That's weird. In previous video about cable management for server is very clean, but it's looks very different, though. Right at the start of the video
The airstream from the AC hits the wall of the Tee before going up and loses momentum which creates additional backpressure that the cabinet exhaust has to overcome. The solution is not a T connection between the exhaust for the rack and the AC discharge, instead you need a Wye connection (With the AC connection being the straight run and the cabinet exhaust connecting into the wye.) .
Any one know of a good ups i use a Eaton 5PX UPS - 5PX1000RT with a extra battery pack i need another one because my load is at 85% anyone know of cheaper ones that can have a extra battery pack with the extra battery pack i go from 7 minutes to 32 minutes on a 85% load im just not looking to spend $1000-$1500 on a new eaton one
8:55 - a miracle indeed, 99.9% of the time they have been lost to another realm untill you pull up your flooring and wonder in total confusement at how it ended up UNDER YOUR FLOORING.
I dropped one while assembling the rack last week, heard one 'ting' and then nothing. I found it while shooting this video... resting on the rail of my file server.
This has been the most interesting “look at my rack” video, I’ve seen. You make your contentions relatable to hobbyists and professionals alike, and i think that’s what drove me to your channel. Good job. Cant wait for the next one.
I'd be really interested in knowing more about the temperature probe setup. I've got my rack in a closet and just leave the door open right now to keep it cool. I plan to get a similar AC unit and dump the warm air into my furnace return in the winter and outside during the summer.
Just when I thought my rack was finished, you go and pull a stunt like this. Loved the video. Just kidding, mine is no where near finished. I'll be working on mine this weekend since I have the weekend off.
great video, I also did something like this but I went for room level instead of just my racks. counting my power needs I use a room HVAC instead tube (to much tube management when I do changes and upgrades) cooling. I also vented out the back of the garage to the outside for my HVAC exhuast.. One thing I also learn was to not always vent my HVAC heat out for I can keep my winter/ heating /cooling at a lower costs power wise by better using my current air. It worked! Hope you had fun doing this...
Love the content glad you made the move to be a permanent youtuber man. Videos were excellent before but now we get longer videos or sometimes more short videos with less time inbetween them. Keep it up man! Also you got SPONSORED!! Congratulations Jeff
Awesome video! Congrats on going full time content creator I've been entertaining the idea of doing a similar setup for my system to isolate heat and remove it from the room as well Just a suggestion, I see your exhaust comes out of the AC and makes two immediate right angle bends, I'm under the impression it's best to minimize those hard bends for better airflow if possible, not sure how much of a difference it truely makes but it looks like you have room to raise the long metal pipe up a few inches which would allow the lower flexible tube a more gradual bend instead of a right angle Also that T intersection could be an issue since the air will hit it and then need to be forced up and out, if I'm not mistaken you can get an intersection piece that is less of a T shape and more of a Y shape so that both exhaust pipes have a more natural flow up and out without much impedance/turbulence Can't wait for part 2, can't wait for more videos!
Whoa never knew Tripp Lite would send out stuff like that for RUclips projects like this. I mean, makes sense they would, but I never heard of it happening much lol. Nice!
Hey Jeff, I did something similar to this with a network rack server cabinet, fortunately mine had 3 steel doors on it and a glass front door, after we had started to use it we noticed that things was getting a little bit work both in the rack and the small room it was it. The room was on an outside wall with a not functioning extractor fan, I did have a large 21" fan and with a bit of effort managed to get it to sit at the bottom of the rack, at the top the top cover was like a short pyramid with a small fan on the top, we took that off and used flexible ducting to take the warm air to the extractor fan in the wall. This did work very well in keeping both the network rack server cabinet and contents cool and also the small room, however over winter we had the office heating fail so we just rerouted the flexible ducting into the office.
This was a great video I've actually thought about installing a Mr Cool mini split in our garage. Also a basement is a must have for the next house I buy I was over a friends house a few days ago its 90 degrees outside his basement was around 70.
I wonder if there's any clear vinyl, like the kind used here, that comes backed with adhesive, that'd be the cleanest and easiest setup; assuming that adhesive is strong enough to hold the vinyl under the vinyl's weight. Otherwise, a plastic sheet with double sided tape along the non-perforated sections of the door would work well, assuming you have the tools, time, and patience to deform the sheet to the curvature of the door, assuming your specific door has curvature; if not replace the mesh entirely with a clear sheet of plastic, assuming this is easy to do with whatever specific cabinet you have.
I totally get it that the weight of that unit is supported by the rails and not the rackmount ears, but the sight of those dinky little 1u ears on that 8U AC unit is hilarious.
Very interesting idea. I have often though of installing an air conditioner to my garage server rack, or at least making a small room to contain it and lower the temperature. However you bring up a good point regarding humidity. I think it would be cheaper and more efficient to use one of those central room AC units with the hose exhaust. I'm sure the benefit of your setup is you can exhaust the server heat as well.
Cool solution. I would suggest changing the "T" at the top to a "Y" style duct. The inline fan will then create a venturi effect on the vent from the AC. I think you will get better flow through the AC.
8:36 Have you talked before about what your previous job as an IT manager / DC technician was? I think it would be interesting as myself and perhaps many of your viewers are either in that space or looking to get into it and hearing some wisdoms from you I think would be helpful
I'd seal that rack completely. Use fire putty or soft fire bricks around the cabling, weather stripping on the doors and black duct tape. Only two holes should be intake and exhaust. Make sure the blower and exhaust fan are running at approximately the same CFM to avoid pulling cool air out. Can probably eliminate the exhaust fan if you seal it well. I'd run a permanent water drain if it has one I'm sure that's why they recommend the bottom of the rack. I like the magnet covers they're so much easier. Stay cool 😎.
