A Mind Lost

When we relocated to newly refurbished offices in 2005, I had a large server cupboard built into my new office to house the network hardware and servers.  The office had air conditioning and the cupboard had a number of vents for airflow.  Unfortunately, our array of servers and hardware kick out a substantial amount of heat and the office air-con doesn’t result in sufficient airflow to keep the temperature in the cupboard down.  It’s 9:00am at the moment and the outside temperature is about 14 degrees but the cupboard temperature is already 31.2 degrees.  I’ve already had to replace two hard drives this year and we have a hot summer predicted in the UK .

The other problem with the server and network hardware is the noise.  The network switch has fans which make a ridiculous amount of noise and the server PSU and CPU fans mean that the cupboard doors have to be kept closed.

Now, we are not a large company, about 20 active users at once and apart from our main file server we have an old NT server keeping a legacy SQL server application running and we have an email server and an intranet server.  It could be argued that we don’t need our own mail server, particularly now that provider-supplied email services now include more services and options.  However, I like the flexibility having our own email server provides.

All of our servers are standard PC kit running Debian (except for the NT server obviously!).  Since there is little CPU or graphics load, it is possible to reduce the hardware requirements and be a little greener at the same time.

When I say green IT, I’m talking more about the micro-environment rather than the global environment.  It’s about improving the local working environment by reducing the excess heat and noise while at the same time saving a little on the energy bills as well.

My first step has been to build two new mini-itx servers, one for the mail server and the other for the intranet.  Since I’m not bothered in the slightest about graphics capability, I’ve used two Intel D201GLY2 motherboards which have a soldered celeron on board with no fan required.  These are housed in a pair of Noah 3988 mini-itx cases and 1Gb RAM each.  I thought about using Atom-based boards but the celeron has more power and only draws about 4 watts more.

Both servers have been moved out of the server cupboard into the main office and are near silent apart from the small case fan and they are hooked up to a substantial Belkin UPS which should provide at least 40 minutes of power to the pair in the event of a power-cut since they only draw 45W each, a reduction of at least 200W in total.

So far they are performing perfectly and while it’s not a solution to all of our server needs (I’m not so sure about running a 20 user MySQL server on one of these.  Would it work?), I’m more than happy with the progress so far.