Servers: Cooling - feralcoder/shared GitHub Wiki
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IMPORTANCE
Some of my servers are loud by nature. All of them can be loud under load. Anything I can do to increase efficiency goes a long way toward keeping them quiet.
Furthermore, all my cooling requirements implicitly require filtering. My air is greasy, dusty, and full of hair, both fluffy and coarse. This accumulates quickly and degrades coolers in an increasing feedback of speed and blockage. Every single system gets filters and fans in front.
My mini cabinets (under construction) each have redundant arrays of fans and filters up front, and they take it to another level. All incidental ingress/egress is sealed, and exhaust is pressurized via a silent, or potentially powerful and still quiet, blower.
CUSTOM CPU COOLERS FOR OPENSTACK
Cooling has been a driving concern from the beginning, for everything. I want the possibility of running a silent machine, and generally for all machines to run quietly. One reason to use Supermicro (sucks) for enterprise boards was my perception that it would allow the use of standard PC cases, which would allow large and quiet fans all over...
I built custom coolers for the Supermicro motherboard, which uses a DC ILM, for which there are no large-configuration sinks! It's been surprisingly difficult to get large sinks to fit into the enterprise-ILM layout, and even after much searching I still had to cut the radiators to clear memory. Even when made to fit, I had to fabricate custom brackets to put them on the enterprise ILM.
My subsequent pivot to HP DL380p's precludes use of these silent coolers, at least without modification of the HP cases.
OPENSTACK COOLING ISSUES
The Xeons in the OpenStack servers are all between 65W and 90W. I currently run them in HP ProLiant DL380p's, with stock cooling. From the factory with 2x95W CPUs installed, it is very loud on boot, and then reasonably quiet once idling in the OS, but far from silent. Of course cooling is 100% adequate.
CABINET AS CASE
I've found one of the most important things to do to guarantee quietest operation is to keep everything clean. The only way to do that is with positive pressure of filtered air. This is easiest to achieve now by sealing, venting, and filtering at the cabinet level.
Each cabinet will have its own redundant power for fans. All air flow around servers will be blocked. The only ingress will be via fans and filters on the front door. The only egress will be via floor vent, through sealed exhaust port, and potentially fan-vented via exhaust hose.