Hey Jeff. I believe the condenser fan sucks air from the top and sides of the AC unit. If you move your UPS up 1U and leave a 1U space above it it should be better. The ambient air from your garage will go through the filter into the evaporator and then discharged to the front of your equipment. The cool air will go through your equipment into the back of the rack. Then the condenser fan will suck all that hot air and force it through the condensing coil and through the duct and out of the controlled space. Im a industrial refrigeration Tech. We design server room cooling solutions as well as build huge refrigerated warehouses. I also believe you should only need the one duct leaving the rack from the AC unit. The 6 inch duct is design and you reduced it to 4" that might cause higher than normal discharge pressures on the refrigerant side causing higher amps and shorter unit life. Let me know if you need a professional opinion. Love the channel.
I bought one of those small blowers for a cooling project on my own rack but ended up removing it. I installed temperature probes in the duct and a damper that I opened and closed with a servo connected to an arduino. The fan was controlled by a switchable power strip, also controlled by the arduino. The idea was that during the winter, it would detect colder air outside and open the damper and turn the fan on. The problem was that the fan has about a 50-watt motor and as such, added 50 watts of heat into the intake. This was detected by the temp sensor which then shut the fan off and closed the damper. I ended up replacing the fan with a 5v Noctua PWM fan. It produces a whole lot less heat and was quieter.
Interesting project. I was actually looking for a good rackmount cooling system for remote offices. Its really hot and humid in my country. 32C and 82% humidity.
I have the same model of rack mount air conditioner that you install in this video. I've tried it in many different configurations, and I've found that it works best when mounted at the top of the rack. Mounting it at the bottom heated up the devices that were on top of it more that it cooled them. The cold air then also never made it up to the very top. And yes, I had a plexiglass front panel on my cabinet to channel the air. Another thing I figured out is that the compressor kept shutting off because the condenser coil was at maximum thermal capacity. My solution was to put a 460 CFM 6" inline duct fan in the exhaust duct. That made ALL the difference. Once I could pull the heat out of the system faster, I could keep the A/C on longer. An added benefit is that I measured the overall amperage before and after adding the duct fan and it was actually more energy efficient with the fan. Even with the added amperage that the duct fan pulled, there was a net gain in efficiency due to the compressor running cooler. I hope you can use some of my experience with this A/C unit and make some gains in cooling and efficiency!
I put a massive in line blower in my install as well, and saw similar results. I did notice the AC was heatibg the server directly above it, so I added a 2U buffer between the top of the AC and next unit. It means I'm giving up 10U if space, but I'll take that given the excellent results thus far. Thanks for chiming in!
Personally I used a wine fridge as a rack. Just mounted a rack frame inside, used a hole saw to get cable's in and out and set the temperature to the hottest setting. O and spare space is used for wine storage.
Great inspiration Jeff, thank you! I was thinking about doing something similar to this when I buy my own house, and maybe get some kind of valve so that in the winter, I can route the hot air into the house and get some heat out of it, and in the summer, route the air outside just like you plan to do with this setup?
You should use a wye/Y split duct for the AC exhaust connection instead of the 90deg turn. (A Y duct may actually act to induce some airflow up the duct as well instead of the 90deg turn which is not advisable).
Jeff, their are long Stainless Steel zip-ties readily available that don't cost much more than regular plastic ones. I've used them to temporarily hold steel parts together that I want to Mig-Weld because they don't melt. I believe I bough my last package of them at Harbor Freight.
@@CraftComputing I think you like them. By the way, I am beyond jealous with that setup you have there. I will go out tomorrow and buy some more lottery tickets :)
I really enjoy your content around the normal hardware stuff. Have you considered making a piece on UPSes? I've found them harder to get right than I'd hoped. I used a fairly basic 650VA one that was no where near close to support the 400W rating. Brand new it shut off under about 300W. I'd love you to share some insight into these units
So, I think, raising the rack and vent through bottom would be ideal vs having the heat dissipate through the duct in the vertical run (zip tied) . Just thinking of future server installs and re ducting.. I plexiglass my rack and used rivets plus washers and added a window tent to my doors. I wish I had the rack ac unit 3 months ago ;)
You can simplify your venting, put your exhaust for your ac unit on the straight part of the T. That way it will draw the hot air out of the rack, instead of the current config.
loved watching this. my only critique would be i think the piping should of gone the other way so that the ac pipe was straight and the "T" part would be sucking the back of the server air. having as many 90º for the air getting blown is causing resistance to the air flow and if it was the other way ( ac blow straight) it may aid in scavenging the air from behind the servers.
great video! What's your ambient humidity like in the garage? Does the tripplite have accommodation for a condensate drain? I'd be willing to bet you'll need one- that's probably also why they recommend installing on the bottom of the rack. This is from experience as a network engineer who has worked with AC in racks before, as well as being a former HVAC technician. love the content! definitely subscribing :)
I too was impressed by your screw-finding prowess. Overall I like how everything came together. Motivates me to go spend more money, right after I go take these WD40EFAX drives back.
I recently installed on of these for a client with a similar situation. They have a rack in an uncooled warehouse. I used the whole ducting kit the way it was intended, mostly. The back door of this cabinet was solid (not mesh), so I just cut a 6 inch hole in it. Worked out great. It keeps the cabinet a cool 68f. I plan on running the drain line for the moisture, so I don't have to count on the reevaporator. I will give you this caution. If you, like me, want everything to have an ip address and be network manageable, be forwarned: the network card for these is awful. It is dependent on Java, only seems to work in IE (with compatibility mode on) , and requires you to do some manual edits to the Java security settings to allow support for MD5. For how much they charge for the network card, you'd think they'd actually give you a decent modern interface. For your install, I think that 6-4 reducer is going to be a problem. That's like 50% less airflow. And as you've seen, this thing moves a lot of air.
I would suggest putting a redirection tube because in winter that heat may be used in the house and during low usage times (server) the air will be cooler in summer.
