I am starting to wonder why my server system is making SO much heat. I live in Norway, so outside temperature is around freezing, and my house I keep it around 25 degrees inside, except no heating in the server room. It got a roof extraction vent that is constantly sucking out air in that room, and I just had it inspected to be working perfectly fine.
Still its always over 30 degrees in that room, and the hot air is oozing from the server. Its just a consumer based drive and a couple of switches, plus a UPS, and its so warm in there.
Im getting afraid the high temperature can affect the hardware when its 30-35 degrees inside the server rack
By keeping your house at 25 degrees, you’re setting the baseline temperature of the house (i.e. it will never be colder than 25 degrees, period).
If you can get some airflow, why not just set your house to like 19 degrees, and use the fans of your unit to equalize the temperature in your unit (19 degrees is the new baseline, it will probably keep the unit a degree or two hotter just by the ambient heat generated by your server).
For what it’s worth a server is fine to run in this type of environment. What are the internal temperatures of your system? Is it overheating?
I vent to the attic using a duct fan.
Hard drives produce a lot of heat. Switches can produce a lot of heat, particularly older switches (and routers).
But, yes, temperature is your enemy.
I don’t generate the heat in the first place. 35 celsius is comfy for servers, though.
Heavy computation rack is in an unheated conservatory with a window cracked open. Keeps the HDD temperatures around 30 degrees. Temperature monitoring from my PDU shows a 3’C rise from the inlet to the exhaust side of the rack. This stuff is mostly powered off when not in use. In summer, it can get to 35’C in that room so I shut everything down at that point.
24/7 rack is in my lounge and vents the heat into the room (helps a little bit with heating costs). Top of the rack is about 37’C but I’ve seen it around 45’C with all my hypervisors doing stuff. Nothing complains. As long as the intake air is within the manufacturer’s stated range, it’s fine.
Might want to consider redirecting the heat into the house rather than venting it outside.
When I had a rack at home, it was a silent one (so almost completely sealed). I had a fat duct coming in from the outside into the bottom of the rack and another fat duct taking the hot air from the top outside. But in winter, I made sure it was blowing that hot air into the living space.
I just commented on basically the same - except it’s more “structured” as Heat Recovery Ventilation also works the other way around.
So you can have fresh (as in new to your house, not the temperature itself) air coming in both in summer and winter - and in both cases it would be pre cooled/heated by the exhaust air.
I don’t really have any input on your question, but I have one of my own.
25°?? Is that a typical indoor temperature for houses in Norway? I’m in Canada and my house sits around 19° most of the year, as do most people I know.
I had the exact same thought… our heat is set to 20 most of the time. 25 would be hot!
TL;DR: No - I think across the Europe 19° to 21° is common during winter. Less than 19° if you’re trying to save money and have old house (and here homes might actually go decades if not centuries older) with crap isolation; and maybe up to 22° if you have kids/baby and have good isolation.
The majority of Dutch keep it at ~19° during winter because of cost of gas/electricity. And then so far majority kind of hoped global warming isn’t a thing. So during summers 25-30° (if not higher) also started to be a thing inside homes for those folks that don’t have airco and have computer on their attic/zolder. And that’s with shades/roll-blinds mostly down yet windows are open 24/7 so it circulates and cools off during night …etc.
These days (actually almost last decade or so) the “joke” is that getting a house just about anywhere in The Netherlands is great investment because within just a few decades you’ll [likely] have a tropical house next to a beach.
No wonder that pre-teenager kids need to pass a swimming lessons/certificate where test is basically “clothes and footwear” (they allow thinner jacket & sweater, borderline pajamas for pants and I guess no need for “Canadian Boots” and sneakers are fine) - where you’re pushed with your back into the pool, and then you need to swim under some obstacles (floating platform), and through some hole in a plane/flag, and pull yourself out of the pool.
BTW I’m originally from Balkans - Belgrade/Serbia where “European continental” climate is, or at least was a thing when I was growing up. I would think Toronto and New York are very similar.
So at least 30° Celsius outside during summer (now regularly even more and sometimes closer or above the 40°C), and quite a few weeks/years where in just a few hours we went from 0cm to 50cm or more of snow, causing total transport collapse - which meant no school ;)
Anyway biggest issue for me during summer here in Amsterdam/NL (which is still below summer heat I grew up with in Belgrade/Serbia in terms of ° Celsius) - is the humidity.
