I ran across an article on The Register that reported the St. James' hospital in Leeds, U.K. frying about £1m or $2M USD worth of computer equipment slated for their new Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) system that was to replace radiology films. Apparently, the equipment overheated and an audit is currently underway to determine if the provider's recommendations on cooling were ignored. I'm shocked that the hardware didn't have any sort of thermal shutdown capability to prevent or minimize damage, but maybe the condition was too severe.
Cooling requirements are a key factor when determining what equipment you can accommodate in a server room or data center. It is surprising how often this is overlooked, especially now that most vendors clearly document thermal output and even offer calculators, like HP's Enterprise Configurator, to accurately determine power consumption and cooling requirements.
If you don't have access to a calculator, here is some good information:
The British Thermal Unit (BTU) is the standard for measuring the capacity of cooling systems. The amount of power (watts) consumed by equipment determines the number of BTUs/hr required for component cooling, based on this formula:
BTUs/hr = watts x 3.41.
For example:
399 watts x 3.41 = 1360 BTUs/hr.
Air conditioning equipment is typically rated in terms of tons of cooling, an old measurement based on the cooling ability of tons of ice (1 ton of cooling = 12000 BTUs/hr).
Comment Preview