If you use a Y duct joint at the top, that should help reduce the amount of back pressure. Also your angle seems a bit too sharp at the bottom so I would suggest raising the vertical duct a bit so that you can make that bottom angle closer to 45° rather than 90.
I feel like you could have used some of the cheap round neo magnets + a dab of super glue for the vinal and you will probably still suffer/fight the AC unit for flow dominance, probably better to just run a separate duct and put a damper on each so they shut and keep the creepy crawlies out. I have some other feedback, but I will wait until part two to see if you catch it on your own, learning as you go is half the fun.
Just don't listen to the part about dehumidification and condensation.. There is no condensation(no matter how low the ambient temperature gets) on your heating source(i.e. servers and networking equipment)..
I kind of want to be the guy to crawl around working on data center machines. I like hands-on work like that. Also, I'mm really interested in this cooling solution for your server. I was thinking of just getting a wall/window A/C unit and either just cooling the whole room or piping it somehow. Not sure how much I like this solution but if it works then it works and I might try it as well
BE CAREFUL. I'm not sure what other equipment is in your garage, but you and viewers should be mindful with this implementation. This is similar to a single pipe portable AC... either way you are creating a negative air pressure in your garage, forcing unconditioned air to infiltrate, including unintended sources. If you have gas appliances like a water heater, dryer or furnace sharing the space there is a high possibility for flue gas back draft, increasing the chances of an incomplete burn due to oxygen starvation and resulting in carbon monoxide filling your garage. Hopefully the garage is poorly sealed and can provide enough fresh air to make up the exhaust air exiting the space. Nevertheless, when there is hot outside temperatures it will bring that hot unconditioned air into the space. I understand the goal is cooler equipment, and this may solve that problem, but just be aware of the bigger picture. An improvement would be a second powered air duct to bring outside air directly to the rack, which would help take advantage of so called "free cooling" when outside air temperature is lower, and also solve the added problem of negative air pressure.
I've got two questions. Does that AC unit can be in any way controlled remotely, or is it only hands-on device? And if it has dehumidifier mode, how do you get rid of water? Surely it isn't that tray on the bottom of the device that you have remove and dump the water every hour or so?
There is an optional network management card for it. I opted for manual control, as I'm not sure I'll run it full time, just on days above 85F. And there is a built in evaporator in the unit, so no draining required. There is an overflow if the AC can't keep up which you can pipe out to a drain, but in Oregon, our humidity in the summer is ~15%, so I have nothing to worry about here.
If you made the "straight" part of the exhaust on the AC unit, you would have less pressure coming through the T section, and less "back pressure". The fact that you have that perpendicular junction means the unit is putting at least 50% of its pressure back into the rack. Simply flip that fixture around, and you'll probably have less pressure coming down the rack side.
You should put a mini wind turbine in the air duct, and recover a little bit of the power! Or a TEC on the wall of the pipe to convert some of the waste heat back to usable power.... 😇
I have to admit, that A/C unit costs much less than I thought it would. I may actually have to consider this. I'm about to be in a new house, and I've wanted to have a server rack for some time. The garage might be the only spot I can put something that large.
Without being specific, a ball-park figure perhaps, but what are your power bills like with the rack and the various other computers running in your home on top of your normal power usage figures? I used to run a 42RU rack in my garage where i hosted my own domain with 3 or 4 servers (admittedly older, larger units - 3-4RUs), a couple of Cisco switches and a router. I turned it all off after 6 months and sold the whole lot when my power bills for that period constantly topped $900/quarter when they were previously ~$300/quarter
The exhaust should always have the smaller/lesser up top and the larger on bottom. Also my concern would be the reduced pipe causing issues long term with the equipment overheating and/or possibly prematurely burning up motors.
I'm wondering... why not to salvage the magnet sheet that came with the A/C, cut it down to strips, then glue the strips to the edges of the vinyl? even some tiny spots to let the vinyl close to the mesh. It would be fully plug-and-play, isn't it?
if you invert the output ,, on the top of the rack , so the ac go out strate , ,, the other one in T will act as vacum and suck the ambient air out withaut fan , try it it may work ,,
Pretty awesome video.. Probably you could got away without the higher speed fan if you put two separate holes out one for the ac and another for the server exhaust instead of combining both into one hole out. But I can understand that making two holes out of the garage doesn't sound like a pleasant idea.
Hi Jeff, really liking this so far. My only question about your T duckt splitter ( or however you muricans) call it😜 why not use a Y so you can direct the pushed air from the airconditioning up a in a more natural flow causing some natural suction flow from the down pipe that takes the other hot air from the servers up. That lower powered inline blower should be enough than isn't it?!🤔
question, if you blow all that air out of your room..... where does new air come back in? specifically: do you even have an air inlet to your room? do you keep the door open? is the garage door untight enough to let air in? secondly: do you suck hot air from outside? how hot is it?
The design of the SRCOOL7KRM seems insane to me - there's only one intake both for air-to-be-cooled, and air-to-be-exhausted, from what I can see. That results in a huge amount of waste, since you can't recirculate cool air on one side of the cooler, while having a separate air path for the hot side of the AC. It's like portable ACs that cool themselves with the room's cool air instead of having a separate intake/exhaust - ridiculously inefficient. A design with separate paths for the hot side and the cold side of the air conditioner would also prevent you from needing to do all that ducting from the rears of the servers - all of the heat rejected from the entire rack would come out of the single air conditioner exhaust.
2:20 Is it just me but is that a bad idea? I mean, if you blow all the "hot" air out, you're constantly cooling down new air for the servers to use. Now if you run your servers at full blast and they exceeded the capacity of the AC or the output air is hotter than the ambient air in the garage, that would make sense. But say your garage is 30c, your AC cools it to 20c, your servers heat it to 25c, then you dump it out. It would be more power efficient for to just pass the air back to the AC and let it cool it by 5c, instead you're taking completely new air at 30c and cooling that 10c. That's huge waste of energy.
