How Do You Cool Your Data Center / Server Room?
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- How much of your coding is done by AI coding agents these days? Posted on June 21st, 2026 | 4608 votes
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- How much of your coding is done by AI coding agents these days? Posted on June 21st, 2026 | 28 comments
Water cooling. (Score:5, Interesting)
Green and awesome.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
You wish. You're releasing fossil CO2 when you burn the propane, GP's replacing fossil fuels with waste heat in his setup.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:4, Informative)
GP said his server room is "green". I say MY office is "greener" because it releases more CO2. What does the green parts of plants use (other than Brawndo)? CO2. Unless I really have had too much beer since biology class.
Equating low CO2 emissions to the color green annoys me. Hybrid cars with a little green leaf on the back annoy me. I'd like a sticker for my CO2 belching SUV that shows a big green tree surrounded by a bunch of people choking to death.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:1)
OK, so your setup is more green, blue-green, red, and brown.
Some respect for the non-chlorophyll B photosynthesizers please!
(cyanobacteria, rhodophyta, phaeophytes, dinoflagellates).
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:1)
Actually plants would be thriving if even MORE co2 was being dumped, which was the parent's point.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
RIP: Google Answers, Google Base, Google Buzz, Google Lively, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, Google Page Creator, Google SearchWiki, Google Sidewiki, Google Video Marketplace, Google X
Re:Water cooling. (Score:5, Funny)
Mine is a brown system, we use the heat to evaporate salt water, we then take the salt left over and use it to salt the earth all over town. Damn growing plants, I'll show them who is boss..
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:1)
Let's try this again. GP said his server room is "green". I say MY office is "greener" because it releases more CO2. What does the green parts of plants use (other than Brawndo)? CO2. Unless I really have had too much beer since biology class. Equating low CO2 emissions to the color green annoys me. Hybrid cars with a little green leaf on the back annoy me. I'd like a sticker for my CO2 belching SUV that shows a big green tree surrounded by a bunch of people choking to death.
Stop being a jerk and write a preg_replace for your brain to find "green" and replace with "ecologically friendly", and get a girlfriend to hug you and then not give you sex til you grow up and act responsibly. What?! Too much to ask? Seemed as reasonable to me as his rant.
Wow! I thought your original post was a joke. (Score:4, Informative)
Wow! I assumed your original post was a joke!
But you're not joking are you? You actually believe that the colour green should be reserved in all symbolic references to plants (and I assume you also believe that other other photosynthesising life forms are also green?)
Anyway, let me break it down for you. The colour green has been associated with nature in all its forms for centuries. This is not a modern phenomena. Calling something green that is friendly to the entire ecosystem is not some sort of contradiction in terms.
I'd like a sticker for my CO2 belching SUV that shows a big green tree surrounded by a bunch of people choking to death.
*sigh* Not this one again. I doubt I'm going to convince you, but just in case someone thick is reading. It is a myth to believe that higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production. [newscientist.com]
Ok, I'm convinced! (Score:1)
Not really. It's not a myth to believe that, as even the article you linked reports "it is well established that higher CO2 levels can have a fertilising effect on many plants, boosting growth by as much as a third." Thick indeed.
Re:Wow! I thought your original post was a joke. (Score:2)
Well, even if you think the color green should be associated to those serial plant killers that we call animals... No, life will adapt to our emissions in no time (for life's timeframe), an it always thrives on hight CO2 environments, it is low CO2 times that are bad. Diversity will fall in the begining, but that isn't a first time thing, it always recovers.
The transformations we are imposing in our planet are bad just for some of the species that currently live here... That includes us, of course.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:3)
Actually, in nature most plants are limited by other factors than CO2 availability, like the temperature, and amount of sunlight, water, nitrogen and phosphorus they can get. Putting more CO2 into the atmosphere is not going to do them much good. Adding CO2 mainly helps in greenhouses and other agricultural settings, where the glass keeps the temperature up, enough water is made available, and fertilisers take care of the nutrient requirements.
