Shouldn't your servers be sweating?

Make servers that run hotter, is the demand from some companies. At least that's the view from Rumsey Engineers, a group describing itself as consisting of "uniquely qualified and dedicated professionals with a passion for high performance, environmentally sustainable and energy efficient heating, ventilating and air conditioning system designs".

In an interview with DataCenter Dynamics, engineer John Weale says that companies are starting to challenge the notion that you have to keep servers at no more than 20 degrees Celsius, with lots of overhead just in case. And they're demanding of server manufacturers that their products become more capable of running happily in temperatures in excess of 30 degrees C.

Weale reckons enterprise execs are asking: "Why does my daughter have a terabyte music server under her bed that she piles towels on top of and it’s been fine for three years, while I’m buying a $10,000 rack and you say it can’t take temperatures of 78 degrees [25 C in real money] for more than three hours?"

Weale predicts that running servers at around 38 degrees C will become the norm in the way that 20 degrees C is now and "the only issue being that the server will need to be made larger to get a little more air through". Oh yes, and liquid cooling...

It's not a bad idea though. There's the benefit of huge energy savings of course, and they're not to be sneezed at.

But it would be good for the people who have to work in the data centre too. Not only would it make the server room a more pleasant place to work from a temperature point of view - many of the ones I've seen are freezing - it would mean less cooling, fewer fans, and - get this - much less noise.

One day, you might even be able to hold a conversation without shouting. Now that would be a step forward.