5 tips to protect your data center hardware
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, power monitoring, temperature monitoring, water leak monitoring
I work with network administrators everyday and I hear one common story. They are not buying servers. The IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker supports me on this. Server vendors are reporting that their business is off 24.5 percent from last year, falling to $9.9 billion in the first quarter of 2009.
They don’t have the budget or can’t get the budget to update their aging equipment. So, what can these admins do to extend the life of their equipment?
Just like an older automobile, maintenance and proper care of the equipment can easily extend your equipment’s life. Constant monitoring of your system inside and out can save you from loosing mission critical servers. Environmental monitors like the temperature and humidity, airflow, smoke and water sensors can be used to make sure that the environment that your systems operate in are the best they can be.
Now, I know what you are saying, “Jim’s just a salesman and wants you to buy something.” Although I might get excited about a product and preach its goodness, I am not a sales person . I might dream of being the star of a Shamtastic infomercial, but trust me, I’m not. What I do want you to know, is that there are some simple things that you can to to help save your hardware.
- Your server room is not a storage area! If it is, it really shouldn’t be. Extra stuff in the room can cause heat issues and possibly be a fire hazard. Keep the area clean and free of obstacles.
- Manage your cables properly. I had a boss who had a hang up on making sure the all cables were organized correctly. You guessed it, I didn’t think it was all that important. In hindsight, I was wrong. Keeping them organized is great for physical management, but more importantly, it makes it easier to manage airflow. Be it a cable tunnel or just pulling them together with a zip tie, making sure your servers get the correct ventilation is important.
- Have a physical maintenance window for your machines. It might bring you back to youthful A+ days, but making sure the servers are dust free and cables are in the correct place can help immensely.
- Monitor the servers health with an SNMP Trending app. Most servers can give you CPU, Server Temp, Fan Info and other valuable information, via a simple SNMP walk. A SNMP trending application, like Denika, will allow you to gather historical information on this data and alert on it.
- Monitor your environment. As I mentioned before, monitoring the room temp, humidity and airflow will make your admin life a lot easier. If you have some room in your budget, this might be the best way to spend it.
So there it is. I guess the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is correct. Even in today’s super digital world!
- Jimmy D
Running a computer in a sub-zero environment
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, temperature monitoring
I just saw a post on Slashdot that was asking the question, “How to Run a Computer in a Sub-Zero Environment?” Since network design is a passion of mine, this exercise interested me. It was a simple question, definitely not common. Even here in Maine, we are always trying to cool down our servers. I never considered someone might need to do the opposite.
Anonymous Coward (7548) gave us a real world answer. “Putting heaters (computers) in an environment meant to be cold is just adding to the cooling workload. If the computer is at any decent operating temperature, it’s going to be heating up the immediate surrounding area, and you don’t want that.” He advised people to mount the computer outside of the cold environment and put the sensor probes inside.
Although this appeared to be a sensible idea, the discussion added a new variable – building size. People were quick to point out that the original question required that he needed monitoring for a warehouse. Most warehouses are large, some larger then a football field. Clearly the above approach would not be applicable.
Embedding the PC inside of the sub-zero environment presents another issue – condensation. How are we going to protect the electronics?
BobPaul (710574) points out:
“Since cold air has a lower capacity to hold water, warming the air should decrease the relative humidity of the air, bringing you farther from the dew point and make condensation less likely. Just let everything sit in the cooler to get nice and cold before you turn anything on and I think it should be just fine.”
This response produced quite a bit of traffic. Quite a few people disagreed with BobPauls theory. Although this could be an answer, its validity is still in question.
The best solution to humidity was pointed out by Detritus (11846). He points out that “Military equipment often uses conformal coating, which is a spray-on plastic coating that protects the components from the environment.” This method encases the electronics protecting it from moisture. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t provide any thermal benefit, nor is it a life long solution. I would make sure to have a humidity sensor in the enclosure to ensure longevity.
The last post that I read made the solution clear. munpfazy (694689) writes, “For what it’s worth, we’ve always built room-temperature enclosures to house electronics gear and PCs for the work we do in Antarctica.” You can’t get much colder than that.
My conclusion, build small micro enclosures for the computer that includes the required environmental conditioning and monitoring equipment.
Let me know what you think . . .
- Jimmy D
Recommended Server Room Temperature and your Ravica SensorProbes
Filed under: environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors, temperature monitoring
Today’s network meetings subject was “Recommended Server Room Temperature”. It appears that our new goal is to make sure that the server farm keeps its temperature at a constant rate. They used the network operations policy for University of California, San Diego as an example. It’s funny, but nobody knew what that temperature should be.
After some research, I found out that the general recommendations suggest that you should not go below 10°C (50°F) or above 28°C (82°F). This is a wide range, remember these are the extremes. It is far more common for server rooms to maintain a temperature around 20-21°C (68-71°F). Keeping it at that temperature can be difficult, there are many variables to address.
I am going to set the thermostat at 55°F and monitor it’s status throughout the day with our Bitsight8 and multiple temperature and humidity probes. I have 20 days to gather this data and report on it. My guess is that we will have to adjust the set temperature a bit before we make the network policy.
