• (cs)

    Nepotism.  Gotta love it.

  • TJ (unregistered)

    Would be funnier if there was a fish in there. maybe not for the fish

  • RedKnight (unregistered) in reply to Red5
    Red5:

    Nepotism.  Gotta love it.

    Remember, only you can prevent nepotism. 

  • Cody (unregistered) in reply to RedKnight
    Anonymous:
    Red5:

    Nepotism.  Gotta love it.

    Remember, only you can prevent nepotism. 

    Yeah, just don't have kids and disown all your relatives.

     

    Anyway, the real wtf is the lack of a new wtf for us wtf junkies. 

  • Dave (unregistered)

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

     

  • Anders (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

     

     The bowl upgrade is definitely the way to go, here. Or maybe a series of sponges placed strategically around the floor...

  • Alien426 (unregistered)

    Could somebody come up with an overflow joke, please? I got nothing.

  • Kurt Werle (unregistered) in reply to Alien426

    That's a wtf? Some water from an AC spilled? If you hadn't mentioned the server, the admin, or the son-in-law, it'd be the same story: some water from an AC spilled.


    There must be better.
  • (cs)

    Been there.  Done that.  Mopped up the floor.  Upgraded the Bucket to "Bigger Bucket".

    (Pump and hose to drain finally installed a few months ago...)
     

  • Anymoose Jr (unregistered) in reply to Alien426

    Anonymous:
    Could somebody come up with an overflow joke, please? I got nothing.

     Perhaps something along the lines of a "buffer overflow" pun?
     

  • Neo (unregistered)

    I call bulls*it on this "story"; I've seen this picture years ago...

  • (cs)

    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

  • (cs)

    Server Admin Who Knows his stuff: 90k per year

    Development staff (4 employees) who might know their stuff: 120k to 210k per year

    CTO who knows @$$ when he sees it and has no clue: priceless

  • Quietust (unregistered) in reply to Neo
    Anonymous:
    I call bulls*it on this "story"; I've seen this picture years ago...

    Interestingly enough, so did Alex...

  • Quietust (unregistered) in reply to Quietust

    And, of course, I failed to notice the tiny "rerun" notice at the top of message. So yeah, that's probably where you saw it from before.

  • Code Slave (unregistered) in reply to Neo

    Anonymous:
    I call bulls*it on this "story"; I've seen this picture years ago...

    Probably because you saw it here:

        http://thedailywtf.com/forums/permalink/37987/37987/ShowThread.aspx#37987 

     
    CS 

  • Blah (unregistered) in reply to Code Slave

    Nope, I'm certain I've seen this somewhere else, not just here. At a push I'd say it was in one of those powerpoints full of "funny" pictures that get sent round offices.

     

  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    BINGO!

  • Ev (unregistered) in reply to Blah
    Anonymous:

    Nope, I'm certain I've seen this somewhere else, not just here. At a push I'd say it was in one of those powerpoints full of "funny" pictures that get sent round offices.

     

    Well, then... You now know the source! ;)

  • (cs)

    Well, what do you expect when 1/4 the population is retarded. I'm surprised that he got the server running... or maybe that's why he was in training? To learn how to setup the servers? Yeah, hopefully the dude learned server room design and setup lol....
     

  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    I was going to say the same thing.  Unless this unit has a second component located outside the room, it is only going to generate heat.  In that case, they could just point a fan at the server (if they even need to do this), and let the buildings central AC keep the room cool as a whole.

  • Jason Roelofs (unregistered) in reply to CodeRage
    CodeRage:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    I was going to say the same thing.  Unless this unit has a second component located outside the room, it is only going to generate heat.  In that case, they could just point a fan at the server (if they even need to do this), and let the buildings central AC keep the room cool as a whole.

     Most standalone A/C units have a vent tube that you snake to somewhere else, usually outside. That air is amazingly hot, and for good reason. The condensor still creates a lot of water, which needs to be drained out seperately (humidity condensor). I can't really see the exhaust tube, but if there's that much water coming out, then I get a feeling the exhaust didn't exist.


     

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Red5
    Red5:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    BINGO!

     

    There are plenty of ac units designed for shitty server rooms that use a duct to vent hot air into the plenum space in the ceiling, while draining water to a bin or floor drain. The good ones usually have a float to tell when the, um, fishbowl fills up, and then they either shut off or sound an alarm. 

  • The A/C man (unregistered)

    A portable A/C unit has a vent hose and extra fan(s) to vent the heat generated by the
    A/C unit out a window/ceiling tile or other hole in the wall. 

  • (cs) in reply to Blah

    I've seen this bouncing round different sites for a long time too. And yes, having an AC in the middle of the room is pointless as it puts out at least as much hot air as cold air in the absolute best case of being able to cool the air itself. In the case of one designed to pull cold air in from elsewhere then it's just going to sit there making noise.

