We just got a couple of HP DL360 G7′s, and I notice it has vents on the top. More hot air seems to exit through these vents than it does anywhere on the back. All our servers in the past have always vented all the hot air through the back. How are these servers with top vents supposed to be mounted? Everyone always says airflow is best by not leaving gaps on the rack, but [...]

My company has several Gateway E2300′s, the slim desktops. One of the machines in particular may be having a thermal issue. THe symptoms are: at seemingly random times throughout the day the fan speed will increase for anywhere from 5-15 minutes making it impossible to work because of the “Darth Vader-like” noise (thats how the end user described it). I have completely dusted the inside of the machine, the heat fins, and the fan. I [...]

It seems like there’s a lot of disagreement in mindsets when it comes to installing rackmount servers. There have been threads discussing cable arms and other rackmount accessories, but I’m curious: Do you leave an empty rack unit between your servers when you install them? Why or why not? Do you have any empirical evidence to support your ideas? Is anyone aware of a study which proves conclusively whether one is better or not? If [...]

I can use lm_sensors to tell me the tempature of various things on my laptop. And sometimes I can hear the fans starting up. Is there anything that will show me how fast various fans on my system are spinning? What you might be looking for is fancontrol – it works in conjunction with lm_sensors to regulate the speed of your fans using pwmconfig Here are some ubuntu specific docs on GKrellM in X and [...]

One of our workstations has begun to freeze or reset under some circunstances. We can reproduce this in both Linux and Windows so it’s most likely a hardware issue. The freezes most usually happen when using a compiler (C++, if you’re curious). We believe this points to either faulty RAM or CPU overheating. We cleaned CPU fans and replaced thermal paste. Temperature is now in the 30ºC range when idle and it does pick up [...]

My organization is in the process of looking for new space in Manhattan. We have 25 employees and are looking at offices that are around 7,000 sq. ft. I don’t anticipate us ever needing more than a single rack (which puts us squarely in the server closet realm) and our cooling needs are ~5,000 BTUs. What should I be looking for in terms of supplied cooling? Is it reasonable to expect a server closet to [...]