Of course, agricultural plants are green too so your claim is not entirely unjustified :-), but if we want to make them grow faster by adding CO2, we're better off just doing that within the greenhouse. That way, we avoid killing the remaining 80% of coral reefs by bleaching and a whole host of other nasty consequences of increased atmospheric CO2 levels.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
"Actually, in nature most plants are limited by other factors than CO2 availability"
Yes. Which means those "most plants" would get a substituted with others more capable to take advantage of the risen CO2 levels (i.e. C4). But still a greener world, as the grandparent stated.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Haven't you heard? CO2 is the new dihydrogen monoxide.
It's a colourless gas, poisonous in high concentration, which causes our blood to become acidic! It is the byproduct of most industrial processes, farming, and internal combustion engines. The scary thing about it is that it that plants actually absorb this gas, incorporating it into its sugars, which humans and other animals then consume.
The only solution is to have a tax on this substance. Sure, some politicians will skim off the top, sure it'll be undermined by corruption, but it's what we need to do to reduce this noxious threat. Never in the history of the world has the earth faced such a large amount of threatening and evil carbon dioxide.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Wait.. what does the heat have to do with CO2?
You don't think your computers take in oxygen and breathe out CO2? do you?
Re:Water cooling. (Score:1)
Re:Water cooling. (Score:3)
Well, computers do take in oxygen (and CO2) and "breathe" out CO2 (and oxygen)...
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
Did you actually read what he said? He said they blow the heat outside and use propane to heat the office instead, releasing THAT CO2 outside as well.
Re:Water cooling. (Score:2)
What has become of slashdot?! First you'll demand I read the comment before replying, and next you'll be saying I should read the summary, or worse, the article!
Egyptian-Style Cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Egyptian-Style Cooling (Score:2)
Re:Egyptian-Style Cooling (Score:3)
Once, again, Egyptian style. You have the interns fanning the server, you have interns fanning you, and you have more interns getting food and caffeine for you.
Sadly, I don't have any interns....*tear*. But I guess that protects me against having them revolt.
Re:Egyptian-Style Cooling (Score:2)
Re:Egyptian-Style Cooling (Score:2)
Absorber refrigerator (Score:5, Interesting)
Solar water heating tubes on the roof--that's an evacuated glass tube with a heat pipe running up hill to a heat exchanger embedded into a hot water loop.
Water-ammonia-hydrogen absorption refrigerator. The hot water loop loops down, runs into a water block that heats up the base reservoir of ammonia-water. This is in a small attic room with a weather sealed door and two fans (intake and exhaust). If the absorption refrigerator experiences a breach, the ammonia is vented to the atmosphere (it's poisonous, but harmless--ammonia is produced as part of the biological process, and is consumed by yeast and other microbes). Doesn't normally breach--the unit is sealed and needs zero maintenance ever.
The initial cooling loop ventilates heat into the room. After that, the cooled expanded ammonia travels through a condenser where it condenses into liquid ammonia at ridiculously low temperatures. The condenser itself is inside an oil-filled block which itself extends cooling fins into a run of duct work. The actual compartment with the condenser is separate, so if the condenser and housing crack it just splatters oil and evaporates ammonia into the outside atmosphere rather than into building duct work. Condensed ammonia goes back into the base unit where it's boiled again to recirculate.
The fans are run by compressed air. The air is compressed by sterling engine. Operating temperature is lower than the breakdown temperature of teflon seals, and so alpha sterling engine layout with hot teflon seals is used. No fluid lubrication required, so absolutely no maintenance. Compressed air also runs pumps that drive the hot loop and a cold loop that exchanges the sterling engine's heat with a ground tapped sink. A backup compressor is physically in another room and driven by electricity in case of failure of sterling engine. This is to avoid sparks in the event of a critical breach of the absorption refrigerator, instead allowing volatile hydrogen and ammonia to vent to atmosphere.
Hot loop is supplemented by a box of slate and oil to store excess heat collected during daylight hours for use at night. Hot loop is backed up by a separate, exchanger coupled loop that passes hot working fluid through a hot water exchanger coupled to a boiler to provide heat from gas via the building's existing hot water system. In the winter, system is bled during the day to provide building heat, and waste heat from heating turbine is used at night to supplement system if working temperature drops critically from lack of stored heat energy.
