overheat, but I still have no escape route in case of fire
I feel a bit mean as they did do something about my problem - but I am worried about fire and I don't quite know what to do next.

[Uraken]

Thanks for your comments all i have been able to compile a decent dossier to the gaffer.

thanks again.

Although we have a separate server room, we have air con in there, and it's too noisy and too cold to work in anyway.

So, we have an office that is no bigger than your average bathroom, with 3 techies in there. We have achieved 'miracles' by getting 3 desks in there, shelving, a video editing system and tea/coffee making facilities!

It get's hot, but it is 'cosy'!

[pallen]

I have recently gone through a new build and now sit in my brand new office/server room, which in fairness is big enough as an office. Unfortunately I wasn't listened to when the architects designed it. As a result it is a noisy(but well below h&s standards) no natural light and I had to steal a desk as the benching they put in wasn't adequate.

Even though I have pointed out that things haven't been done right, it doesn't look like it is going to change(there are other problems through the school which haven't been sorted and I imagine my room is low down on the priority). My main gripe is that I have been turned down for a different office but other staff have managed to get one even though they may only be in use 50% of the week.

My mistake was not asking for enough...Make sure you specify that you NEED an office. As poeple have said, a point of contact without allowing access to servers from anyone other than you. DO NOT accept anything less. If it is a new school there will be plenty of space to allowcate you an office and a server room. The architecht kept putting my room on the inside of the IT classroom even though we had told them I needed to be able to get in and out of the room without interupting lessons. After about the 3rd meeting it was finally moved.

Document everything that you request so that if they get it wrong you have got something to fall back on.

[richard.thomas]

We have quite a large office, bigger than most other offices in the school. However, there are six of us in there! Our server room is quite loud (You can hear the servers from the corridor) and has aircon- I like being in there over the summer as it's much colder than our office :P

I would have thought working in the server room is a health and saftey nightmare. We had a visit from our H&S officer asking us how we felt and stuff. He went around the room and has wrote down how many extenstion cords we use and we're apparently going to be getting wall sockets to replace them. Also getting at least CAT2 lighting... Also he noticed we dont have a CO2 fire extinguisher (apparently any room with computers must have one near?)..

I don't think he looked in the server room, but there's no CO2 fire extinguisher there... Is there one in your server room?

If you want to get put into an office then the health and safty route is prob the best one to go for as every employer has a duty to ensure their staff are working safely and all that!

[aliv25]

We dont have aircon, we have to open our windows. its quite cool in there in terms of temperature...46 degrees?!

[localzuk]

I used to work in an office which doubled up as our server room and this was quite noisy (not too bad though, as the servers were not rackmount units). However, it did get very hot and smelly as it was next to the boys loo.

I now have a dedicated server room (completely enclosed, with aircon) and share my office with the admin staff. Much better!

[dave.81]

I've always worked in the server room... but taking into account this was/is the Head of ICT office which has slowly grown into a server room and i've kicked her out into the IT suite next door.

I'm pushing to get the nearest classroom converted into a server/it office but i dont think that will really happen as we are short on classrooms. But even if it did i'd still be sharing the office with the servers lol.

[torledo]

Strangely enough, I suggested to my boss that I move in to the server room. This was to ensure I got a large office-come-server-room to house two HP 36U server racks (25% populated at the moment) with big ac unit and plenty of space for storage of bits and pieces. It also meant I got to keep the switching core and network gear in a seperate room with a 36U telco rack (broomcupboard sized room but again with AC unit) but with only rack mounted network kit. Originally servers were in the broom cupboard along with the switches et al. And there was no room for a rack, and I hated not having a rack for the servers and crawling under the table to get to the back of the hideous pedestal servers. Racks are really the only way to install and work on the servers - so elegant. It also means I can get a biggish mge or eaton ups with batteries to fit nicely into the rack.

Light, space and cooling is not a problem now that the servers are in with me. Noise is a bit annoying at the moment, but could become difficult once the racks are close to 100%. Thanks for the decibel info - i'll take a reading once everything is up to speed. It could certainly be a H&S issue, and if it is it's up to management to sort it - no ifs no buts.

[torledo]

We dont have aircon, we have to open our windows. its quite cool in there in terms of temperature...46 degrees?!

What you really need to is find a more efficient way of expelling the heat. Thats really the cheapest way of reducing the temperature if you can't cool and extract heat with a traditional A/C unit and/or air extraction system.

APC do a little heat extractor/fan that fits into a suspended ceiling grid and expels heat into the suspended ceiling void (£400), would work great with a rack as you could locate it just behind and above the server rack in the path of the exhaust heat from the equipment and great if you've got a suspended ceiling. But something tells me you haven't. 8)

[tech_guy]

I find the best way to keep our server room cool is to stop some of our worse hams (hot air merchants) coming in to the room.....

:-)

[webman]

We moved into our new office yesterday

No noisy servers. No 30°c+ heat. No door open to a loud IT room which also means no teachers just wandering in through the open door. Natural light!!