I appreciate your green initiative!  

Are these servers that need to be powered on full time?  IE, our
accounting server: I have always thought about shutting it off on
weekends.  It never gets accessed other that 8-5 M-F.

Perhaps you could stick some more 24 critical servers in a data center
somewhere, and be able to shut down everything else Th-Sun at your
office...

I would concur though, that you don't normally want to leave your
servers on at elevated temperatures for extended amounts of time if you
can avoid it.  It's ok once in a while for emergencies...  You could
possible mitigate the risk if you have tons of spare parts though, but I
guarantee your pager will be going off more than you care for :)

Sam

-----Original Message-----
From: John Hornbuckle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 3:01 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Speaking of server heat...

I had mentioned in an earlier thread we're looking at going to a 4-day
work week over the summer so that air conditioning in our buildings
could be shut off Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week.

Since our server rooms (aside from our NOC) aren't on separate A/C
systems, this would mean completely shutting the servers down every
Thursday and bringing them back up on Monday. We'd also need to do the
same with all of the switches in our wiring closets.

Upper management has seen the problems this could create, and it looks
as though instead we'll be leaving the A/C on, but at a higher
temperature. Our Dell servers are rated to run at up to 95 degrees with
80% humidity. I don't want to hit those levels, though, and am pushing
for us to let temps get no higher than 85 degrees.

My question is, could even this lead to problems down the road? I
understand that it's within the operating range of the servers. However,
it's still on the high side. It will result in higher-than-usual
temperatures for the servers, and their fans will run at higher speeds
(which, ironically, will consume more electricity and partially offset
the money we're trying to save). The fans are mechanical devices, so
running at higher speeds would have to reduce their lifespans somewhat,
I would think. Any other considerations? Effects on other components of
the servers?




John Hornbuckle
MIS Department
Taylor County School District
318 North Clark Street
Perry, FL 32347

www.taylor.k12.fl.us



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