Impressed?
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
Pics or it didn't happen.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
I'm a low sci-fi writer with perpetual writer's block. I can create universes and technology and civilizations; I can't create conflict and actual story. That said, the machine does work and is implemented in most large-scale industrial settings where a LOT of waste heat is present (large factories, places that use a Capstone turbine to generate heat/electricity also tend to vent their waste heat into an absorption refrigerator if they need a LOT of refrigeration...). Small scale uses include RVs that run beer refrigerators off a pilot light driven by propane or kerosene (camp refrigerator). Lots of uses in the real world, tbh; but because of the fatal amounts of ammonia present, most commercial and residential uses are bypassed. Ammonia is lighter than air and mitigating the danger is easy, not to mention house explosions (from natural gas leaks) are more likely than having an absorption refrigerator leak ammonia.
I tend to interpret my ability to create, understand, and apply technology as "Solving the world's problems" since I can't write a good story. I can point to a few products that use a few basic concepts to wash and dry clothes, and then cobble them together and show you a machine that washes and dries clothes from start to finish in a five minute cycle with very little energy use, for example. All that stuff exists already, it just hasn't been arranged in the right way. But who cares? This is useless, I can't frame a good story around it that hasn't already been done.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:1)
Why worry about writing a story that hasn't already been done? Just write a story. Let it stand on it's own merit, don't try to compare it to all the other works out there. If all you can do is make universes and no story, make an rpg world and let others tell the story. Everything has it's place, man.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
I'm a low sci-fi writer with perpetual writer's block. I can create universes and technology and civilizations; I can't create conflict and actual story.
Sounds like Hidden Empire I just finished reading (by Kevin J. Anderson). I finished it because the universe was so interesting and mostly complete (unlike some where there are gaping holes in history/present that make is feel fake). And the characters were good. But I didn't like the writing style or the story. It was both interesting and a painful read at the same time. There are plenty of successful writers who sucked in some respect or another.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
The best writing will come when you have a story you want to tell. Not when you have a world you want to show off. If you want to show off your world in a book, then think up a relatively plain story, a love triangle or such (really, so many books can be closely compared to a Shakespeare work it's sad). Just pick someone else's story and adopt it to your world. If the world is good enough, the book will stand on its own, even if you think it crap.
I'm not a professional writer, but I do have a friend with hundreds of rejections. I'll be getting my rejections soon enough (I give it 5 years until my book is done, provided the wife actually illustrates it - it's a childrens physics book for pre-readers).
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:1)
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very Rube-like because it's got so many caveats related to "this thing should never break open BUT if it does it will silently kill everyone in the building, unless it explodes first."
Ammonia cloud flooding the lower floors (say we put it in the basement) will poison everyone in a large area to death. This operates at above atmospheric pressure and with a hell of a lot of ammonia.
The thing uses hydrogen to more efficiently condense ammonia. Hydrogen released into atmosphere is explosive and will cause fires.
To solve these, you physically isolate the damn thing and you isolate it from fire and electricity. You also add a ton of ventilation (suck air in one window, out the other). On top of that, there's provisions for running when the sun isn't shining or when the working temperature just isn't hot enough.
At the core, it's a machine with no moving parts that allows you to apply fire to one side and watch icicles immediately start forming on the other. So instead of fire, we're using the sun.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
"this thing should never break open BUT if it does it will silently kill everyone in the building... unless it explodes first."
Am I the only one who thinks more tech should have this sort of disclaimer with it?
Life's just too damn easy these days; Unless turning on a PC involves the risk of a fiery and gruesome death, you're just not living, man!
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:3)
That's the point though. You could stick it in the basement. It's a solid metal piping system and is sealed, it contains ammonia and hydrogen but it's a sealed unit and is safe. IF it cracks open, however, it will flood your house with toxic and explosive gas.
In order to completely eliminate that corner case, I tack on relatively simple installation guidelines. It's wordy and looks complicated, but then you realize it's running two non-electric fans and putting the thing essentially in an outside enclosure attached to the house. The end result is if it cracks open it vents, and the hydrogen becomes water vapor somewhere outside while the ammonia dissipates and is metabolized by yeasts eventually as natural. All problems mitigated.