~ Jimmy D
Should we Recycle Server Room Heat?
Over the weekend, I was watching System, which is one of my favorite shows on Revision3 .com. One of the questions was on how to use the excess heat generated by computers to heat a room. I am a big supporter of the “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” philosophy, and thought that was a great idea.
After some hard and heavy Google’n, I was excited to find out other ways people have used this wasted server room energy. The story of a Mid-Western college saving their greenhouse caught my eye.
“The University of Notre Dame’s high-performance computing (HPC) department has taken things a step further. It now reuses the heat generated by its servers to warm up a historic greenhouse that the city of South Bend, Ind., has threatened to shut down.”
By using the heat from the server they are saving the university $100,000 on cooling costs and the owner of the botanical garden, the City of South Bend, Indiana, another $70,000 on heating costs. It’s win-win for everyone.
Now I am trying to figure out ways to implement this type of thinking here at work and at home. I think that my first step would be to add another temperature probe to the back of the server rack. This should give me the data that I need.
Maybe I can use the excess heat to warm up my cube. I’ll update you with what I find out.
Using SensorProbes to prove the office temperature is too low.
Filed under: environmental monitoring, General, Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes
I was angry. Well, maybe just a little mad, but no matter what, I was still upset. The office was unbelievably cold, and it had been going on for way too long. By cold, I mean goose bumps and jackets every afternoon. When I would go for a lunch time walk (as I often do), my muscles would cramp, due to the drastic temperature change. As I said, it was cold.
Needless to say, something had to be done. I complained to the powers that be, but their first response was less then rewarding. Answers like “It’s in your head,” or “You are right under the vent,” were explored; but I knew that they were wrong.
Luckily, things got worse. The temperature was getting colder and for longer periods of time. More people were saying things like “Gee it’s cold,” or “Hey, are you cold?” and “Turn up the heat or I am breaking up the conference room table and building the biggest bonfire this side of Boston.” In one remote section of the office there were a group of dissidents that wanted to change the company dress code so that it included a L.L Bean Arctic Parka.
At this point I decided to throw on my Jimmy D detective hat and get some proof. Since I am Uber Geek, I decided to use the tools of my trade, I would need technology!
I integrated a high scale, super conductive data collection station into my work environment. To be honest with you, it surpasses the one that I once viewed at MIT that is currently used to monitor global warming. In reality, I secretly moved my BitSight2 temperature probe from the server room over to my desk. I then setup Denika to trend its SNMP data. With Denika I was able to set a minimum temperature threshold, which would alert me when the temp fell.
I diligently collected data for two weeks. I even adjusted the threshold, as I saw the temp get lower and lower. The data was conclusive. I had my answer. I could now confidently register my complaint to the powers that be and demand change! At the same time, I now had the ability to defuse the previously described uprising. Viva Data! Viva Jimmy D! Maybe I need to get out of my cube more often?
Again, in reality, I took this data to my boss and quickly showed him that in the afternoons were seeing an average of 54 degrees, mornings were a bit higher. He took this to building management and they are currently in the process of finding out what the issue is.
The good news is that my cube is getting warmer, the bad news is the I got my BitSight taken away!
Simple Ways To Make Your Server Room Green
Did you know that there are simple ways to make your current server room green?
“There are hundreds of areas identified as server rooms or data centers – from small server closets to large enterprise data centers, each with unique needs. Despite differing specifications, one key important conservation practice is to keep servers out of undesignated spaces; they should be housed in a server closet, server room, or data center that adheres to the energy-saving best practices.” – UMICH.edu
The University of Michigan has pointed out simple ways to adjust how your current setup can be adjusted to help you save energy and your environment. They list options for data centers the size of a closet (1 to 2 servers) to Enterprise size (100′s of servers)
Corria Nucci from Informationweek’s Green Computing Webblog points out that one of the best ways to save energy is to consolidate your servers. This option has become popular in recent years due to the power of the recent processors and the ease of “Virtual” environments like VMWare.
Analysts, however, are skeptical about all the new marketing over greener IT. “Many of the answers are things that don’t generate publicity, such as rightsizing the facility and supporting green design principles,” says Steve Wallage, a managing consultant at BroadGroup.
The end result is that companies are not buying into the hype due to cost or lack of supporting data. They just can’t see it helping.
The best answer? IT analysts and vendors both agree it is in metrics: studying power consumption, reallocating server loads, refocusing airflows—and even in simple measures such as shutting off a server that’s not in use.
This can all be done with simple equipment that will help you monitor your server rooms environmental conditions, such as Ravica’s “Used Power Monitor Sensor” and the “Temperature” and “Air Flow” sensors. In the end, these small steps will not only help the world be a little greener and possibly cut down your energy and equipment costs.
____________________________________
Jim Dougherty aka “Jimmy D”
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!
Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/jimmydnet
____________________________________
Scientists find a way to generate electricity through vibrations
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, Intelligent Sensors
Scientists have discovered how to make electricity by converting low-frequency vibrations, like simple body movements, the beating of the heart or movement of the wind into energy. The discovery could enable you to charge your iPod or BlackBerry with a wave of your hand. According to researchers at the School of Material Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the findings could also be used for environmental monitoring.