That would only be in an ideal situation, most likely, when the servers are running at full speed, there will be little to no effect of running that hot air from the servers back through the aircon just to cool the servers again.
1) its going to be significantly hotter coming out of a server rack that big, much hotter than ambient 2) you have to vent heat somehow, the AC unit can't work without dumping its heat somewhere, so he's using that airflow to also pull the heated air out of the rack 3) its probably more energy efficient to run a small AC unit to cool just the rack than it would be to try and cool an entire garage, though I'm not sure I'd put a rack in a garage anyways but then my houses have never had well insulated garages
i think using a mini split unit is what u are thinking.. and i believe it would be more efficient than this method.. but i dont know if one is made small enough that could fit in a single wide rack...
This unit is designed to run only the discharge from the condenser out of the controlled space. Typically we install climate controlled liebert systems in server rooms that controls humidity, temperature, and air purifying. I can see this unit in a server rack that's in a server closet with a filter on the door. Then it would use the space around the server and the air would be forced to go through the condenser and out the duct system out of the controlled environment. These unit range from 12000 to 22000 BTU's. For a small server.
@@AsbestosMuffins 1) He approximated that the rack uses 500W on average, but the unit was capable of couple of kW. Depending on if that's the transfer capacity or load, it's either way more powerful than the servers or a lot powerful (ACs have typical heat transfer few times their energy usage) That would mean the air coming out the server would still be colder than the ambient air of the garage. 2) The heat is meant to be dumped trough the back of the unit, with where the AC dumps the hot air, which he has correctly vented out. 3) The AC wouldn't try to cool the garage if the rack was more closed up. Either way, it's better for electricity usage for the AC try to cool down the whole garage than vent the semi-cool air out losing all the benefits of it. If the semi-cool air cools the garage even a little bit, it makes the job of the AC easier, making it use less electricity or cooling the servers down even further, depending on the controls of the AC.
Be cool if you could somehow recycle the waste heat though, like use it to heat a swimming pool. I admit results might be negligible on a home rack, but just a thought.
Yea, fairly certain that is not how you are supposed to vent a unit like that. You are taking all the cooled air, and dumping it causing the compressor to need to draw in ambient and work even harder to cool. Just for a test, block off the second 'exhaust' vent from the top of the unit (not the one coming off the back of the AC unit) and see if temps drop lower while the compressor cycles less. See, unless the servers manage to dump enough heat energy into the back of the rack to take the temperature above ambient (they probably won't if your estimate of 500W is accurate), then all you are doing is dumping out cooled air and drawing in more ambient. Sealing the entire rack and leaving some small vent holes at the top back and bottom front should result in much cheaper and cooler performance (The AC exhaust still needs to be taken outside though).
Project advise from 15 years of experience. If you need 10 screws to complete a project buy 20. You can always return them or you will loose almost that many anyway. Also not a big deal when you are on the floor. A much bigger deal when you are hanging on a 200' tower.
Why don't you use a Y-piece on top and let the flow from the AC suck the air out from the top of the rack? You can also use some magnets to stick the vinyl to the front of the door and looks way nicer :-)
Huge shoutout to Ridge Wallet for sponsoring this video. To receive 10% off your next order, visit Ridge.com/CRAFT, and enter code CRAFT at checkout!
That's weird. In previous video about cable management for server is very clean, but it's looks very different, though. Right at the start of the video
you need to put the fan after the tee. It will solve the problem of back flow (suck not blow) also your use of "tweezers" worked great... heh heh..
The airstream from the AC hits the wall of the Tee before going up and loses momentum which creates additional backpressure that the cabinet exhaust has to overcome. The solution is not a T connection between the exhaust for the rack and the AC discharge, instead you need a Wye connection (With the AC connection being the straight run and the cabinet exhaust connecting into the wye.) .
O ,eB,@@soniclab-cnc 8,tn
Any one know of a good ups i use a Eaton 5PX UPS - 5PX1000RT with a extra battery pack i need another one because my load is at 85% anyone know of cheaper ones that can have a extra battery pack with the extra battery pack i go from 7 minutes to 32 minutes on a 85% load im just not looking to spend $1000-$1500 on a new eaton one
Finding the screw you drop in a server rack is a miracle.
says every mechanic ever...
Right up there with finding the 10mm socket you drop in the engine bay
8:55 - a miracle indeed, 99.9% of the time they have been lost to another realm untill you pull up your flooring and wonder in total confusement at how it ended up UNDER YOUR FLOORING.
Dropping a screw and not hearing it hit the ground is one of the worst feelings
I dropped one while assembling the rack last week, heard one 'ting' and then nothing.
I found it while shooting this video... resting on the rail of my file server.
More like *_"I N D E E D"_*
Goes to that land of missing socks
The screws get under the floor because screws are a burrowing species
This has been the most interesting “look at my rack” video, I’ve seen. You make your contentions relatable to hobbyists and professionals alike, and i think that’s what drove me to your channel. Good job. Cant wait for the next one.
Great solution! Love the ingenuity and engineering that went into this!
Looooots of napkin drawings 😂
Craft Computing oh I can’t even imagine!
I'd be really interested in knowing more about the temperature probe setup. I've got my rack in a closet and just leave the door open right now to keep it cool. I plan to get a similar AC unit and dump the warm air into my furnace return in the winter and outside during the summer.
Just when I thought my rack was finished, you go and pull a stunt like this.
Loved the video. Just kidding, mine is no where near finished. I'll be working on mine this weekend since I have the weekend off.
great video, I also did something like this but I went for room level instead of just my racks. counting my power needs I use a room HVAC instead tube (to much tube management when I do changes and upgrades) cooling. I also vented out the back of the garage to the outside for my HVAC exhuast.. One thing I also learn was to not always vent my HVAC heat out for I can keep my winter/ heating /cooling at a lower costs power wise by better using my current air. It worked! Hope you had fun doing this...