It's the difference between "making it work" and "doing it right."
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
The GP said it was the end result.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:4, Funny)
""this thing should never break open BUT if it does it will silently kill everyone in the building, unless it explodes first.""
i am putting this sticker on every device we install from now on.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
"this thing should never break open BUT if it does it will silently kill everyone in the building, unless it explodes first."
i am putting this sticker on every device we install from now on.
Soon, the device manufacturers will wise up, and put text like "removing this will silently and untraceably kill you" instead of their lame "removing this will void your warranty" on those stickers covering access screws etc.
The EULA/TOS/etc will assert that if you manage to survive removing such a sticker, the warranty is ipso facto void.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
Why would they wise up to that? They benefit if you remove the sticker.
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:3)
In other words, "I'm doing SCIENCE!"
Re:Absorber refrigerator (Score:2)
Heh. I've exploded myself once, but I have that excuse.
Cooling of Data Center / Server Room? Not my job! (Score:2)
Re:Cooling of Data Center / Server Room? Not my jo (Score:2)
Yeah, I chose no cooling because no server room.
Re:Cooling of Data Center / Server Room? Not my jo (Score:2)
Yeah, I chose no cooling because no server room.
Wot? That's like saying you have no beer tap, or no record player. Of course you have a server room - if nothing else, it's the room your NAT router (which likely is both a DHCP server, forwarding name server and web server) is in.
Re:Cooling of Data Center / Server Room? Not my jo (Score:2)
You should go out more often.
If you stretch your imagination to consider my 50 dollar router as a "server" and my living room as a "server room"... damn!
Re:Cooling of Data Center / Server Room? Not my jo (Score:3)
That being said, If I were still working, I'd have selected whatever cooling was used at work, even if I weren't involved in running it.
Re:Cooling of Data Center / Server Room? Not my jo (Score:3)
My office's server room is in a closet. Contains a single server plus stuff like my Internet connection (fibre link), a modem (receives fax), and switch (internal LAN). Oh and the phone switch box is mounted in there, too. All I need for a two-person company.
It has passive cooling. Floor of the door has a gap, the false ceiling at the top removed, so chimney effect. More than enough cooling.
Not everyone works at some kind of megacorp!
Comment removed (Score:2)
Small server room (Score:2)
Small server room, 2 racks, 2 AC units, just for redundancy. One could do the job easily.
Home server uses bleeding edge throttled hot-rack setup, mostly passive cooling ;-) I had it before Facebook did actually :D
Missing Option (Score:2)
I open the window.
Re:Missing Option (Score:1)
Re:Missing Option (Score:2)
Shouldn't that be, Cowboy Neil opens a window for me when it gets too hot.
I had to cut corners and laid off Cowboy Neil. But don't worry, he's snagged a posh job as a Telephone Sanitizer.
Re:Missing Option (Score:2)
Crazy and Expensive - Squirrels (Score:2)
I use squirrels.
It is crazy and expensive (you wouldn't believe how much a squirrel can eat), but it sure gets the job done.
Re:Crazy and Expensive - Squirrels (Score:2)
Make a squirrel push your gas
Make a squirrel push your gas
Make a squirrel push your gas
And when you're done
Just throw him in the grass! YEAH! [youtube.com]
Re:Crazy and Expensive - Squirrels (Score:1)
I use squirrels.
It is crazy and expensive (you wouldn't believe how much a squirrel can eat), but it sure gets the job done.
I find the use of squirrels leads to communism.
In Soviet Russia squirrel cools YOU!
Re:Crazy and Expensive - Squirrels (Score:2)
And when everything else fails you can always eat the squirrels!
TO THE CLOUD! (Score:5, Funny)
I have no idea how our servers are cooled - they're in "the cloud", so they could be cooling it with the souls of the damned for all I know.
Re:TO THE CLOUD! (Score:3)
With the drool of intelligence agencies.
Re:TO THE CLOUD! (Score:2)
I have no idea how our servers are cooled - they're in "the cloud", so they could be cooling it with the souls of the damned for all I know.
Isn't that obvious? "In the cloud" means "air cooled"!