Calculation/story wife and I (and family that came to visit us for extended period here in NL) have is basically:
- around 0°C and the Dutch are hopeless. I mean country is flat, yet cars and even trucks/lorries get stuck - obviously because many use summer tires, though also they just don’t know what to do (e.g. shovel, sand/salt, rubber floor-mat) even when they have all-season/universal tires that people can go to mountain without snow chains
- 10°C or less outside might require a bit thicker pullover/sweater or even windbreaker jacket, and if it’s <=5°, windy and sun isn’t strong enough - I might feel like Timberland Pro, North Face parka jacket
- And yet 25°C or more outside might require you to wear short pants, t-shirt, flip-flops and hide from the sun or else you might get a heat strokeThe irony is the north will be unhabitable due to lower temps and countries like Italy and Spain are where you will need to be.
I will leave this comment here for when I am 90yo.
Also Canada and I keep mine closer to 24-25c. 19-20 waa what my parents used to do growing up lol.
Yup, mine is around 18-19 in Canada, 25 is wayyyy too hot
I’m about 21-22 year round (also in Canada) and my server room isn’t much warmer than the rest of the house but it isn’t closed off either. The larger air space you can give it, the better.
Maybe energy is cheap there or OP is rich, I live in the UK and was surprised by the temperatures they quoted.
I would say though that Scandinavian houses are known for being very well insulated and energy efficient.
My heating is on 19C when I’m home, lowered to 10 while I’m out/sleeping because my cat has his own fur coat to keep him warm and I have a 13 tog duvet
I hope you have very low humidity, going that low can create a risk for mold forming in your walls.
Lived here 8 years and no mould issues so far.
Grow tents bro.
Living in The Netherlands - and although Gulf Stream and such make it much more timid/neutral than Norway, literally every home here has “mechanical ventilation” - for example https://www.ithodaalderop.nl/nl-NL/consument/product/03-00398
And at least for about a decade or so - “Heat Recovery” types of ventilation were already a thing - say https://www.ithodaalderop.nl/nl-NL/consument/product/03-00407
In your case it might be more effective to set this “Heat Recovery” in a way where it’s heat from your server room used as “OUT” and then other places (say living room, kitchen, hallways) are “IN”.
What are you running hardware wise? X5690 (aka something old, power hungry, hot, and not very efficient)?
I disagree that 30C is just peachy, but I suppose for home use it’s fine. But if your house is at 25C and room raise to 30C isn’t that much… depending on what you’re running and average utilization.
In the summer, I’m dumping it outside.
In the winter, I’m heating my garage with it.
Has worked great for many years now.
Ignoring it. My lab is in the garage. It gets hot here in the summer, but not incredibly hot. And if heat shortens the life of my hardware, it’s all cheap; I’ll just buy a cheap replacement.
what’s your cheap hardware?
Love these little HP Elitedesk 800 G2 Mini I7. Can get them between $80-110, slap 32 GB of mem, and NVME drive, and have a nice and low power lab machine. Sips about 5-6 watts at idle.
You’ll need inlet and outlet, not just outlet. Also, look at your server power usage too, drive don’t generate newrly a much heat.
Requirement of both inlet and outlet depends on quite a few things.
In Europe - homes heated by natural/earth gas central heater (sometimes also provides hot water) usually require “mechanical ventilation” - which is just a box with efficient fan that’s always running and exhausting at least a little bit of indoor air, and you crank it up when cooking/showering/etc, as well as some form of grill/grate/opening to let outside air in.
It’s not only because of using gas for cooking/heating - officially it’s also to make sure your house doesn’t build up too much of things like Argon that’s creeping in from your crawl space/basement/etc.
For example Velux slanted ceiling/roof windows have that ventilation option built in where you can close/lock the window, but still allow fresh air (and no bugs/mosquitos) in.
Otherwise it’s either some sort of ventilation grill on your windows/doors, beeing able to slightly tilt/crank some windows, cutout/opening for mail in your front door…
Or any other place where your house is not hermetically sealed :)
Too long
You’ll have to provide cool air to the room as well. No amount of extraction will help if you don’t do that.
Close off the vent in the server room and open the door from the server room and your house. Free heating
I cut my office off from the house HVAC during the winter and use my rack to heat it.