  • yet another Alex (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    But bare with it; the accompanying story from Zack makes it worthwhile ...

    Pardon me if I don't bare with it. Perhaps late, without...

  • (cs) in reply to CodeRage

    You can see a very large wheel on the left side of the unit, so that means it must be a portable AC unit.  A search on Google Images reveals that these things are supposed to come with ducts for the intake and "exhaust" air, which are probably hidden from view.  How the sys admin knew to install the air ducts but not the condensation duct is a mystery!

  • (cs) in reply to Dave
    Anonymous:
    Red5:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    BINGO!

     

    There are plenty of ac units designed for shitty server rooms that use a duct to vent hot air into the plenum space in the ceiling, while draining water to a bin or floor drain. The good ones usually have a float to tell when the, um, fishbowl fills up, and then they either shut off or sound an alarm. 

    Good point.  I guess we'll never know by looking at this picture weather or not the unit is suitable for this envrionment and/or if it is hooked up properly.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anders
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.
     The bowl upgrade is definitely the way to go, here. Or maybe a series of sponges placed strategically around the floor...
    No, we need a series of tubes.
  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel

    Alien426:
    Could somebody come up with an overflow joke, please? I got nothing.

     

    "Most overflow problems cause a loss of stability in the program. This one causes a lack of stability for anyone entering the room."

    or

    "The server crashed every 48 hours due to an overflow vunerability in the server setup. The only fix was to manually flush the cache."

    or

    "The overflow problem can be solved by using the pipeline."

     

  • Code Slave (unregistered) in reply to Jason Roelofs
    Anonymous:
    CodeRage:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    I was going to say the same thing.  Unless this unit has a second component located outside the room, it is only going to generate heat.  In that case, they could just point a fan at the server (if they even need to do this), and let the buildings central AC keep the room cool as a whole.

     Most standalone A/C units have a vent tube that you snake to somewhere else, usually outside. That air is amazingly hot, and for good reason. The condensor still creates a lot of water, which needs to be drained out seperately (humidity condensor). I can't really see the exhaust tube, but if there's that much water coming out, then I get a feeling the exhaust didn't exist. 

    Not neccessarily... I was in a shop where we had one of those things vented to another room. Eventually the air that was being vented out would make it's way back into our space through ventilation, but not before the building's AC unit had a chance to process it (effectively making everyone else a degree or two warmer, but still allowing us to get the server room down to a reasonable temperature).

    In any case, during high summer - we'd pull out about 4 liters of water from the A/C's drip tray in the morning, and anouther 4 before leaving for the day. It jsut depends on the umitiy and how hard the A/C has to work (that combined with 4-6 people working in the same room all day, I'm sure can account for the H2O).

  • Positively Evil Person (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

    You mean fish tank - say 2 gal/day for 3 weeks, so a 50 gallon tank ought to suffice!

  • bob the dingo (unregistered) in reply to Code Slave

    it's not really a wtf. as you'll note, the server is up pretty high in that rack. therefore, it would take a really really long time for the water to actually affect it. besides, isn't water another avenue to cool air? man, this guy was brilliant, i hope he was teaching that course on room design...

     

    </blatant sarcasm> 

     

     

    haha, CAPTCHA="clueless", as in "this guy" 

  • A/C gal (unregistered) in reply to Positively Evil Person

    No no no!

    When water evaporates, it cools the surface on which it resided.

    The idea was for the A/C to cool the air, and the evaporating water to run along the floor onto the base of the server rack. When the base of the rack cooled from the evaporation, the cold would 'travel' up the metal and cool the server even more ;)

  • (cs) in reply to CodeRage
    CodeRage:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    I was going to say the same thing.  Unless this unit has a second component located outside the room, it is only going to generate heat.  In that case, they could just point a fan at the server (if they even need to do this), and let the buildings central AC keep the room cool as a whole.


    They've got an enclosed server rack there.  What they could be doing is ducting the cold air from the A/C to the rack intake vents, which would keep the server cool without needing to vent the hot air anywhere.
  • Cody (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    CodeRage:

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    I was going to say the same thing.  Unless this unit has a second component located outside the room, it is only going to generate heat.  In that case, they could just point a fan at the server (if they even need to do this), and let the buildings central AC keep the room cool as a whole.


    They've got an enclosed server rack there.  What they could be doing is ducting the cold air from the A/C to the rack intake vents, which would keep the server cool without needing to vent the hot air anywhere.

    Except that eventually the ambient temperature would become so high that the difference through cooling wouldn't be able to make up for it and the rack temperature would increase. 

  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    It's probably one of those ones that has a hose that you put in the window.  It's more expensive than the window kind, but easier to install.

     

  • Woody (unregistered)

    This was much like when I walked into a "co-lo" and found my startup's 20K stack of hardware resting on two rack-shelves facing out from a two-post rack.  Each of the 1U servers stacked on each other.  At least the switch and the raid cage were bolted to the rack.


