Seeking cooling recommendation

[speckytecky]

Anyone got recommendations for additional cooling for Tower Servers. Our main server is in an Air Con'd Suite but our Admin serrver lives in a smallish office which becomes really stuffy and hot in summer. There is a window but even with that open it's toasty.

 

What I'm after is a suggestion that's not too expensive for getting the air flowing and temp down out of hours when the windows is locked. Anyone found something that works that they can recommend?

[danrhodes]

Move the admin server to the server room? The simple solutions are the best!

[SYNACK]

Does it have more than one exterior wall or have a wall that opens into a large well ventilated area. You can use convection currents to your advantage by adding an expell-air type fan to the top of the exterior wall and add some passive intake vents lower down to the larger well ventilated area. The combination of the riseing hot air and the pull created by the expulsion fan will usually set up quite a nice air current from the ventilated area out the expulsion fan going past the server in question.

 

This is not the best solution AC or moving it would probably be more efficient however it is a much cheaper option than AC and if you are not able to move it then it may suffice. You could probably get another length of data cable run from the server room to wherever the sattilite office is (depending on distance) if it is on a seporate network and manage it that way for about the same cost as the above solution.

[speckytecky]

Problem is it was a Capita recommendation and install for hands on use as a workstation by the Business Manager.

 

Move the admin server to the server room? The simple solutions are the best!

[pete]

Problem is it was a Capita recommendation and install for hands on use as a workstation by the Business Manager.

 

Unless you're a primary, that's a rather stupid recommendation. If the business manager arses up his workstation, no-one can get into SIMS.

 

*wanders off before he starts shouting "you don't use servers as desktops" *

 

edit: "air-conditioned suite" implies you don't have a dedicated server room, right? So the admin server wouldn't be sufficiently secure where the other one is?

Edited April 30, 2010 by pete

[speckytecky]

Unless you're a primary, that's a rather stupid recommendation. If the business manager arses up his workstation, no-one can get into SIMS.

 

*wanders off before he starts shouting "you don't use servers as desktops" *

 

edit: "air-conditioned suite" implies you don't have a dedicated server room, right? So the admin server wouldn't be sufficiently secure where the other one is?

 

Yep - it's a Primary. We do have a pretty secure Air Con'd ICT Suite where the curriculum server lives - so yes best solution would be to have the Admin Server in there and the Business Manager accessing via a workstation. Budgetary constraints mean that's a no go though so I'm looking at best options to get some ventilation to the kit.

[Andrew_C]

I' put quite a lot of money on it being cheaper to get Buis Man a cheap desktop than it would be to get someone in to punch two holes in a wall, and a sparks to fit a fan in one of them.

[SYNACK]

We just chucked the holes in ourselves, ten minutes, a jigsaw and a couple of exterior vents from a hardware store and the internal vent is done. Only had to get the electrition in for the extractor fan.

 

I can see the need for physical security though, even if the IT suite is secure it still probably has kids and teachers walking in and out of it all the time putting the data and hardware at an unacceptable risk. At one point we had the servers in the AP office (server room rebuild was in progress at the time), this office of course got frequented by naughty children which were told to sit in the corner. At least they were until one got the bright idea to fiddle with the buttons on the outside of the server cases. Cue mayhem.

[Andrew_C]

We just chucked the holes in ourselves, ten minutes, a jigsaw

OK, I was assuming bricks, and possibly not on the ground floor.

[danrhodes]

Problem is it was a Capita recommendation and install for hands on use as a workstation by the Business Manager.

 

 

SERVER AS A DESKTOP???? Bit risky!

 

D

[synaesthesia]

I'd quite like to know who exactly from Capita suggested such a setup - they'd want shooting and disciplining (in that order). As was mentioned, a workstation of reasonable spec will set you back a mere £500 with all the gubbins included, meaning there's absolutely no reason for such a bodge-job setup as that.

[speckytecky]

SERVER AS A DESKTOP???? Bit risky!

 

D

 

Yerp - fully agreeespecially as I have caught the receptionists kid working on it after normal school hours when same was catching up! Added problem is SBM recently promoted from Admin Officer is now my Line Manager.

[speckytecky]

I'd quite like to know who exactly from Capita suggested such a setup - they'd want shooting and disciplining (in that order). As was mentioned, a workstation of reasonable spec will set you back a mere £500 with all the gubbins included, meaning there's absolutely no reason for such a bodge-job setup as that.

 

I know that we have Capita folk amongst our members - perhaps one can explain the recommendation - seemed strange to me as well. That said previously SIMS was hosted on a lowly workstation.

[PiqueABoo]

Quite a few Primary schools have combined SIMS +office-user XP workstations in this neck of the woods and they're on my personal hit list. For a typical Primary these days I reckon the best £££-saving and pragmatic approach is (where necessary) to throw a bit more RAM into what I hope is an OK-ish curriculum server with next-day warranty and run a SIMS VM (server OS) on there.

 

previously SIMS was hosted on a lowly workstation.

 

It's a relatively small and lightly stressed database and despite the MS/SIMS bloat a half-decent workstation *is* up to the job for a few users in a Primary. In this scenario you only really need Sever when it's more than a few users because of the 10 connection limit.