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[benn600]

I have put the new server in a small closet, about 4 feet wide by 10 feet long.  It is fairly large but clearly too small to allow the heat to dissipate easily.  The room gets too hot over an hour or two.  Do I need a standalone air conditioner for the area?  Are there any other options?  There are no air vents from the house system in the area at the moment.

Worse yet, it is definitely too loud.  The server has 5 large fans which I have slowed way down.  The problem are the fans in the redundant power supplies.  Are there any ways to slow these down?

[newsposter]

Think about what you've written here.

The room is too hot, has no ventilation, yet you want to slow down the system cooling fans because of noise.

AFAIK, 'noise' has never killed a system or drive assembly.  Heat will almost always do it.  Quickly.  First things first.

A closed room with a major source of heat will in turn get hot no matter the size of the room.

[AoXoMoXoA]

1 - you need to have ventilation (air flow, not necessarily a/c) to keep the closet a servicable temperature

2 - sound absorbsortion and baffling can significantly reduce noise without a major loss of airflow

3 - as in real estate: location, location, location (if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it)


btw, Benn - I don't know what is in your signature, but everytime I open/refresh this page I get a request to logon . . . . .

"The server ppcpathways.com at Raid Console requires a username and password."

[Magic_Randy]

btw, Benn - I don't know what is in your signature, but everytime I open/refresh this page I get a request to logon . . . . .
"The server ppcpathways.com at Raid Console requires a username and password."

+1

I think all of the pages with your posts do the same thing.

[newsposter]

You don't think it's possible that Ben has exposed the admin interface of his server to the internet?

[benn600]

Thanks for removing the images.  I did make a mistake in my configuration and have been busy with fourth celebrations so didn't test things properly.

Since this post we discussed the issue a lot and we did discuss piping AC air to the room and pulling the hot air out but overall the easiest solution is another room which is icy from air.  This means the heating issue is fully resolved but I will need to consider some sound diminishing techniques.

Thanks everyone.

[benn600]

We are exploring a few options including adding air circulation to the small area but also adding a third zone to the theater because it definitely has trouble when in heavy use-- 7 to 10 + people can be in there with all the hot equipment and poor circulation.  A third zone would completely solve the problem with a dedicated trunk to maintain proper temperature.

[newsposter]

Get yourself a closed in rack of the 19" wide, 22" deep, and 6'+ high variety.  Make sure that the rack has exhaust fans in the top AND intake fans at the bottom.  You can get racks with dual in/out fans and alarms for temp and fan function.  Or you can set up the server itself to monitor and report on temp sensors that stick out into the in and out air flows.

A decent rack like this should be able to muffle sound without impeding the flow of cooling air and exit of hot air.

I use a 4' high rack, but I have it mounted/hanging on the ceiling of the basement mechanical room.  This way it's off the floor, closer to the overhead air ducting for heat exhaust (cool air is not a problem) and the stuff I have mounted in the rack is more easily accessible from a step stool instead of stooping over or sitting on the floor.  Plus I have no worries about the (remote) possibility that a wet basement floor could drop my comms and storage systems.