When it comes to server room cooling systems, the old adage “out of sight, out of mind” definitely does not apply. Even though your servers are stashed away out of sight in dark, windowless server rooms, they are still vital to the everyday operations of your business.
Modern servers run hot and fast, which poses a problem because excess heat can prove very damaging to server hardware. High temperatures and humidity can result in random reboots, system crashes, and generally poor performance.
Fortunately, protecting your servers from heat is fairly simple. Make installing and maintaining a high-quality server room cooling system your top priority, and you can significantly reduce the likelihood of server crashes due to equipment failure.
Three Vital Functions of the Cooling System
Your server room cooling system actually has three vital functions to perform: temperature control, humidity reduction, and air circulation. To prevent equipment from overheating, the system should be programmed to keep the room within the recommended range of operating temperatures, as described by the server equipment manufacturer. To prevent rust and corrosion, they system should keep humidity levels between 40 and 55 percent. Finally, in order to ensure a constant temperature in all parts of the room, the cooling system will need to provide air circulation to eliminate hot spots.
Equipment Requirements
Ideally, your server room cooling system should be independent from the rest of the building’s cooling system. This ensures that you can always guarantee ideal temperature conditions in the server room, even on nights or weekends when the rest of the building doesn’t require cooling. Your cooling system should also be able to perform automatic restarts in the event of a power outage, so that cooling can resume as quickly as possible and without manual intervention after hours. Finally, your cooling system should have a vent hose, which can be fed into existing ductwork in order to whisk hot air away from your servers.
Portable air conditioning units that meet all of these equipment requirements are often considered the best way of providing server room cooling. They are simpler and easier to access and maintain than central air conditioning units. Plus, their portability offers the potential to move them around the server room to attack especially stubborn hot spots. Finally, they come with condensation tanks for effectively containing moisture removed from the air during cooling.
If you need help assessing the performance of your server room cooling system or choosing a new system, don’t hesitate to get a professional opinion. With the integrity of your servers at stake, it’s well worth the expense.