Raised Flooring Obsolete or Not? 372
mstansberry writes "In part three of a series on the price of power in the data center, experts debate the merits of raised flooring. It's been around for years, but the original raised floors weren't designed to handle the air flow people are trying to get out them today. Some say it isn't practical to expect air to make several ninety-degree turns and actually get to where it's supposed to go. Is cooling with raised floors the most efficient option?"
The future is not in raised flooring... (Score:2, Funny)
Where else? (Score:5, Funny)
sub-floor (Score:5, Funny)
Oh...so it's for practial reasons... (Score:5, Funny)
Turns? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where else? (Score:2, Funny)
The problem is your boss. At a previous company my boss was the one that insisted we have a "beer fridge" hidden in the back of our server room, out of site of the rest of the company.
Re:Turns? (Score:5, Funny)
After reading this very insightful article summary, I was planning to completely replace all of the ductwork in my house on the assumption that air can't go around corners. You just saved me several thousand dollars.
Re:sub-floor (Score:3, Funny)
I got a totally impracticable solution right here! (Score:5, Funny)
Most. Efficient. Cooling. Evar!
Re:sub-floor (Score:4, Funny)
Downside: needs more reinforcement, especially if you need to hide an overweight PHB. Upside: if the odors go upwards, the bodies will remain undetected longer.
Or you could just use old enclosed racks as sarcophagi, hiding them in the back of the storage room behind stacks of obsolete boxen.
Re:Where else? (Score:5, Funny)
Raised Floor Fun! (Score:5, Funny)
But it also eliminates the joy of making fun of coworkers who gets lost in a raised floor, or closing them in when they go on a hunt for something...
Re:I got a totally impracticable solution right he (Score:2, Funny)
Going to have to bugdet for towels, though...
Re:Where else? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Army Research Labs solution... (Score:3, Funny)
I bet that computer simulated the best cooling for itself.
Call in the aliens (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if you're willing to host an alien spaceship at the bottom of your datacentre, maybe they could lend a hand...
Re:No Raised Floors? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where else? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Raised Floor Fun! (Score:4, Funny)
Yikes...
Re:Hey -- who's the experts anyways?!?! (Score:2, Funny)
But better yet ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Army Research Labs solution... (Score:3, Funny)
Some call that planning and engineering.
An engineering firm that was hired to do some upgrades to our 2 room computer facility which included a fan to circulate air between the two rooms. We asked what the CFM of the fans were and how often the air would be exchanged between the rooms. Their answer: Dunno, never thought of that. Good thing we did.
Re:Where else? (Score:3, Funny)
Sprinklers are as bad for chemical labs as for computers, but what the building had instead wasn't much better. The whole installation was pre-Halon; it used a CO2 dump system, with a big tank outside. (I don't know how much the tank held, but it cost them $10,000 to fill it.) In order to smother files without killing people, the CO2 vented at floor level. That's right—under the raised floor of the computer room.
Did I mention that the chemical labs around the outside were still in use? Every time a chemist set something on fire and pulled the panic handle, the system flooded CO2 into the entire building. Foom! Up would fly the floor panels, accompanied by huge clouds of dust.
—Drifting right into the old-fashioned optical smoke detectors. Foom! again. More panels blown loose, more dust flying, panicked chemists fleeing in every direction, babbling in German and Hindustani and Farsi. The system would cycle over and over until the tank was empty.
The fellow that told me about this place was amazed that, although the system got triggered two or three times while he worked there, completely emptying the tank every time, they never shattered any disk platters or CPU boards by flash-freezing them. But he did tell of coming back into the building to find the keypunch operator's potted plant frozen stiff.
Re:Raised Floor Fun! (Score:1, Funny)
"Make a left at the next tee, grab the bonus health and the chain gun and keep heading toward the light. Shoot out the fan and drop down into the control room from the overhead vent. Duke, can you still hear me?"
Re:Where else? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So you don't care - who cares? (Score:2, Funny)