Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!necntc!drilex!dricej
From: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Personal Unix machines vs Air Conditioning
Message-ID: <545@drilex.UUCP>
Date: 17 Apr 88 22:44:26 GMT
Organization: Data Resources, Inc., Lexington, MA
Lines: 31

I'd like to know how other sites are handling the problem of Personal
Unix boxes, especially with disks, in hot offices.  Unix systems want
to be left on most of the time, either to allow access from home or
the net or just to avoid the problems of a shut-down.  This means that they
throw off heat, even on weekends. It's not unusual for such
a system to throw off several hundred watts.  Some machines
will throw off more than a kilowatt.  And most personal machines will
be located in offices whose doors are closed on weekends.

Because these machines are really high-tech space heaters, they can
run into problems with facilities managers who are trying to save on their
energy budget.  In one of our buildings, the air conditioning goes off at
6 PM on Friday and doesn't come back on until 8AM on Monday.  In a closed
office with a kilowatt or so of space-heating, it can easily get to be well
over a hundred degrees on a hot July weekend afternoon.  This can be very
harmful to disks, etc.

In the past, with multi-user systems, we have gotten special air-conditioning
installed in the rooms where these systems were installed.  (Even this didn't
happen until we had lost several thousand dollars of disk-drive.)  However,
it probably isn't feasable to get each office containing a Xenix system or
a Sun-with-shoebox specially air-conditioned.

Our facilities man puts the cost of weekend air-conditioning at over $200k
per year, so this is no trivial issue.

How do you address this problem?
-- 
Craig Jackson
UUCP: {harvard!axiom,linus!axiom,ll-xn}!drilex!dricej
BIX:  cjackson