[NCLUG] Re: "Green" power -- off grid

Chad Perrin perrin at apotheon.com
Fri Sep 19 16:39:18 MDT 2008


On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:56:14PM -0600, DJ Eshelman wrote:
> See- I agree with you on both fronts.
> 
> The last time I was called upon to help with this sort of thing the only 
> thing the schmucks at their HVAC vendor could think to do when I 
> mentioned this is to put in a vent system on a thermostat.
> What I wanted to do was to have them install two 'winter/fall' vents one 
> to draw in air to the front of the racks, one at the back to draw it 
> out, or alternatively to draw the air into the rest of the building when 
> heating was needed.  There would be a clear plastic 'shroud' bordering 
> the front of the racks- like you see in supermarket's freezers, for example.
> 
> So given all this idea, what do they do?  Put two air conditioners in 
> the room, in the BACK of the servers.
> Idiots.
> Then, at about 3 am sometime around November, my pager goes off that the 
> temperature had reached 90 degrees in the server room- the condensers 
> had shut down because the temperature outside dropped below 30 degrees.  
> Their only solution was to add another AC unit (I kid you not).  When 
> that one failed as well- they decided to add a vent.  Amazing how they 
> never thought to just listen to me in the first place- it seems like the 
> savings every year would be immense.
> I've taken this idea to three other places I manage and none want to do 
> it.  I just don't get it!

I'm suddenly reminded of the place I worked when I first moved to
Colorado.

The server room (also my office) was on the top floor of the building, in
leased space.  The building owner wouldn't allow the addition of any
vents.  Our only available mechanisms for cooling the servers were:

  A. building AC

  B. a small AC unit in the room

Of course, without any vents to the outside of the room to direct heat
exhaust from the AC unit, we basically just had to run a tube from the AC
unit into the drop ceiling and hope for the best.  This was especially
problematic because the building owner insisted on turning off the AC
after 6PM every evening.

The end result was:

  A. There was one server that overheated and shut down at about 2AM
  every night, and another that would overheat *sometimes*, depending on
  the season.  Luckily, neither was a system that needed to be on 24/7,
  but I had to come in and turn them back on every morning when they had
  crashed.

  B. If I had to come in after hours to deal with a problem (such as a
  RAID failure at 11PM one night), I couldn't work in there for more than
  about ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch before needing to take a
  break, leaving the top floor of the building entirely to cool down.
  Otherwise, I'd get a splitting headache.

Despite this, my employer just wouldn't do anything to try to rectify the
problem.  I guess the situation was kind of unfixable, at least in the
short term, but considering the company was supposedly making money hand
over fist I think, in the President's position, I would have moved the
business somewhere else, considering its business model was related to
realtime system development, algorithm design, et cetera.  It wasn't like
the contents of the server room constituted an unnecessary expense.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ content licensed PDL: http://pdl.apotheon.org ]
Colin McFadyen: "Unix is not an 'a-ha' experience, it is more of a
'holy-shit' experience."
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