    I was asked to take my backpack (for the laptop) off before going into the machine-room, because I might bump someone else's equipment and turn it off.  About 2/3s the racks where just 2-posters, with shelves or face-mount boxes.  A couple people had brought in their own rack cabinets, but most of the place was just exposed servers, with their network cables and power cables tangled together.

    Oh, and it was 90*F in there (according to the temp monitor that was screaming an alarm on one of the boxes above us in the same rack).  They were "replacing their A/C system".  I came by again several months later.  Still working on it.

    We've finally moved out, to a place where we have 4-post racks for the servers, and an actual cage.

    The original colo was the choice of the original (and now long-gone) CTO.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon

    Anon:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.
     The bowl upgrade is definitely the way to go, here. Or maybe a series of sponges placed strategically around the floor...
    No, we need a series of tubes.

    Precisely! Route the tubes to the router and drain the water to the Internet. Now you've

    1. Solved your overflow bug.

    2. Help keep the Internet from overheating thanks to watercooling.

    3. Make it make it possible to download water for your coffee or tea right at your computer!

    The network admin will get right on it once he's back.

    --Rank

  • (cs) in reply to Carnildo

    That wouldn't work because the hot air generated by the A/C would end up filtering back into the A/C.  That would cause the A/C to work harder and in turn, generate even more heat.  In order for the A/C to cool, it has to disperse the heat somewhere else, outside the room. 

     

    I can't wait for the Pop-up Potpourri.

  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel
    ssprencel:

    That wouldn't work because the hot air generated by the A/C would end up filtering back into the A/C.  That would cause the A/C to work harder and in turn, generate even more heat.  In order for the A/C to cool, it has to disperse the heat somewhere else, outside the room. 

     

    I can't wait for the Pop-up Potpourri.

     

    This was supposed to reference Carnildo "What they could be doing is ducting the cold air from the A/C to the rack intake vents", but Cody beat me to it. (and sounded more intelligent too)

  • coyo (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?
     
    You are correct, sir. The air blowing from the air conditioner to the unit may take heat away from the unit but it would never cool below the ever increasing ambient temperature of the room 
  • Loren Pechtel (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel

    ssprencel:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?

    Nothing unusual in that. I have an AC behind me that is entirely in the room.  There's a big tube going up to the window and it terminates in a plastic piece meant to go in a window and allow the hot air to be blown outside.  A normal window unit wouldn't work because of solar screens and CCR's that prohibit them.

    It works properly, though--the water goes in a tank, when the tank fills up it turns off.  There are some units these days that have no tank, the water is directed to the hot air exhaust where it evaporates.
     

  • Cody (unregistered) in reply to coyo
    Anonymous:
    I thought A/Cs put off more heat then air they cooled, i.e. the reason one part of a window unit is outside.   If this thing is dripping water, then I imagine it has a compressor, condenser, etc., the whole nine yards.  Have they somehow designed this A/C so that it just cools air and doesn't put off heat or is this the real WTF?
     

    You are correct, sir. The air blowing from the air conditioner to the unit may take heat away from the unit but it would never cool below the ever increasing ambient temperature of the room 

    Technically, it would never lower the average temperature of the room, though the cold air coming out of the AC unit will always be below the average temperature of the room.  It would, however, increase the average temperature of the room until the gradient between the room and the outside world becomes so large that it stabilizes.

  • (cs) in reply to Positively Evil Person
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

    You mean fish tank - say 2 gal/day for 3 weeks, so a 50 gallon tank ought to suffice!

    No, no, you're not thinking long-term enough.  I say go for a koi pond.  Functional *and* scenic. 

  • Cody (unregistered) in reply to Cody

    (Stabilizes due to the room losing heat to the outside world)

  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel
    ssprencel:

    That wouldn't work because the hot air generated by the A/C would end up filtering back into the A/C.  That would cause the A/C to work harder and in turn, generate even more heat.  In order for the A/C to cool, it has to disperse the heat somewhere else, outside the room. 


    It would create a localized patch of cold where it matters: inside the server cabinet.  This is similar to how a refrigerator operates, only with less insulation.
  • (cs)

    We use a 5-gallon bucket, not a fishbowl.  Amateurs.

  • (cs) in reply to Positively Evil Person
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I think you need a higher capacity bowl.

    You mean fish tank - say 2 gal/day for 3 weeks, so a 50 gallon tank ought to suffice!

    A plumber or HVAC person should be able to get there in three weeks.  Good luck moving a full 50 gallon fish tank to drain it.
  • Liamjn (unregistered) in reply to AssimilatedByBorg

    When you upgraded, was it to Bucket98®?

Leave a comment on “A &quot;Priceless&quot; Server Room: Priceless”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article