Love the content glad you made the move to be a permanent youtuber man. Videos were excellent before but now we get longer videos or sometimes more short videos with less time inbetween them. Keep it up man! Also you got SPONSORED!! Congratulations Jeff
Awesome video! Congrats on going full time content creator
I've been entertaining the idea of doing a similar setup for my system to isolate heat and remove it from the room as well
Just a suggestion, I see your exhaust comes out of the AC and makes two immediate right angle bends, I'm under the impression it's best to minimize those hard bends for better airflow if possible, not sure how much of a difference it truely makes but it looks like you have room to raise the long metal pipe up a few inches which would allow the lower flexible tube a more gradual bend instead of a right angle
Also that T intersection could be an issue since the air will hit it and then need to be forced up and out, if I'm not mistaken you can get an intersection piece that is less of a T shape and more of a Y shape so that both exhaust pipes have a more natural flow up and out without much impedance/turbulence
Can't wait for part 2, can't wait for more videos!
Whoa never knew Tripp Lite would send out stuff like that for RUclips projects like this. I mean, makes sense they would, but I never heard of it happening much lol. Nice!
Hey Jeff, I did something similar to this with a network rack server cabinet, fortunately mine had 3 steel doors on it and a glass front door, after we had started to use it we noticed that things was getting a little bit work both in the rack and the small room it was it.
The room was on an outside wall with a not functioning extractor fan, I did have a large 21" fan and with a bit of effort managed to get it to sit at the bottom of the rack, at the top the top cover was like a short pyramid with a small fan on the top, we took that off and used flexible ducting to take the warm air to the extractor fan in the wall.
This did work very well in keeping both the network rack server cabinet and contents cool and also the small room, however over winter we had the office heating fail so we just rerouted the flexible ducting into the office.
This was a great video I've actually thought about installing a Mr Cool mini split in our garage. Also a basement is a must have for the next house I buy I was over a friends house a few days ago its 90 degrees outside his basement was around 70.
What about using neodymium magnets to hold the vinyl onto the door?
I wonder if there's any clear vinyl, like the kind used here, that comes backed with adhesive, that'd be the cleanest and easiest setup; assuming that adhesive is strong enough to hold the vinyl under the vinyl's weight. Otherwise, a plastic sheet with double sided tape along the non-perforated sections of the door would work well, assuming you have the tools, time, and patience to deform the sheet to the curvature of the door, assuming your specific door has curvature; if not replace the mesh entirely with a clear sheet of plastic, assuming this is easy to do with whatever specific cabinet you have.
You've done a really good job with side panels, exhaust, and vinyl panel. Looking forward to Part 2.
I totally get it that the weight of that unit is supported by the rails and not the rackmount ears, but the sight of those dinky little 1u ears on that 8U AC unit is hilarious.
I thought the same thing 😂
Very interesting idea. I have often though of installing an air conditioner to my garage server rack, or at least making a small room to contain it and lower the temperature. However you bring up a good point regarding humidity. I think it would be cheaper and more efficient to use one of those central room AC units with the hose exhaust. I'm sure the benefit of your setup is you can exhaust the server heat as well.
Cool solution. I would suggest changing the "T" at the top to a "Y" style duct. The inline fan will then create a venturi effect on the vent from the AC. I think you will get better flow through the AC.
looking forward to seeing the data! Thanks for that, most of the time youtubers would just say "...and it's running much better"
I appreciate that you didnt skip all the screwing and boring work. It's nice guidance,
If I had to do it, you'd better watch it! ;-)
8:36 Have you talked before about what your previous job as an IT manager / DC technician was? I think it would be interesting as myself and perhaps many of your viewers are either in that space or looking to get into it and hearing some wisdoms from you I think would be helpful
Tweezers, The Verge! Hahaha
And I thought the internet had finally forgotten about that. I should have known better. The internet never forgets.
@@dangerousmythbuster Never! Once it's up to the Cloud It's Over! Lol
Ahh he’s never gonna be able to live that one down LOL
Then right into a barnacles reference.
haha
Excellent tweezer work there! Nailed it!
Needs more Brian the Electrician.
Bruh... He's still in Canada. Including pandemic lockdown
@@abdulmuhaimin5274 surely he can just travel by telecom rack?
@@christophertaylor520 without assistant?
Christopher Taylor I believe that wendell
@@theminer3746 Wendell from Level 1
This is awesome. I always love your music choices too. Well done. :)
I'd seal that rack completely. Use fire putty or soft fire bricks around the cabling, weather stripping on the doors and black duct tape. Only two holes should be intake and exhaust. Make sure the blower and exhaust fan are running at approximately the same CFM to avoid pulling cool air out. Can probably eliminate the exhaust fan if you seal it well. I'd run a permanent water drain if it has one I'm sure that's why they recommend the bottom of the rack. I like the magnet covers they're so much easier. Stay cool 😎.
Hey Jeff. I believe the condenser fan sucks air from the top and sides of the AC unit. If you move your UPS up 1U and leave a 1U space above it it should be better. The ambient air from your garage will go through the filter into the evaporator and then discharged to the front of your equipment. The cool air will go through your equipment into the back of the rack. Then the condenser fan will suck all that hot air and force it through the condensing coil and through the duct and out of the controlled space. Im a industrial refrigeration Tech. We design server room cooling solutions as well as build huge refrigerated warehouses. I also believe you should only need the one duct leaving the rack from the AC unit. The 6 inch duct is design and you reduced it to 4" that might cause higher than normal discharge pressures on the refrigerant side causing higher amps and shorter unit life. Let me know if you need a professional opinion. Love the channel.
Just joined
I bought one of those small blowers for a cooling project on my own rack but ended up removing it. I installed temperature probes in the duct and a damper that I opened and closed with a servo connected to an arduino. The fan was controlled by a switchable power strip, also controlled by the arduino. The idea was that during the winter, it would detect colder air outside and open the damper and turn the fan on. The problem was that the fan has about a 50-watt motor and as such, added 50 watts of heat into the intake. This was detected by the temp sensor which then shut the fan off and closed the damper.
