In Season 2 of HBO’s hit TV Series, ”Silicon Valley,” Gilfoyle, a software designer and hardware guru, (played by Martin Starr) builds his company, Pied Piper, a host server in their ”Hacker Hostel’s” garage.
Now, we don’t try to be too big of computer know-it-all’s here at Dickson. While we do have our own Software as a Service system, with IoT hardware that communicates to a cloud application, we utilize Amazon Secure Web Services to host all of our data. Which means we don’t have direct, day-to-day interaction with the actual machines running all of our system’s data.
That all being said: we are temperature nerds. And we really question Gilfoyle’s temperature foresight to build a server in a garage. (We admit that the show is based in the Bay area of San Francisco, and thus isn’t susceptible to HUGE temperature swings. But, an office with an HVAC system would really be a much better solution.)
Why? Because server rooms heat up quickly, especially when the power goes out. They continue to run on backup battery, while the HVAC system is shut down.
Losing data is a nightmare. Which is why for Gilfoyle, we would recommend temperature mapping the Hacker’s Hostel garage before and after putting servers in. Data centers and server rooms experience extremely quick rises in temperature: servers generate a lot of heat. Without proper air circulation, and proper temperature monitoring, those extremely warm temperatures ruin a company’s data.
In a server room, temperature mapping means monitoring in a much more congested space than say, a warehouse. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be less points to monitor at within your server environment. Instead, when you map a data center, map at more points. Place your data loggers down the aisles of your server stacks, in between stacks, at all HVAC outputs, near any windows and doors, and by any external heat source (other than the servers themselves).