Questions tagged [physical-environment]

This tag is appropriate for questions dealing with the physical environment of a system/deployment (e.g. dust, vibration, etc.) with no better, more specific tag.

This tag is appropriate for questions dealing with the physical environment of a system/deployment. Examples include questions asking about "special" environments, like:

  • Substantial shock/vibration
  • High dust levels
  • High levels of EM interference
  • Extremely hot or cold temperatures, or wide temperature swings
  • Extremely humid areas

If a more specific tag exists, please use that instead.

196 questions
189
votes
12 answers

Physically locating the server

I've got a CentOS server somewhere in the building; I can login into it remotely and VNC, etc. Now I've got to physically move it, and for that I need to physically locate the machine among the lookalikes around the office. What can I do remotely to…
Michael
  • 1,723
32
votes
8 answers

Putting servers inside a refrigerator?

It could be a silly question, but I decided to go for it. I shall be buying 3 servers in the next few weeks to set up a small webfarm at my home. I am told by different people who work in server rooms, that I should keep my servers in an air…
Muhammad Jamal Shaikh
16
votes
10 answers

How to keep your physical server environment manageable

Anybody who's ever worked with servers and even a small LAN environment knows (or should know) how messy things can get. Cables, routers, hubs, servers and so on. Everything crawling where it shouldn't go, and good luck finding that one cable that's…
KdgDev
  • 293
11
votes
2 answers

How to calculate server room air flow requirements

I have a small server closet that sits on a climate-controlled manufacturing floor. Since the main room is air conditioned, I want to use the air from that space to inexpensively cool the server closet by exhausting the server closet to the main…
fwrawx
  • 187
6
votes
1 answer

Should a System Administrator handle office furniture moves,setup and procurement?

I have been getting more and more requests to move furniture and today I was asked to organise furniture for a new office fit-out. How do other handle these requests? Is it often the lot of the sysadmin to get lumped with these requests? If you have…
Matt
  • 1,142
6
votes
8 answers

Air is out in server closet, not going to be fixed until tomorrow... What to do?

We are a small company, so we have a small closet with one server rack. This closet has very good ventilation, so that's not a problem - but today the air went out on this side of our company suite. It didn't occur to me until just now, that means…
Ricket
  • 439
4
votes
6 answers

Dealing with dust?

I know I'm pretty allergic to dust. However, dealing with servers and workstations on a day to day basis, I encounter it all the time. How do you deal with dust?
Brett G
  • 2,023
4
votes
1 answer

Server room in shipping containers

I was wondering if anyone have experience with building server rooms in shipping containers, how viable it is, and what to look out for. We need more space, but can't build due to restrictions, so we are wondering about placing down some permanent…
4
votes
4 answers

Cleaning soot out of a server

Cleaning dusty servers is one thing - but I have a slightly different problem: Soot in the servers! During some warm summer months, we needed to open the windows at our server room. Unfortunately, the windows are located directly above the exhaust…
Kristian
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3
votes
3 answers

Equipment suggestion for exhaust and cooling for a small server room

I am currently looking for solutions to cool down and exhausting the heat that is currently being generated by our blade servers. Recently we migrated from 12 custom built tower servers to 5 1RU DELL 1850 Edge servers and 4 Dell 2950 Edge servers,…
3
votes
8 answers

How can one reduce computer sound noise levels?

What measures can be taken to reduce the sound noise levels coming from computers (i.e. sound noise from fans, hard drives etc.) in an office space setting or home setting?
Spoike
  • 369
3
votes
4 answers

server cooling - unique and odd situation

There were a lot of questions asked about server cooling, but I can't seem to find the one that fits our needs. Our server rack/cabinet is situated in the mail room, which can get extremely hot in the summer times. Plus, because we're on the top…
3
votes
4 answers

Best ways to move a server room and 80 desktops to a new building

Need to plan the best way to physically move a server room (12 IBM x3400 towers) and all associated networking equipment to a new building. Everything is going, comms (80 strong call centre operation), desktops(80-90) the whole lot and has to be…
Marko
  • 97
2
votes
3 answers

Should I put an air purifier in my computer room?

My small computer room (~250 sq ft) seems dusty. Is there any reason against putting an air purifier in a computer room? Could it cause problems?
Daniel
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1
vote
2 answers

What causes servers to reload or shut down if COLO temperature is around 35C or above?

What causes servers to shut down or reload in case of high temperature? For example Juniper network equipment running Junos OS will halt the routing engine if it's CPU temperature remains above 100C for more than 60s: Jun 3 00:40:32 M10i…
Martin
  • 372
1
2