- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
- Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Other Series
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
Especially when water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon.
Admin
Admin
Easy fix. 20 lb sledge to the side of the tank, drain, replace.
Admin
Everytime I've seen something like this (and this is not even the second or third I've seen, though it is the first one with a sexy bowl instead of the ubiquitous 5 gallon bucket) it was because the high-mukety mucks who set the budgets set aside no money for a real cooling system, and decided that something like this was "just as good" as a real cooling set up.
Admin
That's nothing. A while back I visited a company in DC. Their technology drone (CTO) purchased a portable AC unit. They did this because the room they decided to convert to a server room would cost them $nn,nnn to retrofit for a real A/C unit. No way they were going to pay real money for that. This is a fairly small office of less than 50 people, although the principals are extremely wealthy. Ex chairs of NASD, SEC, etc.
The combination of the heat generated from the equipment, humidity and condensation from this unit resulted in significantly higher output than a fish bowl. Solution? A full-size outdoors trash can. Holds 32+ gallons of water.
Next problem: on long weekends or snow days, 32 gallons wasn't enough and it would overtop the trash can, and they were back to a water incursion problem.
Solution? Buy a Sensaphone, and have it call IT drone when the trash can overtops. He could come in on the long weekend and "drain" the can. Which is another hilarious process, as it involves two-staging the water from the big immovable can (250 lbs of water) to something smaller, like a mop bucket, so it required at least five trips. The draining
processritual occurred every mornnigI suspect they may have taken this to the next level by now and have a big vat on wheels with an electric pump for the morning ritual.
Fskwits.
Admin
Well, they were working on it then, and still were a couple months later. The place was torn apart, ducting hangin down, and a fan trying desperately to get the slightly cooler air to flow through the server racks.
Admin
They do, which is exactly why you need to vent them like so...
[image]
Admin
I like how the open ceiling tile lets it bleed back into the room, and the fans give it a nice regal air, sentries around the king. xD The ones I've worked with plugged into vents that go up to the roof, which entirely prevents recirculation, though the tiles might well be insulated enough. Not really my area. (Except for the moron HVAC guys who once installed it with the tube duct taped to cardboard to plug the hole left by the old installation - until the duct tape came off, two hours later.)
Admin
Reminds me of my server room.
BTW last week I accidently disconnect the entire company off our enterprise application because when I turned around I disconnected a cable that run's part of the way down the wall, along the floor, into a switch (which is on the floor behind three network cabinets). This is because we're "too busy" to do anything properly.
--doc0tis
Admin
Here's "The Registers" take on a similar situation:
http://regmedia.co.uk/2002/10/08/891.jpg
From the article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/08/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/
Admin
We have a half-arsed designed server room. The A/C was underspecced so we got a large industrial portable unit in. The heat was vented to the plenum. However, to make the server room fire-proofy, the plenum of the server room was not connected to the plenum of the rest of the floor (drywall went all the way up) so we ended up having to get someone in to cut holes in the drywall.
You think that two years later they'd listen to us regarding what is needed in the new server room now we're moving to a new building. Wouldn't you?
Admin
Why didn't anyone try a bucket sort pun?
Admin
The Plenum is usually the return for the building AC so it is fairly reasonable to vent the hot outlet up there. Heat also rises so you shouldn't get too much bleed back through the holes at the side.
Rich
Admin
No No No No. The A/C runoff hose needs to drain directly into a humidifier equipped with a float ball lever that triggers the power supply A/C unit. When the humidifier gets low on water, it kicks on the A/C. Once replenished, the float turns off the power to the A/C unit.
To regulate the evaporation rate of the humidifier, point an oscillating floor fan at the humidifier. This system can be enhanced by multiple outlet strips and lamp timers. Ultimately you'll want to employ some type of UPS.
Admin
Nobody seemed to notice my overflow puns, so I didn't think it was worth it.
Admin
Empty several cans of chicken stock into the water and ten dogs will drink it down to a mangable weight in minutes.
Admin
Agreed - seen the pic years ago too.
Admin
That's the idea!
- make sure the server rack is completely enclosed. I mean really, 100% air- and water-tight enclosed.
- add a hole, stick the cold air outlet from the portable A/C into it. duct-tape it there. Twice. We don't want any of the precious cold air to escape, do we?
- set up a camera, wait for the server rack to explode
- submit to theDailyWTF.com
Admin
No no no, silly. Everyone knows you turn the AC off, then let the heat from the servers evaporate the water.
Admin
There is some genuine merit to your thinking. However we have to think past the short term solution.
A) "The only fix was to manually flush the cache."
B) "The overflow problem can be solved by using the pipeline."
Clearly the pipeline connects to the toilet reservoir tank ( cache ). Flushing the toilet would obviously clear the cache. However this presents a dependency problem. No?
Admin
Or 1kg per litre. Hmmm, is metric easier to work things out or what?
