Last Updated on Monday, 28 December 2009 11:43 Friday, 14 August 2009 09:24

Q: Modern servers don't really need a climate controlled server room, do they?

A: Many startup and small businesses make an extra office their server room. That's not necessarily bad as long as that office:

• has filtered inlet and outlet ventilation connections so it can be closed 24x7 and still have clean, cool air
• never receives heated air from the office heating system
• is secured at all times by a lock with limited access
• does not have windows and is not connected to the outside wall of the building
• has some kind of server storage that secures the servers to a wall and at least six inches above the floor
• has a sufficient number of power outlets to support the future expansion of both the servers and their UPS systems
• is not on an electrical circuit whose capacity could be quickly exceeded by future expansion or disrupted by other devices sharing the circuit
• is near the building phone room where most communication lines are connected for the building
• is not near transformers, large numbers of power lines, or any unshielded power sources

There are many things that can go wrong that can easily cause very painful disasters if any of the points above are ignored when deciding on the location of a server room. Of course, if you have a disaster recovery plan, the pain should be minimized, but once you establish a basic disaster recovery plan, your goal should always be to plan to avoid disasters.

Generally speaking, if you keep your servers in a room that you or an average office worker could not comfortably work in, you will reduce the life of the servers and their components, drastically in some cases. Modern server components are generally more rugged than in the past, but extreme conditions can cut their life spans by 50% or more. For instance, an average SATA hard disk has a four year warranty, but hard disks in servers at customers in the field in an un-cooled dusty environment often fail after only the first year.

The single biggest mistake businesses make with their servers is ignoring maintenance. That includes not just monitoring the application and service logs, server and network capacity, updates, and other operations, but also monitoring the environment of the server room after you establish it.

Many IT disasters are caused by a failure of some system outside the server room that affects the room's environment and eventually causes failures. For example, a server room at a customer in the field was left unchecked for months, the room's air conditioning access failed, and a week later a server hard disk failed and had to be sent out for data recovery at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars in recovery work and lost business. The extremely high temperature of the server room would have been noticed and remedied quickly if the customer had simply checked the server room environment once or twice a week, including weekends.

Many small businesses make the mistake of turning off their air conditioning on weekends, including the server room. If your servers are turned on and operational, their environment must be maintained regardless of whether anyone is actually using them. Of course, servers could be shut down at the end of the week when the air conditioning is turned off, then turned back on at the beginning of the following week when the air conditioning is turned back on. Businesses in colder northern regions will only have air conditioning on during the summer months without realizing that the server room still needs at least air circulation even in the winter months. But again, regular server room environment checks will avoid any problems caused by changes in external systems the server room depends upon.

If your server room cannot meet all the basic conditions listed above, there are alternatives. One alternative is to operate your servers at the facilities of a managed service provider like Net Fu. Often, the cost of doing this is actually lower than maintaining your own environment, and may make more sense if your business can't maintain a minimal maintenance schedule. Net Fu can even manage your servers and their environment for you at your company's offices.

Another alternative if you have a virtual server infrastructure is to simply move your virtual server files to host server hardware located at a managed service provider like Net Fu. This alternative is usually simpler than moving physical server operations and highlights one of the advantages of virtual IT infrastructure. The virtual servers could even be hosted at the managed service provider in addition to your own offices as a part of your disaster recovery plan.

If you have any questions about the points made above, contact us to schedule a complete analysis of your business offices and server environment. Don't make the mistake of waiting for a disaster to occur before you find and fix your problems.