Recommended Location of Server - vibration & humidity

[J-NAS]

I'm trying to find the best home for my FreeNAS box, and would like your input.

Initially I was going to place my FreeNAS box in my furnace room, but a number of considerations have ruled it out. The humidity of that room varies wildly, and I can't imagine that's good for the components. Plus the room is so small if my hot water tank ever sprung a leak, there is no way the server could avoid being water damaged.

I *think* my best best right now is in the equipment rack of my home theatre. Here's where I'm worried about vibrations. The rack is on wheels (it rolls back into a cubby). I have a number of subwoofers and occasionally listen at reference (loud!) levels.

Is it possible that the subs could create vibrations that would cause HDD damage? I'm running Hitachi NAS drives.

I'm also worried about moving the rack while the server is on. In this location I would have to power the server down before I moved the rack in or out of the cubby to be safe, correct?

I really don't want to be creating physical platter damage with my server's placement. It currently sits on the floor of a guest room which is about to be occupied. WAF is at an all-time low.

 

[BigDave]

The WAF is the most important consideration here, without debate :D
If your water heater can't be trusted, perhaps it's time for replacement!
(My professional opinion here as a Plumber)
The "severe" humidity levels (above 75, below 25) are not good for electronics,
but for short periods ( <48hrs) would be ok. Tell us more about "varies wildly".
I would NEVER keep the hard disks around a sub woofer, or move my server
while it was running. Heat must be your first consideration in regards to server location.

 

[J-NAS]

The WAF is the most important consideration here, without debate :D
If your water heater can't be trusted, perhaps it's time for replacement!
(My professional opinion here as a Plumber)
The "severe" humidity levels (above 75, below 25) are not good for electronics,
but for short periods ( <48hrs) would be ok. Tell us more about "varies wildly".
I would NEVER keep the hard disks around a sub woofer, or move my server
while it was running. Heat must be your first consideration in regards to server location.

I believe you meant to say heat is first only in the absence of WAF. ;)

It's not that I don't trust the hot water tank--having lived here a number of years now I don't trust anything about this place. So many layers of weekend warrior work...it will take me a lifetime to undo it all...(in addition the venting on the hot water tank needs to be inspected--it was orphaned when we added a high efficiency furnace with its own venting, and I suspect the water tank has been back-drafting as a result)

The closest sub to the rack is four feet away. Is that cause for concern? I mean, it rattles anything I lean against a wall, and I can feel it rattling my *skull* watching certain movies, so I'm thinking it will rattle the HDDs too, amiright?

*sigh*

If the server were to live in the furnace room it would be full time. We have relatives moving in for an indeterminate length of time--certainly longer than 48hours. I haven't thrown a thermometer in the furnace room, I just know that some days it is an inferno and smells damp, while other days it is dry and cool. Actually, it can be a mixture of any of the above on any given day.

My drive already run close to or above 40degrees celcius--in a cool room (19degrees). The furnace room is consistently hotter than that.

Wherever I end up putting it I need space for the accompanying UPS, and enough CAT6 to get back to my cabling room.

 

[BigDave]

The closest sub to the rack is four feet away. Is that cause for concern?

IMHO you should be VERY concerned.

My drive already run close to or above 40degrees celcius--in a cool room (19degrees). The furnace room is consistently hotter than that.

In my mind this rules out the furnace room, period.

Wherever I end up putting it I need space for the accompanying UPS, and enough CAT6 to get back to my cabling room.

Is the cabling room an option for you?
You need to address the cooling of your NAS enclosure, it shouldn't be any where near 40 in a
19 degree room

 

[J-NAS]

IMHO you should be VERY concerned.

In my mind this rules out the furnace room, period.

Is the cabling room an option for you?
You need to address the cooling of your NAS enclosure, it shouldn't be any where near 40 in a
19 degree room

The furnace room and cabling room are one in the same. =(

Was going from memory. Here's my smart stats for bottom:

Code:

Device Model:  HGST HDN724040ALE640
194 Temperature_Celsius  0x0002  193  193  000  Old_age  Always  -  31 (Min/Max 21/39)

and top drive:

Code:

Device Model:  HGST HDN724040ALE640
194 Temperature_Celsius  0x0002  176  176  000  Old_age  Always  -  34 (Min/Max 21/47)

I've been told with 7200rpm drives, under 40 is pretty good...

 

[BigDave]

7200rpm, gotcha
What was the room temp when those smart readings were recorded?
My current room temp is 19 c

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# smartctl -l scttemp /dev/da0
smartctl 6.3 2014-07-26 r3976 [FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE-p8 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SCT Status Version:  3
SCT Version (vendor specific):  258 (0x0102)
SCT Support Level:  1
Device State:  Active (0)
Current Temperature:  28 Celsius
Power Cycle Min/Max Temperature:  27/41 Celsius
Lifetime  Min/Max Temperature:  22/41 Celsius
Under/Over Temperature Limit Count:  0/0

SCT Temperature History Version:  2
Temperature Sampling Period:  1 minute
Temperature Logging Interval:  1 minute
Min/Max recommended Temperature:  0/60 Celsius
Min/Max Temperature Limit:  -41/85 Celsius
Temperature History Size (Index):  478 (282)

Index  Estimated Time  Temperature Celsius
 283  2015-02-22 06:54  28  *********
 ...  ..(476 skipped).  ..  *********
 282  2015-02-22 14:51  28  *********

Granted my drives don't spin as fast as yours, but they don't spin down either...

 

[Bidule0hm]

This is ok for 7200 RPM drives. Remember that going under 30°C is also a bad thing, the sweet spot is 30-40°C.

 

[BigDave]

Remember that going under 30°C is also a bad thing

Explain this please.

 

[Bidule0hm]

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/fr//archive/disk_failures.pdf page 6, you can see that going under 30°C increases the failure rate pretty significatively (as going over 40°C) ;)

 

[BigDave]

I'm not concerned that my drives are in danger running at 28c.
Those temps are going up big time when winter is over here in Texas.
It was 24c here just five days ago,
tomorrow will bring ice storm with high of minus 2 celsius
We have a saying here in Texas, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes...

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yes, 28°C isn't far from 30°C, the whole universe won't collapse because of that :D

I've seen that it max out at 41°C so you're good, you can't do better apart from regulate the fans speed accordingly to the drive temp ;)

 

[J-NAS]

Just got a SMART warning. It seems my scrub finally pushed temps up to 41°C after running for 2.5hours. Maybe I will investigate adding an exhaust fan out the top instead of the passive grill I'm using at the moment...

Device: /dev/ada5, Temperature 41 Celsius reached critical limit of 41 Celsius (Min/Max 31/41!)

Device info:
HGST HDN724040ALE640, WWN:5-000cca-24ccd3728, FW:MJAOA5E0, 4.00 TB