Admin
I dunno...worst case, you'll lose some backup media (although those plastic shells are fairly watertight), some manuals, a couple of monitors. Unless you get serious floor-level flooding the UPS and other equipment on the floor will probably not drown (and most floors/walls have some kind of leak somewhere which should absorb water at the rate the A/C spits it out). Most of the equipment is in cases so splash damage is unlikely. It's a different story if the two buckets actually fall off the top shelf, of course.
Now, if the buckets were located on the top left just to the right of where they are, they can take out switches, flow electrolyte-laden water along network cables, and get into that open PC case at the bottom. That would do some serious harm with just a few drops of water.
Admin
Have you ever tried to sort a bucket of minnows? It's not possible. Perhaps a bucket of eggs or a bucket of rocks. Bucket sort is lottery logic.
Admin
Sure it's possible. Just select two minnows at a time and select the greater of them. Same as with any other animal. Well, except for weevils.
Admin
The REAL WTF is paying $2,000 to clean some water off a standard, unraised, cheap tile floor. Unless that's whatever the stuff in the strapped box is worth.
Admin
Sorry, the law of conservation of energy is still in effect. But if you find a way to convert that excess heat energy into matter, I would hope you'd find better uses than in air conditioning.
Admin
Admin
Oh c'mon, nobody's going to ask me why you take the greater of two animals for everything except weevils?
Admin
Soooo. Why take the greater of two animals for everything except weevils?
Admin
'cos you always pick the lesser of two weevils.
Admin
We must have heavier water in the UK, it's 10lbs/gallon. Much easier to work with than 1kg/litre when the original size was in gallons...
Also, a 50 gallon fishtank here would have a greater safety margin before overflowing. Problem solved!
(Well, I've seen consultants who added just enough capacity to a system for it to appear to work until they were paid and gone, it only seems fair for me to do the same thing...)
Admin
Especially since a real gallon of water is roughly ten pounds. ("A gallon of water/weights a pound and a quarter")
It's those wussy short-weight US ones that aren't.
Admin
Please don't tell me you poured the sysadmin's sea monkey farm down the drain!
Admin
I think this server room is even better. Just imagine what happends in the case of "overflow"...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/08/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/
Close up picture:
http://regmedia.co.uk/2002/10/08/891.jpg
Admin
Goatcheez, if you quote statistics from South Park you should mention that as your source. Makes your post more believable. Never trust statistics without a source reference.
Admin
At my company we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Admin
Nope. The water just needed a sponge and bucket. The $2000 was for the brand-new color laser-jet printer that was in the room right below this one . . .
Admin
The goggles!!! They do nothing!!!!!!!!
Admin
You mean they need a bowl that goes to "11" ? :)
Admin
The real solution to this problem is to delegate this problem. Drill a hole in the floor. Hope the CEO has his office below the server room. done.
Admin
I can totally top a fishbowl...
At my company, (not some rinky-dink firm, but a two-billion-dollar company, in case you are wondering), I run a server room. In the days of yore, the server room had a Halon fire suppression system. This was a problem because due to insurance regulations, we had to do a test discharge it once a year. But this caused an environmental impact because Halon is poisonous, so various fines and ISO violations ensued. As a result, our plant manager insisted the Halon system be replaced. With a next-generation, non-toxic Halon replacement, you might think? No...
...with water sprinklers.
All I have to say is that if those sumbitches go off and our million-dollar server room is annihilated, I will not make it my round-the-clock, 7-days-a-week Crimson Alert project to rebuild it. Instead, I will be collecting my two weeks of vacation and walking out the door...
captcha: pizza (I could go for some right now!)
Admin
Doesn't that defeat the "fire-proofiness" of the server room? Which makes it against, um, local fire codes or something.
Admin
For reference, from Google:
<font size="+1">1 Imperial gallon = 1.2 US gallon</font>
Admin
GGAAHHHHH!!!! pun-sniped. I bow to you, sir or ma'am.
Admin
I'm fairly sure this is just a dehumidifier.
<>If so there are more WTFs: the admin didn't know the difference- or maybe- neither does the author?
<>I am not a robot.
Admin
That isn't a server room. It is a closet with some computers in it.
You don't tell us anything about the quality of the installation of the computers so what we've really got is a poor HVAC employee.
Admin
Admin
just be glad it's not the US federal gov't.
it'd be $20M instead of $20K worth of equipment put at risk from crappy facilities management.
captcha: "clueless". indeed.
Admin
Every firecode I've ever seen counts drywall as firestop. I've only seen residential codes though.
Drywall made from one of those strange chemicals (much like cement) that include water within the molecule. This is not a chemical bond, the water is a separate molecule trapped inside the gypsum. Or something like that, I don't feel like looking it up this morning. If you want details look it up yourself.
Admin
Reminds me of the game "The Incredible Machine"... (which also included a fish bowl)
The network admin should have simply positioned a conveyor-belt between the fish-bowl and the outer door, so that the spilled water would be transported outside of the room. Simple puzzle...