When it’s Hot Outside, Your Servers Are Burning Up Inside

If you host your own servers in-house, or in an off-site data center, you know all about the frustrations of keeping your hardware up to date and healthy. This also includes keeping your servers from overheating. These mission-critical pieces of hardware are known to produce incredulous amounts of heat, and keeping them cool only gets more challenging during hot, sticky summer months.

When a server overheats, it can have unexpected (or, well, obvious) results. Too much heat can fry your server’s hardware, effectively disabling it and possibly ruining it for good. This is obviously not a good thing, and it can happen when you least expect it. Therefore, it’s important that you always have a way in which to keep it cool and under control.

Here are three cooling factors you should consider when hosting your own server in-house:

• Keep your servers in a temperature-controlled climate. Basically, you should store your servers somewhere where you can easily control the temperature. There are cooling racks specifically designed for such a task, but many SMBs simply resort to closets with air-conditioning. However, if your server room consists of a closet with fans blowing directly on your hardware, you might want to consider a cooler solution.
• Take care of your cooling equipment. If your cooling machines fail, it’s the same as allowing your servers to overheat. Therefore, the upkeep of your cooling system is of the utmost importance. Is the overall atmosphere damp? Is dust accumulating on your fan blades? Set up routine maintenance procedures and stick to them to avoid surprises, like a failing cooling system.
• Be sure to allocate enough assets from your budget. Air-conditioning can be a costly expense. Even having fans running constantly can add a hefty addition to your electric bill. Therefore, you need to properly assess just how much you have available to allocate toward proper server cooling units.

You might also consider revamping your backup policy to one which constantly takes snapshots of your data. This way, despite your best efforts, if the server does overheat, you have a backup plan that can handle these unexpected problems. Our Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution is perfect for a time like this. It can take the place of your server in a pinch if it were to somehow become inoperable, and allows for a quick and efficient restore once you arrange for a replacement.

As a managed service provider, Preferred knows how to provide quality technology management services to small and medium-sized business owners like yourself. One of our services is server hosting and management. This lifts the burden of maintaining your server hardware from your shoulders, and places it on ours. As capable technology experts, you’ll have little to worry about in terms of proper upkeep and maintenance. Give us a call at 708-781-7110 to learn more.