We are moving office into a large open plan office unit. We have a couple of ideas for housing our renderfarm rack and server - either build a ‘server room’ that we connect into an aircon system or buy a professional silent racking system (basically a big rack cabinet with silent fans that will quietly move all hot air from inside the rack into the main office space which in turn is cooled via the office aircon system).
I like the idea of the silent rack system, mainly as its an ‘off-the-shelf’ product. but it probably means our aircon will need to work extra hard to cool the office with all this extra heat being piped into it.
Most companies I’ve worked in use their tape department or a dedicated machine room with pretty loud fans and air conditioning - you get way better cooling performance from big loud fast fans. Aircon is normally pretty loud too.
they have some quiet ones too, but not tried them, we are thinking along the same lines in the short term. but long term will be a AirCon server room to house all the gubbins. Our Poweredge servers are damn noisy, but you just have to shout a little louder across the desk!
Yeah - came accross those kell ones - and some by Emerson - we are waiting for a quote. But as my PC supplier has suggested, we may need to sell a kidney on Ebay to afford one! :shock:
We have a large custom shelving system in our office that runs down the length and also acts as a partition (as it has MDF panneling on the ‘outside’ of it). A large section of this is dedicated to our servers, but I can hear them from my desk.
I recommend getting a contracter in to build you an 8’ x 8’ room with sheetrock walls (and insulation for the noise!) and give it a dedicated AC unit.
Shouldn’t cost too much. Make sure the door is big enough to be able to get equipment and racks in and out.
