server room / dust

P

Private Citizen

Gawd
Joined
Mar 15, 2002
Messages
782
I was wondering what some of you folks have implemented in a dedicated server room to keep dust at a minimum. I pulled one of our IBM X346 servers out of commision yesterday and opened up the chassis only to find a fair amount of dust inside. I can also see dust on the front of the chassis on the SCSI drives.

I know there are very large systems that can pull dust out of a server room but I'm looking for a smaller solution that can be brought in to a current server room that is fairly small in size.

We are talking a couple different locations here.

Room 1: 8x15
Room 2: 15x15
Room 3: 10x13

Anyone have any recommendations?
 
I'm assuming these are really just offices with a shared HVAC system? Quick question, is your room sealed and is the HVAC separate and dedicated? If so, are the filters clean, these needs to be replaced quite frequently. What type of floor are you using?

You should not need a filtration system to filter out dust in the first place.
 
2 things I've used in a pinch before for my current office and my side jobs.

1. Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifier. Plug that little baby in and let it clean out most garbage that comes in the room.

2. Get a box fan... you know the ones from home depot that cost like $10-15. Then buy 2 25x25 or 20x20 airfilters and duct tape one to each side of the fan. Plug that puppy in and set to low (unless the room is kinda warm, then medium. Air will be pulling from the back and filtered... then pushed out through the front..filtered again. Sounds stupid and ghetto.... but give it 2 weeks... when you change the nasty ass filters! cheap and effective.

just my 2 cents.
 
turb0 said:
2 things I've used in a pinch before for my current office and my side jobs.

1. Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifier. Plug that little baby in and let it clean out most garbage that comes in the room.

2. Get a box fan... you know the ones from home depot that cost like $10-15. Then buy 2 25x25 or 20x20 airfilters and duct tape one to each side of the fan. Plug that puppy in and set to low (unless the room is kinda warm, then medium. Air will be pulling from the back and filtered... then pushed out through the front..filtered again. Sounds stupid and ghetto.... but give it 2 weeks... when you change the nasty ass filters! cheap and effective.

just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...


I've seen this done before, it's fugly, but it does work! :D
 
The AC filters are replaced as per manufacture specs. The building does have a shared HVAC system running through the building. There is carpet in two of the rooms and regular drop flooring in the third. The third room is a proper server room unlike the other two which are converted office space.

I don't want to make it sound like the server was caked in dust, as it wasn't. However I do feel it was a bit more than I would liked to have seen inside our server. The server was in use since 2005.

Not sure which direction I'll go yet.
 
Private Citizen said:
The AC filters are replaced as per manufacture specs. The building does have a shared HVAC system running through the building. There is carpet in two of the rooms and regular drop flooring in the third. The third room is a proper server room unlike the other two which are converted office space.

I don't want to make it sound like the server was caked in dust, as it wasn't. However I do feel it was a bit more than I would liked to have seen inside our server. The server was in use since 2005.

Not sure which direction I'll go yet.
Click to expand...

Carpet is going to be your biggest issue next to the shared HVAC system. My only suggestion at this point would be to get a room filter, but perhaps that wont even work as the hvac system will keep dumping in dirty air.

You shouldn't have much dust at all, perhaps a picture would do? We pull some of our several year old production systems without a spec of dust, but then again, we do isolate everything in a controlled environment.
 
Get a high quality filter (MERV 13 at the very least - the higher the number the better), 5-6" thick, for your HVAC system. Don't go to Home Depot for one, because the filters they sell as MERV 13 really aren't. Go with Aprilaire or Alen. Most HVAC systems just use fiberglass filters that only catch REALLY big things and clog up very quickly. Not nearly good enough!

You can get a HEPA air purifier. IQAir, Alen or Blueair. I get my stuff from www.air-purifiers-america.com

The Ionic Breeze is HORRIBLE. Do not go near that crap! Oreck, Honeywell and anything else you can buy in Wal-mart or see infomercials for suck, too.
 
I noticed we have almost no dust in our newly built out server room and I think that has to do with the fact that the room has its own AC unit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top