I ended up replacing the fan with a 5v Noctua PWM fan. It produces a whole lot less heat and was quieter.
Interesting project. I was actually looking for a good rackmount cooling system for remote offices. Its really hot and humid in my country. 32C and 82% humidity.
That is a pretty cool rack, and I look foreword to seeing the testing results.
I have the same model of rack mount air conditioner that you install in this video. I've tried it in many different configurations, and I've found that it works best when mounted at the top of the rack. Mounting it at the bottom heated up the devices that were on top of it more that it cooled them. The cold air then also never made it up to the very top. And yes, I had a plexiglass front panel on my cabinet to channel the air. Another thing I figured out is that the compressor kept shutting off because the condenser coil was at maximum thermal capacity. My solution was to put a 460 CFM 6" inline duct fan in the exhaust duct. That made ALL the difference. Once I could pull the heat out of the system faster, I could keep the A/C on longer. An added benefit is that I measured the overall amperage before and after adding the duct fan and it was actually more energy efficient with the fan. Even with the added amperage that the duct fan pulled, there was a net gain in efficiency due to the compressor running cooler. I hope you can use some of my experience with this A/C unit and make some gains in cooling and efficiency!
I put a massive in line blower in my install as well, and saw similar results. I did notice the AC was heatibg the server directly above it, so I added a 2U buffer between the top of the AC and next unit. It means I'm giving up 10U if space, but I'll take that given the excellent results thus far.
Thanks for chiming in!
Personally I used a wine fridge as a rack. Just mounted a rack frame inside, used a hole saw to get cable's in and out and set the temperature to the hottest setting. O and spare space is used for wine storage.
Loved the casual roast to the verge.
Under 5 minutes! I like when i catch these videos!
Great inspiration Jeff, thank you!
I was thinking about doing something similar to this when I buy my own house, and maybe get some kind of valve so that in the winter, I can route the hot air into the house and get some heat out of it, and in the summer, route the air outside just like you plan to do with this setup?
You should use a wye/Y split duct for the AC exhaust connection instead of the 90deg turn. (A Y duct may actually act to induce some airflow up the duct as well instead of the 90deg turn which is not advisable).
Jeff, their are long Stainless Steel zip-ties readily available that don't cost much more than regular plastic ones. I've used them to temporarily hold steel parts together that I want to Mig-Weld because they don't melt. I believe I bough my last package of them at Harbor Freight.
Just added that to my next shopping list there. Thanks!
@@CraftComputing I think you like them. By the way, I am beyond jealous with that setup you have there. I will go out tomorrow and buy some more lottery tickets :)
I really enjoy your content around the normal hardware stuff. Have you considered making a piece on UPSes? I've found them harder to get right than I'd hoped. I used a fairly basic 650VA one that was no where near close to support the 400W rating. Brand new it shut off under about 300W. I'd love you to share some insight into these units
Awesome job! I'd like to see black screws for the clear PVC, would make them blend into the door :D
Hey Jeff! Love the homelab server videos lately, any chance you can show how an UPS works inside a configuration such as yours? Love from Portugal!
very nice, can't wait for the next video
So, I think, raising the rack and vent through bottom would be ideal vs having the heat dissipate through the duct in the vertical run (zip tied) . Just thinking of future server installs and re ducting.. I plexiglass my rack and used rivets plus washers and added a window tent to my doors. I wish I had the rack ac unit 3 months ago ;)
You can simplify your venting, put your exhaust for your ac unit on the straight part of the T. That way it will draw the hot air out of the rack, instead of the current config.
loved watching this. my only critique would be i think the piping should of gone the other way so that the ac pipe was straight and the "T" part would be sucking the back of the server air. having as many 90º for the air getting blown is causing resistance to the air flow and if it was the other way ( ac blow straight) it may aid in scavenging the air from behind the servers.
would possible make for a good testing parameter with the probes on another video.
I might put two exhaust fans into the sequence, one down low, and one after the t. Good to have a little redundancy too.
great video! What's your ambient humidity like in the garage? Does the tripplite have accommodation for a condensate drain? I'd be willing to bet you'll need one- that's probably also why they recommend installing on the bottom of the rack. This is from experience as a network engineer who has worked with AC in racks before, as well as being a former HVAC technician. love the content! definitely subscribing :)
Great explanation...
In the UK, we'd be taking the heat from the server to warm the rest of the house ;-)
I too was impressed by your screw-finding prowess. Overall I like how everything came together. Motivates me to go spend more money, right after I go take these WD40EFAX drives back.
I recently installed on of these for a client with a similar situation. They have a rack in an uncooled warehouse.
I used the whole ducting kit the way it was intended, mostly. The back door of this cabinet was solid (not mesh), so I just cut a 6 inch hole in it. Worked out great. It keeps the cabinet a cool 68f. I plan on running the drain line for the moisture, so I don't have to count on the reevaporator.
I will give you this caution. If you, like me, want everything to have an ip address and be network manageable, be forwarned: the network card for these is awful. It is dependent on Java, only seems to work in IE (with compatibility mode on) , and requires you to do some manual edits to the Java security settings to allow support for MD5. For how much they charge for the network card, you'd think they'd actually give you a decent modern interface.
For your install, I think that 6-4 reducer is going to be a problem. That's like 50% less airflow. And as you've seen, this thing moves a lot of air.
I would suggest putting a redirection tube because in winter that heat may be used in the house and during low usage times (server) the air will be cooler in summer.
We need Jeff's face at 0:03 as an emote on discord lmao
The tweezers stab gave me a good chuckle.
Next step, use a couple of HVAC smart vents to heat up your house with the exhaust air during the winter.
