RE: DS20L

["Peter Petrakis" <voodoo alphadriven org>]

> I don't know what environmental conditions in the US, but over here, it's
> almost
> impossible to get room about 18C(65F).  Best we can expect is 20C,but most
> of places for them machines including telecom centres, it's about 25C.
> Inside cabinet is little warmer. So I can agree heat problem...

It depends on how diligent the outfit is concerning the welfare of their
equipment and their electronic infrastructure. If it's cheaper for them
to cover the expense of failed disks and dead equipment due to over-temp
then fine, That's what they've come to realize what "their time is worth".
Me on the other hand, If I can get more cooling than is required to 'prevent'
premature failure and extend the life of existing hardware. I've made my job
easier and increased everyone's efficiency because there is less downtime.

> Price wise, your idea works, but AFAIK, usually to add additional AC
> requires a lot
> more paperwork than to purchase a cluster.  Plus, extra power consumption
> might be another issue.  And big AC is not that cheap here...

It should be no more paper work than it would take to contract an electrician
to add more power to your machine room. Say you buy just eight CS20's each
with 600W PS, That's 4.8KW of power. You want to put that on an already
loaded circuit and then expect it to perform reliably? If you have to turn
off the power to add more juice and in the process of that, securing
existing HW with UPS and your backups are up to date. There should be no
problem with adding an AC unit to that work order. Companies that don't take
maintenance seriously 'will' pay for it later.


> I've seen 128CPU IA nodes running at 28C or 30C room temp for just fine...
> What's exact spec for room temp. on CS20/DS20L?

5?C to 35?C (41?F to 95?F) Is the spec. I like things on the cool side.

Running at 30C is damn hot, 86F. I wouldn't step foot in that room and if that's
the ambient temp your 10K hard drives 'will' be failing sooner than later. Even
if you went and ran CS20's at the high side, 96F. Would you really recommend
subjecting that and other equipment to that temp? Nevermind humans :-)

> If it's required to run between 63-67F it'll be hard to find customers at
> Universities or telecom use here.  Very few have such a nice condition.

It's not required but it's common knowledge that "heat kills". They're very
expensive investments and with just a one year warranty I honestly believe
that customers should be taking better care of these machines. At the high
end of the pricing scale, It's the difference between one CS20 or another
air conditioner (or two) that could drop your room temp by as much as 10-15C.
Why not?

> just my $0.02

Copy that :-)

Peter
--
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Peter Petrakis         Warrior/Engineer        voodoo@alphadriven.org
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