Summer Heat vs. Computers – Heat Wins Every Time

Every summer we hear from a client that has turned off the air conditioning over a long weekend to keep the electricity expenses down, only to find the server room equipment is ‘frozen’ and unresponsive.

High temperatures can be a death sentence for your electronics. A server that becomes overheated usually costs more in energy to run, has a shorter life-span, and is more likely to crash.

For most companies, a server crash can mean hours or days of downtime, unproductive employees, and a great deal of unnecessary stress.

8 Steps to Prevent a Heat-Induced Server Crash:
1) Tidy up the server room. Remove papers or other items that have been stacked on top of, or right next to, computer equipment.
2) Make sure cold air reaches all the equipment; this area has to have air conditioning 24/7/365!
3) Keep the doors to the server room closed and seal off the space.
4) Consider a server room thermostat that can send temperature alerts directly to your email. Get some help from our techs as you consider
where to set the thermostat and what levels to set for the alerts.
5) Buy a rack enclosure so the air can flow all around the equipment rather than having the computers stacked on a table top, or even
worse, on top of each other. Server racks are designed to keep air flowing above and below the equipment and can include your APC
units.
6) Keep the temperature at no more than 77 degrees Fahrenheit.
7) Look into Managed Services to monitor the health of your computer equipment.
8) Consider virtualization of physical servers, or cloud computing, so you can have fewer pieces of equipment producing heat in the first
place.

Electronics are sensitive to heat, and your computers are an integral part of running your business, as well as a sizable investment. How can we help? – CMW