Re:TO THE CLOUD! (Score:3)
"I have no idea how our servers are cooled - they're in "the cloud""
My guess is water vapor :-)
Re:TO THE CLOUD! (Score:2)
My guess is water vapor :-)
By definition, if it's a cloud, the vapour has condensed into droplets.
Re:TO THE CLOUD! (Score:2)
Missing option (Score:2)
I don't have a server room, you insensitive clod!
Warm is good (Score:2)
I need that heat to keep the house warm. In winter I power up the spare systems and run disk tests. In a "heat wave" I turn off a few monitors. :)
normal? (Score:2)
Of course calling it "normal air conditioning" is a bit of a stretch when you have 4 times as many coolers as you need so that and 3 can fail and nobody would notice.
Air cooling (Score:2)
Re:Air cooling (Score:2)
So the scroll wheel of the mouse spins?
Curious (Score:1)
Re:Curious (Score:1)
What's a "server room"?
It's where the serving staff go to change into their uniforms, eat, clock in and out, and generally keep out of site of the upper class when they are not working - an serving their betters.
Cooling? To waste such things on the service class is just outlandish and vulgar.
Now if you'll excuse me sir, it is somewhat inappropriate for me to have this discussion with you. I suggest that if you have further questions to ask the butler or my valet.
Good day.
Beer! (Score:1)
Frost giants (Score:2)
Effective, but we do go through ops guys pretty fast...
Re:Frost giants (Score:2)
Re:Frost giants (Score:2)
"Hoar frost"?
WTF (Score:2)
Laser cooling (Score:2)
Heatwave? what heatwave? (Score:3)
Here in England it's summertime. We reached a high of 14C yesterday in my particular part of the country. That was on a day when some places received the average July rainfall for the whole month, in a single day. If we need to cool our computers all we need to do here is to open a window.
Summer in England: the rain gets warmer.
Exotic? (Score:3)
I remember when the Harrier was in flight test, there was a 19" rack mount mini-computer in a Nissen hut (corrugated iron) which needed a drastic environmental control soliution. A copper pipe was threaded through the cabinet with a funnel at the top and a thermos flask at the bottom. When it was hot, we poured liquid nitrogen through the pipe, but when it was cold we used hot water. Great skill was needed to keep within the safe working temperature range. Of course this was before health and safety made such solutions illegal.
Define Normal (Score:2)
We spray paint the servers. (Score:1)
They're cool!
Spiders (Score:1)
What bloody heat wave?. (Score:2)
Water/Liquid Chilled-Coolers (Score:1)
My server room is air cool (Score:2)
Normal Air Conditioner I guess (Score:2)
Considering my "server room" consists of a old TVIO box with a pico-SAM9G45 as its guts and a couple TB drives running as a NAS and in house FTP server for my retro computers its being cooled by whatever we are. If its summer its the AC, if its winter then its not really being cooled by anything but the stock 60mm fan.
That is if it ever kicks in, its temperature sensitive, and considering the only heat sources are the drives bolted to the case and the very small power supply from the TVIO which is put under much less demand than stock, if it does move its very slow and not for long.
At work we have a simple setup, mounted in a open air rack. it all lives in a small telecoms closet with an ac duct. Course were not running freaking google there, just some network storage, and a domain server.
No fucking clue (Score:2)
No fucking clue. Ask Amazon.
Re:they should partner with a public swimming pool (Score:1)
Re:they should partner with a public swimming pool (Score:2)
And unless you have many racks of servers it won't make any difference to the pool.
Re:they should partner with a public swimming pool (Score:2)
heat exchanger
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/BELL-GOSSETT-Heat-Exchanger-2NXP9?cm_mmc=CSE:GoogleBase-_-HVAC%20and%20Refrigeration-_-HVAC%20Controls-_-2NXP9&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=2NXP9 [grainger.com]
for example
Re:Windows (Score:4, Funny)
To cool my server room, why, I open the window, of course.
That would cause my systems to become buggy. Damn mosquitoes.
Re:Nerd-cave (Score:2)
You mom's basement is 20 feet below ground? What is it, the sub-sub-basement?
I'm so cool (Score:2)