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Would getting a blackout blind reduce the temperature of my server room?

I have already silvered the windows and our aircon is struggling but we are not in a position to be able to replace the aircon yet.

Sorry if this question is out of scope

Simon Foster
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1 Answers1

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It might, but probably not significantly.

Replacing the aircon really is the only option. Let me guess, it's a small room, and the aircon just can't keep the temperature low? There's probably not enough air in the room to outweigh the thermal output of the servers. So you'll get the situation where it's not possible to cool the air fast enough to keep it cool.

One possible solution is to implement some kind of hot/cold aisle isolation so that hot air stays at the back, and cold air is drawn in at the front, although this is tricky, and might not give a significant benefit.

Tom O'Connor
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  • Maybe it would be worthwhile for the OP to look into open-air cooling ? – Stephane Jul 18 '13 at 09:35
  • You mean evaporative cooling? I wouldn't. That increases the relative humidity, so you have a hot, wet environment. Ideal for cooling people, terrible for cooling precision electronics. – Tom O'Connor Jul 18 '13 at 09:38
  • Or do you mean opening the window? That has numerous security implications, and you'd have to fit some heavy-weight intrusion prevention system (Big-ass bars). – Tom O'Connor Jul 18 '13 at 09:38
  • No, I mean opening the windows and putting on large ventilators. It won't work in very moist environment but, in case of temporary spike in temperature that makes it impossible for the AV to keep the air flow down, it works quite well (facebook even designed a whole datacenter on that principle). Modern equipment is actually much more resilient to moisture, dust and moderately high temperature than to the very high temperature that can be reached in a closed environment with insufficient AC. Just an idea, though – Stephane Jul 18 '13 at 09:42
  • Oh, I agree there are implications, but without more detail about the context, I think it's worth mentioning. – Stephane Jul 18 '13 at 09:43