If you use a Y duct joint at the top, that should help reduce the amount of back pressure. Also your angle seems a bit too sharp at the bottom so I would suggest raising the vertical duct a bit so that you can make that bottom angle closer to 45° rather than 90.
I feel like you could have used some of the cheap round neo magnets + a dab of super glue for the vinal and you will probably still suffer/fight the AC unit for flow dominance, probably better to just run a separate duct and put a damper on each so they shut and keep the creepy crawlies out. I have some other feedback, but I will wait until part two to see if you catch it on your own, learning as you go is half the fun.
Saving this video for when my new house is done and I need to vent my server rack
Just don't listen to the part about dehumidification and condensation..
There is no condensation(no matter how low the ambient temperature gets) on your heating source(i.e. servers and networking equipment)..
I kind of want to be the guy to crawl around working on data center machines. I like hands-on work like that.
Also, I'mm really interested in this cooling solution for your server. I was thinking of just getting a wall/window A/C unit and either just cooling the whole room or piping it somehow. Not sure how much I like this solution but if it works then it works and I might try it as well
BE CAREFUL. I'm not sure what other equipment is in your garage, but you and viewers should be mindful with this implementation. This is similar to a single pipe portable AC... either way you are creating a negative air pressure in your garage, forcing unconditioned air to infiltrate, including unintended sources. If you have gas appliances like a water heater, dryer or furnace sharing the space there is a high possibility for flue gas back draft, increasing the chances of an incomplete burn due to oxygen starvation and resulting in carbon monoxide filling your garage. Hopefully the garage is poorly sealed and can provide enough fresh air to make up the exhaust air exiting the space. Nevertheless, when there is hot outside temperatures it will bring that hot unconditioned air into the space. I understand the goal is cooler equipment, and this may solve that problem, but just be aware of the bigger picture. An improvement would be a second powered air duct to bring outside air directly to the rack, which would help take advantage of so called "free cooling" when outside air temperature is lower, and also solve the added problem of negative air pressure.
You are absolutely on point and scientifically correct!
I was researching how to cool my home lab and I stumbled on this. Thanks for your input.
Your channel is a great discovery. Can you tell me where can I buy the slide mount for the UPS you have?
I'd recommend a y instead of t for the ducting junction.
I've got two questions. Does that AC unit can be in any way controlled remotely, or is it only hands-on device? And if it has dehumidifier mode, how do you get rid of water? Surely it isn't that tray on the bottom of the device that you have remove and dump the water every hour or so?
There is an optional network management card for it. I opted for manual control, as I'm not sure I'll run it full time, just on days above 85F. And there is a built in evaporator in the unit, so no draining required. There is an overflow if the AC can't keep up which you can pipe out to a drain, but in Oregon, our humidity in the summer is ~15%, so I have nothing to worry about here.
If you made the "straight" part of the exhaust on the AC unit, you would have less pressure coming through the T section, and less "back pressure". The fact that you have that perpendicular junction means the unit is putting at least 50% of its pressure back into the rack. Simply flip that fixture around, and you'll probably have less pressure coming down the rack side.
You should put a mini wind turbine in the air duct, and recover a little bit of the power! Or a TEC on the wall of the pipe to convert some of the waste heat back to usable power.... 😇
I have to admit, that A/C unit costs much less than I thought it would. I may actually have to consider this. I'm about to be in a new house, and I've wanted to have a server rack for some time. The garage might be the only spot I can put something that large.
Without being specific, a ball-park figure perhaps, but what are your power bills like with the rack and the various other computers running in your home on top of your normal power usage figures?
I used to run a 42RU rack in my garage where i hosted my own domain with 3 or 4 servers (admittedly older, larger units - 3-4RUs), a couple of Cisco switches and a router.
I turned it all off after 6 months and sold the whole lot when my power bills for that period constantly topped $900/quarter when they were previously ~$300/quarter
The exhaust should always have the smaller/lesser up top and the larger on bottom. Also my concern would be the reduced pipe causing issues long term with the equipment overheating and/or possibly prematurely burning up motors.
Agreed, going from 6" to 4" is a 55% reduction in cross-sectional area and roughly equivalent reduction in air flow.
5:57 lol I know it's Star Tech but I hear Star Trek every time I rewind this part.
Craft Computing You should have used a 45 degree T instead of the straight T one. That way the AC air would accelerate the cabinet exhaust air :P
Bit late now, but pro tip, use an electric drill-driver with variable clutch to do all the screws in a rack-mount install. So much quicker.
This reminds me of Central Services from Brazil...
Nice on a day where I want to spend $500 u bring out something not relating to new stuff but old stuff and making it awesome
02:41 I wonder where all the hot air will go...
It was a joke because he repeated the same line 5 times in a row
I'm wondering... why not to salvage the magnet sheet that came with the A/C, cut it down to strips, then glue the strips to the edges of the vinyl? even some tiny spots to let the vinyl close to the mesh. It would be fully plug-and-play, isn't it?
Not sure how cold it gets where you are but you might consider a damper to redirect the hot air into the garage in the winter.
If you don't mind sharing, where did you buy your vinyl for the front of the rack?
if you invert the output ,, on the top of the rack , so the ac go out strate , ,, the other one in T will act as vacum and suck the ambient air out withaut fan , try it it may work ,,
Look at Mr Venturi over here :-D
I may do just that, even if the blower I bought is enough. It could always be more efficient.
@@CraftComputing try it ,, it may work ,, i have done it with my kitchen ventilator ,
Nope! I don't ordered an air conditioner for my server rack... but that fancy cloud neon sign! :D
Get one here ;-)
amzn.to/3biSzhD
could of used venturi effect from the A/C hot air outlet to draw the hot air out of the back of the rack and only use the fan as a backup
Pretty awesome video..
Probably you could got away without the higher speed fan if you put two separate holes out one for the ac and another for the server exhaust instead of combining both into one hole out. But I can understand that making two holes out of the garage doesn't sound like a pleasant idea.