The vibrations from movement is converted into electricity using zinc oxide nanowires. The nanowires generate an electric current when subjected to mechanical stress, according to the American Chemical Society. The researchers presented their findings at the ACS’s annual meeting in March.
The nanowires can be grown on a wide range of surfaces including metals, ceramics, polymers and fabrics.
The researchers believe the discovery could be used by the military to generate electricity for sensors and communication devices when they are far from energy sources, but what is the application for environmental monitoring?
For our purposes, we monitor the environment to ensure that it remains the same so that equipment is not adversely affected by a dramatic change in temperature, for example. In theory, we could use the nanowires to convert the ambient vibrations of the room into electricity and use that to charge the monitoring equipment. Or perhaps set a threshold for the ambient vibrations so that a change in the environment would kick the nanowires to turning on an alarming device.
The nanowires reminded me of metal whiskers or zinc whiskers, a data center manager’s worst enemy. They’re tiny hairs that grow spontaneously on metal surfaces and can cause short circuits. According to Wikipedia, zinc whiskers have been responsible for increased systems failure rates in computer server rooms. They can grow underneath zinc electroplated floor tiles used in raised floors due to the friction when they’re walked on. They can break off disk drives causing head crashes or bearing failures.
They’re a data center manager’s worst nightmare because zinc whiskers wouldn’t be the first thing that would spring to mind when faced with a systems crash in the server room.
My Ravica sensorProbe woke me up! Time for some coffee.
What a morning here at our Network operations center. My cell phone paged me at 2:00 am letting me know that server room 4 was overheating. After I grumbled a few choice words, I got out of bed to see what the issue might be. I also received another page from the air flow probe .
I logged into Denika and then clicked on the SvrRoom4 report group. I pat myself on the back for being super smart. When we set up this server room I made sure to setup reports for the various Ravica probes and complimented them with other related SNMP reports. I have quite a few, port utilization, memory, CPU utilization and most importantly System Temperature.
So I looked at the reports. I drilled down in the historical graph and could see that the air flow sensor saw a steady decline a little after 1:30 am. I then went over to the temp sensor and started to see the temp climb around 1:45 am. The temperature sensor reached the threshold at 1:55 am.
At this point I was a bit puzzled. We had placed the air flow sensor by the cooling unit but the AC voltage detector was reporting fine. That means the environmental fan was running.
I’m lucky, I was the designer of this server room and was adamant about having a security light that I could turn off or on remotely. So I sent the command to turn on the light and then logged into the webcam. The good news is that I could see what happened. We had stacked some cardboard boxes on that wall and one had fallen in front of the vent. That means that fan was running but air couldn’t get out.
The good news is that I was able to find and remedy the problem quickly. The bad news is that I had to get dressed and drive over to the office and move the boxes. I did make sure to stack all the boxes on top of the desk of the person who was supposed to get rid of them in the first place!
____________________________________
Jim Dougherty aka “Jimmy D”
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!
Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/jimmydnet
____________________________________
5 tips for an energy-efficient data center
Designing a data center is much like designing a nursery for a newborn baby. You want your pride and joy to be happy and thrive in a room that’s not too cold, not too warm, and have the correct humidity. Below are five top tips to a happy data center. The tips are taken from the Green Grid‘s recently released whitepaper Fundamentals of data center power and cooling efficiency zones.
1. Blowing hot and cold: Having parallel rows of equipment racks facing forward may look neat and tidy but it could make a sauna out of your data center. IT equipment sucks in cool air via the front and pushes out hot air from the back. If a machine is spewing out hot air the device behind it is sucking that in when it should be taking in cold air. Imagine how hot the air must be in the last row of machines. The ideal placement for rows of equipment would be to have the front of the servers facing each other. The backs of the rows should also be facing each other to create a hot aisle/cold aisle configuration.
2. Place cables overhead: If the space underneath the raised floor is a spaghetti junction of cables cool air won’t be able to do its job in the data center. Cables should be distributed overhead and unused raised floor cutouts should be blocked to eliminate unwanted air leakage. The Green Grid recommends that perforated tiles, with a design of about 25% open area, should be used to ensure uniform and predictable airflow distribution in lower density areas.
3. Recommended temperatures: The recommended range of temperature for critical enterprise server and storage environments is between 64.4° to 80.6° F (18° to 27° C), according to the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), as cited in the whitepaper. ASHRAE also specifies a dew point value of about 5.5° C (41.9° F).
4. Set air conditioners to the same levels: Computer room air conditioning units with humidifiers are a great addition to ensure optimum humidity of the data center but if you have more than one, be sure that they are set to the same settings. If not, they could be operating at odds with one dehumidifying the air while the other is humidifying it.
5. Cool the source. The white paper recommends using row and rack-based cooling to address dynamic hot spots that can form as workloads are constantly shifted from one server to another. Cool air has a much shorter path of distribution, so bringing cooling closer to the heat source is key.