Re: Keeping node0 cool...

["Martyn Wendon" <martynwendon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My Node0 is in the garage, a self-built wooden "cupboard"
about 800mm  *
600mm * 1800mm internally.

When I built it, I skinned the internal walls with plasterboard and filled
the cavity with foam to insulate from cold in the winter and help cooling
in
the summer.  The equipment shelves are again wooden, but they've been
drilled with 15mm holes to aid air flow between them and they also stop a
few inches short of the back wall and front door.

I also fitted a 6" bathroom extractor fan in the bottom (sucking in)
and a
6" bathroom extractor fan in the top (sucking out) which was ducted to
outside the garage - the idea being that cool(er) air from the concrete
garage floor would be sucked up through the equipment and hot air sucked
out
from the top.  Both of these fans had the auto opening / closing vents on
the front and I controlled them by a simple thermostat in the centre of the
rack back wall.

This worked well initially, but as I added more and more equipment to the
rack, I really began to struggle with cooling - temperatures would reach 50
degC in the summer three years or so back.  At one point I resorted to one
of those portable air conditioning units in the garage blowing directly
into
a hole I cut in the front door at the time (I was pretty desperate at that
point).  Even this didn't work very well, and only took a few degrees off
of
the temperatures at the top of the rack.

Then a couple of years ago, I got speaking to a friend of a friend who was
into hydroponics who suggested that bathroom type fans were a waste of
time,
and what I needed was something that could "replace" the air in
the rack as
many times as possible in the space of an hour.  He suggested looking at
the
types of fans available for hydroponics as they were designed to do just
that.

After some research, I settled on one of these http://tinyurl.com/3x4nrkr
(eBay link) - I removed the bathroom extractor fan from the top rack and
replaced it with the inline fan.  The first time I powered it up, the
suction created by the air flow was such that I actually struggled to get
the front door open again!  I ended up having to introduce some additional
venting into the bottom of the rack and the airflow now is phenomenal!

Last summer, with the fan "cycling" in and out as and when
needed, I rarely
saw temperatures at the top of the rack of over 38 degC - that's a pretty
good drop from 50+

During the cooler months, the fan cycles in and out much less and the
temperature at the top of the rack hovers around about 30 degC.  This
autumn
I'm planning on installing some sort of heat exchanger in the duct outlet
to
attempt to utilize some of the wasted heat.

So along with a decent in-line fan, the other piece of advise I'd give
would
be to monitor the temperatures in Node0 at several points and attempt to
shift equipment around to eliminate hot-spots.  I monitor my Node0 with
1wire temperature sensors at the following locations - air intake, bottom
of
rack, under shelf one, under shelf two, under shelf three, top of rack, air
exhaust.


Cheers,

Martyn


----- Original Message -----
From: "Vargster" <vargster@xxxxxxx>
To: "UKHA Mailinglist" <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2010 5:03 PM
Subject: [ukha_d] Keeping node0 cool...


> This has been kind of discussed before, but I was wondering what you
chaps
> did about cooling your Node0's?
>
> Mine has been gradually gaining kit and then over the last few months
the
> server has been acting a bit strange (locking up, rebooting, random
> processes crashing), then last week the server it locked up and
wouldn't
> restart. I dragged it out of "my little node0" (aka the
cupboard under the
> stairs) and found the hard drive was corrupt. Re-imaging it and then
> updating from the backups :)
> got it working again. Since then it's been on the desk in my study,
and
> it's
> been 100% solid, no restarts/lock ups nothing. I put this down to the
> temperature in N0, it was getting a bit hot in there.
>
> I've drilled a 4" hole in the wall of N0 (going back into the
hallway) and
> put a duct through, then trimmed 1/2" off the bottom of the door.
This did
> nothing for the temperatures.
> I've tried a 120mm PC case fan and also an old bathroom extractor fan,
to
> blow out the warm air. But they only lower the temperature by 1'C or
so.
>
> What next? Ideally I'm like to keep the heat in the house to warm it
over
> the winter (save energy and all that) but what are you guys doing to
cool
> your N0's?
>
> Lee
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>



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