Air Coolers which don't need an external air vent?

[ste]

Hi there,

In work, we've got a small room of about 1.75m x 1.5cm, and about 3m high. We want to put some of our servers in there (they will just about fit!), but are worried about it getting too hot in there.

We definitely need some sort of cooling system, but connecting a full air conditioning system will not only be expensive, but having an external air vent is going to be very tricky (and even more expense!) due to the location of this room within the building.

Are there any air coolers out there which can keep the temperature down within an enclosed space without an external air vent? I know that a fan on its own would only recirculate the warm air, but was hoping there would be a system for our needs? I saw some air coolers in the argos that had a 12 litre water tank, but wasn't sure if these also required an external air vent to work?

Thanks for any advice.

Ste

[Harry Bloomfield]

ste was thinking very hard :

They work by blowing a flow of air at a moistened surface. The moisture draws heat from the air as part of that process of evaporation. They air comes out a few degrees cooler, but with very high humidity. The humid air will then condense on cooler surfaces, unless it is vented out doors.

The humidity might not be a problem with good ventilation, but it would be fairly useless in an enclosed poorly ventilated room with servers in.

[Grunff]

No.

No.

That's just what you need in a server room...

This isn't a technology problem; it's a physics one. In order to cool your room, you need to do something with the heat. You either dump it outside, or use it to evaporate a liquid in the room. Dumping it outside is the only option.

A good split unit aircon will cost about the same as a single server, and take less time to set up than a single server takes to install and configure from scratch.

[Andy Dingley]

No (unless they have a water circuit which is vented in turn).

It's a piece of classical thermodynamics that you can't make a "powered heatsink". No matter what you put in the black box, or how much energy you feed it, you can't make heat disappear, you can only move it to somewhere else.

[<me9]

^^ They must be /very/ narrow servers. How does anyone fit into the room.

[shaun]

Don't use an evaporative cooler where you have servers running. All that water has to go somewhere and the humidity won't do the servers any good whatsoever.

If you value the data find another room where you can set up a proper controlled environment.

[ste]

think I'd rather it be hot than damp! :-) I'll have to find another solution...

Ste

[ste]

Thanks for that Grunff. I realise the money the air conditioning and routing of pipes will cost, hence why I was trying to find cheaper options. If we have to pay, then we have to pay; but it's worth asking if it could save us a few grand!

Ste

[ste]

Thanks for that Andy. Classical Thermodynamics? Damn, I think I was off sick when they taught that one in school, hence why I'm posting here! :-)

I'm wondering if I could simply 'dump' the warm air into the adjacent room (which is well ventillated) as opposed to an outside wall (which would require metres and metres of pipes to get there)?

Ste

[ste]

The servers are actually quite wide. They're not very long though at 1.5cm each! :-)

...of course, that's 1.75m x 1.5m x 3m tall. Still not that much room though, but just another to fit in a set of rack mounted servers and a ups etc.

Ste

[ste]

I agree, now that I have a slight understand to how it all works. I wasn't sure previously, I thought the water tank might have been used to collect humidity from the air, not to create it!

We value our data, and if we can keep this room cool for as cheaply as possible (within effective reason), then we will be happy.

Ste

[Andy]

Yes, you can dump the air into the adjacent room. Of course, that room will warm up so in the end as you dump hot air from the server room, warm air from the adjacent room will be coming back in to take its place, but you will be dissipating the heat over a larger volume than before, and that should certainly reduce the temperature in the server room somewhat. It would not be easy to tell in advance what kind of a temperature reduction you might achieve.

Andy.

[nightjar]

...

You really only need an external air vent to allow for air changes and the servers probably won't care if the air is cooled but not changed. That means that you only need to find a way to route a few copper pipes between the cooling unit in room and the heat exchanger outside.

Colin Bignell

[shaun]

If you have a look here

under the "disadvantages" section you'll see what I mean.

Is there not a suspended ceiling in the building that could be rigged with ducting? Unfortunately "cool" is never cheap - both from installation and running costs...

[John Rumm]

I would guess you are looking at less than a grand unless you need to run the connection between internal and external units a long way.

(You are talking about a 3" diameter bundle of insulated pipes here - you can buy split units precharged and ready to go - you simply feed the pipes through (typically they are 5 to 6m long) and connect up. Plug it in and off you go. That should give you 3kW of cooling - so good for half a dozen servers or more)

[Grunff]

Yes, totally - up to a 10m run, you can get very nice units at about £800.

[dennis]

If you value your data then fitting proper air management equipment isn't a problem what ever the cost. Don't forget fire protection and security while you are doing the job.

Maybe you could lease some servers off site in a proper facility?

[ste]

Hi there,

Just a quick reply to everyone else who has replied (sorry for not replying one-by-one) to say thanks for the advice, it's much appreciated.

Ste

[The Natural Philosopher]

You have to take the heat somewhere. Normally one uses a small aircon system outsode the biulding and runs cold piping to essentially fan assisted cold air blowers in the room.

This doesn't requure an air passage outside, but it does require cold refrigerant - or water - pipes to be taken from the room to somwhere that they can extrcate and dump the heat.

Its ideal for machinery that needs cooling but not ventilation.

Its not cheap.

I know that a fan on

[Harry Bloomfield]

You can buy self contained units, where all that is needed is a hole through the wall for the hot air outlet pipe.

The traditional internal and external units are combined as one unit, then the extracted heat is blown out of a small flexible air duct. The duct can be fed out via a window or a hole drilled in a wall.