30 ms·
> Maintaining a stable temperature and humidity within tight tolerances is critical to IT system reliability. Data center HVAC engineer here. The part about ti
by tjmc 8y ago
> Maintaining a stable temperature and humidity within tight tolerances is critical to IT system reliability.
Data center HVAC engineer here. The part about tight tolerances is not entirely accurate. IT equipment can handle a reasonably wide range of temperatures. The ASHRAE guidelines [1] have a range of 18 to 27 deg C for all classes of equipment.
What is an issue is rapid changes between temperatures. For a data center with any kind of devices (eg tape storage), ASHRAE limits this rate of change to 5degC within a 15 minute period and obviously you also want to avoid any situation where condensation could occur or static build up (high or low relative humidity).
Data centers do try to keep the temp stable towards the top of the thermal envelope for economic reasons but there's always some fluctuation due to server load.
[1] ASHRAE TC9.9 Data Center Power Equipment Thermal
Guidelines and Best Practices http://tc0909.ashraetcs.org/documents/ashrae_tc0909_power_white_paper_22_june_2016_revised.pdf http://tc0909.ashraetcs.org/documents/ashrae_tc0909_power_wh...
- gerdesj 8y agoAye. The old rules are ... old rules. Nowadays we have rather a lot of temperature sensors - inlet, outlet and each subsystem has multiple sensors - they will also report max and min and current. Rapid changes in temperature and interactions with certain ranges of humidity can be interesting.
- taneq 8y agoWow, your gear is treated so nicely. The stuff I work on has to deal with anywhere between 0C and 80C while having the crap shaken out of it and occasionally being hit with a high pressure hose. Different worlds...
- gerdesj 8y agoOK, high pressure hose in a data centre piques my interest 8) I stuck a camera on a stick at the southern boundary of my property, about three feet above the stream. The stream rose four feet for a while. I moved the camera. Now, 0 to 80C. That is just plain odd. Here (southern UK) the temp range is something like -10 to +35C. Nowhere has 0-80C apart from a weird oven.
- taneq 8y agoThis is minesite automation stuff, so it usually lives in a stainless steel cabinet, ambient air temperature can be over 50C, sometimes sharing the space with high power switchgear. It's not unheard of for the inside of the cabinets to be over 70C if it's mounted in direct sunlight, so most gear is rated to 80C. Then at other times in the year it'll get down to freezing.