Temp at Level 3 data centers

Wed Oct 11 23:52:31 UTC 2017

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 3:39 AM, Naslund, Steve <SNaslund at medline.com>
wrote:

> If the ambient temperature is higher is means the temperatures throughout
> the device would be higher and the temp at those points is what really
> matters.  I would also be concerned because if they lose one of the a/c
> units what would the ambient temperature rise to?  I would want them to
> tell me what the set point of the a/c actually is.
>
> Bottom line 80 F input air is too hot in my opinion and apparently the
> equipment's opinion as well.
>

My quick thoughts on the matter:

1. Above all else, know what your DC provider states in their SLA/contract.
2. It's never a bad idea to try to be on the best possible personal terms
with the DC manager(s), the better you get along the more they're inclined
to share knowledge/issues and work with you on any concerns.
3. You can't infer faults or lack of redundancy from the running
temperature - by way of example several facilities I know run at 25 degrees
celsius but if a chilled water unit in a given data hall fails there's a
number of DX units held in standby to take over. This is where point 2
comes in handy as knowing somebody on the ground they'll often be quite
happy to run through failure scenarios with you and help make sure
everybody is happy with the risk mitigation strategy.

Out of idle curiosity - I'm curious as to if the equipment that is alarming
is configurable or not? Reason I ask is I've heard users claiming
environmental parameters were out of spec before, but then it turned out it
was their own environmental monitoring they'd installed in the rack (using
default parameters out of the box, not configured to match the facility
SLA) that was complaining about a set point of 25...

Cheers,

Sam