Hot Spots, Temperature Variations

When the thermostat on the wall reads 72 degF, the natural tendency of most people is to assume this means that the room is 72 degF everywhere.  But of course, this simply isn't the case; temperatures can vary by 10 degrees or more in a room, and variations of 20 degF inside server cabinets are common.  It is good practice to check different areas of the room and monitor your server room's temperature with several sensors at multiple locations - otherwise, equipment on one side of the room might be running hot while equipment on the other side is well within normal limits, and you might never know until it's too late.

How UPS Helps Cook Gear

Ironically, a UPS unit can help fry your equipment.  While a UPS can keep the server equipment running when main power fails, it doesn't keep the air conditioners going.

While keeping the equipment running during a power failure may make the users happy, it also means that the gear will keep making tons of heat.  In as little as two or three hours, the equipment could fry itself into scrap.

If main power fails for more than a few minutes, the safest thing for the server room equipment would be to shut each down until the air conditioning is restored.  The servers should be gracefully shut down; programs exited, files closed, and the machines powered off.  While an hour or two without service may frustrate your users, just imagine how much worse it will be if your system is off-line for days or weeks because you had to re-build the entire server room after the equipment cooks itself...

Of course, to be able to shut the servers down at the right time, you would need to know that the a/c isn't working - for that ITWatchDogs provides low cost and easy to use power and climate monitors that alert you when temp falls above/below a certain level or in event of power failure.  Check out www.itwatchdogs.com for details or contact sales@itwatchdogs.com with your questions to see what product is right for you.