Maybe you could ad a duct for the ac intake to the front mesh with vinyl around to not exhaust the cool air in the front.
Or maybe ad a lip of insulation on the upper side of the ac pushing against the door to seal it better.
Hi Jeff, really liking this so far. My only question about your T duckt splitter ( or however you muricans) call it😜 why not use a Y so you can direct the pushed air from the airconditioning up a in a more natural flow causing some natural suction flow from the down pipe that takes the other hot air from the servers up. That lower powered inline blower should be enough than isn't it?!🤔
question, if you blow all that air out of your room..... where does new air come back in?
specifically: do you even have an air inlet to your room? do you keep the door open? is the garage door untight enough to let air in?
secondly: do you suck hot air from outside? how hot is it?
Some types flexable ducts are highly flammable. They look like they are made of metal but are flammable plastic.
The design of the SRCOOL7KRM seems insane to me - there's only one intake both for air-to-be-cooled, and air-to-be-exhausted, from what I can see. That results in a huge amount of waste, since you can't recirculate cool air on one side of the cooler, while having a separate air path for the hot side of the AC. It's like portable ACs that cool themselves with the room's cool air instead of having a separate intake/exhaust - ridiculously inefficient.
A design with separate paths for the hot side and the cold side of the air conditioner would also prevent you from needing to do all that ducting from the rears of the servers - all of the heat rejected from the entire rack would come out of the single air conditioner exhaust.
Was waiting for that AC portion
great job~!
if you want to make crawling around in data centers even more fun add in a seismic sub floor below.
2:20 Is it just me but is that a bad idea?
I mean, if you blow all the "hot" air out, you're constantly cooling down new air for the servers to use.
Now if you run your servers at full blast and they exceeded the capacity of the AC or the output air is hotter than the ambient air in the garage, that would make sense. But say your garage is 30c, your AC cools it to 20c, your servers heat it to 25c, then you dump it out. It would be more power efficient for to just pass the air back to the AC and let it cool it by 5c, instead you're taking completely new air at 30c and cooling that 10c. That's huge waste of energy.
That would only be in an ideal situation, most likely, when the servers are running at full speed, there will be little to no effect of running that hot air from the servers back through the aircon just to cool the servers again.
1) its going to be significantly hotter coming out of a server rack that big, much hotter than ambient
2) you have to vent heat somehow, the AC unit can't work without dumping its heat somewhere, so he's using that airflow to also pull the heated air out of the rack
3) its probably more energy efficient to run a small AC unit to cool just the rack than it would be to try and cool an entire garage, though I'm not sure I'd put a rack in a garage anyways but then my houses have never had well insulated garages
i think using a mini split unit is what u are thinking.. and i believe it would be more efficient than this method.. but i dont know if one is made small enough that could fit in a single wide rack...
This unit is designed to run only the discharge from the condenser out of the controlled space. Typically we install climate controlled liebert systems in server rooms that controls humidity, temperature, and air purifying. I can see this unit in a server rack that's in a server closet with a filter on the door. Then it would use the space around the server and the air would be forced to go through the condenser and out the duct system out of the controlled environment. These unit range from 12000 to 22000 BTU's. For a small server.
@@AsbestosMuffins
1) He approximated that the rack uses 500W on average, but the unit was capable of couple of kW. Depending on if that's the transfer capacity or load, it's either way more powerful than the servers or a lot powerful (ACs have typical heat transfer few times their energy usage) That would mean the air coming out the server would still be colder than the ambient air of the garage.
2) The heat is meant to be dumped trough the back of the unit, with where the AC dumps the hot air, which he has correctly vented out.
3) The AC wouldn't try to cool the garage if the rack was more closed up. Either way, it's better for electricity usage for the AC try to cool down the whole garage than vent the semi-cool air out losing all the benefits of it. If the semi-cool air cools the garage even a little bit, it makes the job of the AC easier, making it use less electricity or cooling the servers down even further, depending on the controls of the AC.
Be cool if you could somehow recycle the waste heat though, like use it to heat a swimming pool. I admit results might be negligible on a home rack, but just a thought.
Yea, fairly certain that is not how you are supposed to vent a unit like that. You are taking all the cooled air, and dumping it causing the compressor to need to draw in ambient and work even harder to cool.
Just for a test, block off the second 'exhaust' vent from the top of the unit (not the one coming off the back of the AC unit) and see if temps drop lower while the compressor cycles less. See, unless the servers manage to dump enough heat energy into the back of the rack to take the temperature above ambient (they probably won't if your estimate of 500W is accurate), then all you are doing is dumping out cooled air and drawing in more ambient. Sealing the entire rack and leaving some small vent holes at the top back and bottom front should result in much cheaper and cooler performance (The AC exhaust still needs to be taken outside though).
Hey quick question? What did you do about the drain plug? does it matter?
you consider a Y instead of the T joint? the airflow would flow more naturally in the direction you want it to go.
Pretty cool :)
Project advise from 15 years of experience. If you need 10 screws to complete a project buy 20. You can always return them or you will loose almost that many anyway. Also not a big deal when you are on the floor. A much bigger deal when you are hanging on a 200' tower.
Neat idea but I'd be worried about condensation any time the cabinet is opened.
you could have used hotglue to secure it to the side. Make sure that you seal all the holes. on the rack to give a negative space in the rack
Why don't you use a Y-piece on top and let the flow from the AC suck the air out from the top of the rack? You can also use some magnets to stick the vinyl to the front of the door and looks way nicer :-)
Nice Rack Jeff.....And they are REAL!
Awesome. You did a great job with the piping and the vinyl. Was this filmed before you installed the patch panel?
The patch panel was filmed in the middle of this video while I was waiting on parts :-)
@@CraftComputing Ah ok. Can't wait for part 2 and the rest of the server related content to follow!