[Beowulf] Q: Cooling units? Raised floors? General machine room stuff..

[John Hearns]

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004, Jim Lux wrote:

> >   Secondly, given this is a rather small machine room (aiming for a max
> > capacity of 5 42U racks), what advantage would be found in going with a
> > raised floor?  And does anyone have any cost estimates on raised floors
> > for rooms on the order of, say, 15' by 15'?
> 
> Kind of depends on how you're arranging the racks.  If you've got them all
> side by side in the middle of the room (so the cold air comes in the front
> and blows out the back of a "wall o'racks") the raised floor probably isn't
> worth it.  You'll have plenty of room on both the front and back for cable
> trays, etc.  Raised floors are handy if you have rows and rows of racks, or

I tend to agree. Raised floors are of course the business in a large 
computer room.

I've recently though seen one new server room at a university in England 
which I rather liked. 
Cable trays installed above the racks, suspended from the ceiling using
Unistrut. The cable trays were (if I'm not wrong) open metal work types
(think of supermarket baskets, not metal trays).
For mains, commando type sockets coming down from above, about a foot 
above the rear of the racks.

I'd try that - just convince your sparkies (*) to run the mains 
distribution along the ceiling to commando sockets.





(*) english slang for electricians