Re: Equipment in loft - dust and heat issues?

[Neil Fuller <neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dermot

I've had two servers in the loft for the last 4 years and there have
been no problems.

In the summer, temperatures have reached 45DegC and I really expected
the one with 4 drives in it to keel over but it just carried on! Cold
hasn't been an issue either.

My 24 port Linksys switch is in the loft (in a rack) and that's been
fine as well.

As far as dust in concerned, I wouldn't have thought it to be too much
of a problem in a 3 year old house.

Noise is a bit of a problem though. The big box does hum on the
floor/ceiling but it's only audible when standing directly beneath it. I
keep meaning to get some kind of anti vibration mount up there but it
hasn't been that much of a problem yet so I keep finding more important
things to do.

Oh, I should mention that the 'big' box is only a 900MHz Athlon - It's
only NAS and my weather site server.

HTH

Regards

Neil

dermot_bradley wrote:

>Hey folks
>
>I moved house a few months ago (just after finishing wiring on my last
>place doh!) and am trying to plan stuff out in the new house (3 years
>old but new to me). Unlike the previous place there's nowhere under
>the stairs to put kit and cables and I think the garage is out for
>various reasons.
>
>I was just going to put the ether switch, router, CAT5 cables etc in a
>corner of my home office but now I'm wondering about using the loft.
>However I'm considered about dust and heat up there.
>
>At the very least I'd consider having CAT5 cable run to a patch panel
>there and the ether switch up there. The aerial coax already meets
>there for a amp/splitter.
>
>I'm planned on building a couple/few new servers and am considering
>whether to put them up there - the RAID server probably would generate
>too much heat (and the noise might echo down thru the roof into the
>bedrooms) but the other boxes may be mini-ITX machines (not sure if
>fanless) with no disks so they should run cool and quiet.
>
>Basically I'm worried about dust in the loft getting sucked into PSU
>and case fans. Also in summer I'd expect the loft gets quite hot and I
>wouldn't want the servers dying due to it.
>
>I guess I could put everything in a small rackmount chassis (10-12U
>max) but these tend to be expensive.
>
>Comments?
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>Yahoo! Groups Links
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