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
23
votes
11 answers

Why datacenter water cooling is not widespread?

From what I read and hear about datacenters, there are not too many server rooms which use water cooling, and none of the largerst datacenters use water cooling (correct me if I'm wrong). Also, it's relatively easy to buy an ordinary PC components…
Arseni Mourzenko
  • 2,275
  • 5
  • 28
  • 41
20
votes
5 answers

Is carpet, or another floor covering, appropriate for a server room?

Ive requested the carpet to be removed from my server room, a disaster was almost waiting to happen air con leaked and the carpet UNDER the rack was soaked. (air con unit 0.3 meter from rear of servers) They have asked if we can have some sort of…
user121246
  • 291
  • 1
  • 4
  • 14
17
votes
3 answers

Ideal humidity for a server room?

Most equipment is rated for a wide range of humidity (5 to 95% non-condensing, for instance). However, what is the ideal humidity? Higher humidity carries heat away from equipment a little better, but may also be more corrosive, for instance.
Adam Davis
  • 5,446
  • 3
  • 37
  • 52
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
  • 253
  • 1
  • 7
  • 21
15
votes
5 answers

Cooling Server Rack with Water? Sensible? Reuse energy for small installation?

First - this is not a shopping question and not about concrete prices but about general feasibility. It makes no sense to look for a manufacturer if the approach is bad. I am moving my company to new offices in September, and during the move we will…
TomTom
  • 51,649
  • 7
  • 54
  • 136
14
votes
2 answers

Ethernet port plastic plug blocking port access on server

I have Dell Poweredge server with plastic blockers inside their ethernet ports. My problem is that I don't know how to take it out. You can see photo of the plug here: I tried to pull them out, or to squeeze and then pull, but they don't move. I…
Marko
  • 371
  • 5
  • 18
13
votes
16 answers

Computer in cold and damp environment (a shed)

Background I am hoping to convert a shed in my garden into a home office. The shed has a concrete base and brese block walls. It already has Power and Ethernet and will soon be watertight. However I am now wondering about some of the…
Jeremy French
  • 675
  • 3
  • 12
  • 25
13
votes
3 answers

Heat Sink compound and older desktops and workstations

This is my first question asked on SF, so be gentle kids. As my desktops (approximately 110 or so) have begun to age and with my users resisting Windows 8, I've begun to notice an odd trend. We are primarily an HP shop. So the desktops I am having…
MikeAWood
  • 2,566
  • 1
  • 13
  • 13
12
votes
4 answers

Is it bad to stack rackmount servers?

I have a couple of Dell 1U rackmount servers that I need to temporarily move out of a rack. Is it bad for them to be stacked on top of eachother?
Chris
  • 405
  • 4
  • 8
12
votes
13 answers

Whats the average lifespan of a server?

i'd really like to know what the lifespan of a server is, or could be. Is there something like lifespan in the world of PCs at all? Lets assume it runs 24/7, how many hours/days/years/etc could it be used?
therufa
  • 257
  • 1
  • 5
  • 18
12
votes
8 answers

Cooling for a small server room

I have a server room about 12 feet square with an unfinished ceiling (exposed ducts and wiring). It houses a few servers (about ten, 1U and 2U) and some networking gear (four 1U switches, three routers, three modems, two cable boxes). With the door…
John Zwinck
  • 281
  • 2
  • 4
  • 17
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
  • 3
  • 11
11
votes
2 answers

Using 48v for servers

I'm currently in the middle of a process to specify and design a new server environment for graphics and video rendering. We know we want to use blades, and we're pretty sure of our vendor decisions. We've got one massive problem, and that's…
10
votes
4 answers

How should I store my HDDs?

I have a few HDDs which contain backup data. I want to store them in a secure place. I know some good practices like storing them in a different building so if there is, let's say, a fire, you can still restore the data. But I am more concerned in…
user395136
10
votes
15 answers

Best floor of a tall building to locate your server room or data center

What reasons would you give for locating data centre in the basement instead of a upper floors?
Chris Huang-Leaver
  • 315
  • 1
  • 3
  • 10
1
2
3
13 14