[tech] Cooling the machine cupboard/room with meyer/kalimari, was Re: Aircon UCCleanup busybee request, Re: [committee] Follow up meeting on UCC's servers

Sun May 19 17:13:12 AWST 2024

On Wed, Aug 04, 2021 at 02:59:21PM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote:
[ `meyer`, the Kelvinator KWH62HRE was about three years old ]
> We have an identical "cold-spare" spare unit [ `kalimari` , as in Mario Kart! ].

[ next UCCCleanup busybee ? ]
> Could I request that someone gives the aircon a better clean?  - it's
> something we should do once or twice a year - turn it off, remove
> the front cover, wash the dust filter - look for any other trapped
> dust/water/slime/gunge
>   - some aircons have "No-drip technology: for faster cooling efficiency
>     and no need to empty the water tank" - this usually means they
>     channel or evaporate it themselves, but it also means there's a place
>     that slowly collects gunge
>     - not sure if that exactly describes our current Kelvinator KWH62HRE
> - give it a name label to distinguish it from [ edit: `kalimari` ], our cold-spare
>   repaired-under-warranty Kelvinator KWH62HRE - unless it has a name and
>   label, already?

Maybe it's had a clean in the interim? but nearly 3 years later - it
needed it. Thanks, [GPO]! The manual says to clean the dust filter every
two weeks (!) which sounds a bit excessive.

The dust filter cleaned up pretty easily under hot water, but [GPO]
and I had to dig deeper to clean out the dust/mud that was probably
stopping it draining well.

> There's been talk of selling kalimari:
[or lending it to UWA E-sports, or chilling our snack machine]

> - I'd rather have kalimari running as a hot-spare, feeding cold air
>   into the top of the snack machine via some acrylic baffles rather
>   than sitting out its life as a cold-spare
> - I'd rather have kalimari sit out its life as a cold-spare than risk
>   being without a ready-to-use aircon when ours fails next in the middle
>   of summer, as kalimari did on 2018-03-05
>   - I don't think that was even a super-hot day, it was forecast higher
>     at 38C later than week.
>   - we knew it was urgent and we already had the in-principle agreement
>     to immediately go out and buy a retail replacement in exactly
>     that contingency
>   - but it took us until about 2018-04-13 to get it done:
> https://www.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/infobase/minutes/2018/2018-04-13.ucc
>     - Did the receipt end up in /home/other/committee/docs/2018 ? about $1300?

`kalimari` originally lasted from 2015-01-27--2018-03-05 - more than 3
full summers, pretty good for $1026! then it was urgently replaced, then
repaired under warranty (which was a fairly big hassle).

Nominally 6000W of cooling capacity, takes 6-7A over a 15A plug.
Previously we'd been running two smaller 3600W/4A aircons (like
`kalahari` and `atacama`) but they'd ice up now and then and only worked
for a couple of years each. It was nice that they wouldn't both fail 100%
at once, but this eggs-in-one-basket Kelvinator model has done very well.

`meyer` has been running since 2018-04-13 and was set to 20C, probably
not reaching it. Seems like it's reaching it more easily now, so it's
set to target 25C. 24C-27C ambient temperature, today.
See attached, or from the clubroom network:
http://uccmonitor.ucc.asn.au:3000/d/PkPI4xGWz/s-m-a-r-t-dashboard?orgId=1&refresh=30s&from=now-32h&to=now

On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 04:36:34PM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote:
[...]
> Back in Kelvin's predecessor's predecessors time, UCC's immediate
> issue was lack of cooling, leading to very real failed equipment,
> 4 out 5 of mackerel's memory boards. So UCC built a cupboard out of
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonite and today we're being told in
> a tone of apparent urgency: "hey! you can't store snacks in the same
> cupboard as a running server!" and "it doesn't match the design
> specs for a newly built datacentre!"
> 
> Even though that didn't seem to be an issue for the UWA contractors
> or campus IT reviews that have examined it in detail in at least 2002,
> 2009 and 2015... but, well... it's not even _wrong_.
> 
> We've tried to discuss here, in chat, and in person at the recent
> cleanup and project nights - what end result exactly would we
> _like_? over-and-above the quick tidies to the ceiling and contents
> that we've done already? I think we need to get that down in writing,
> something we can compare and aim for, with budgets and fundraising.
> 
> Three potential improvements were discussed here on 2021-06-21 , and one
> or two more at:
> https://www.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/infobase/minutes/2021/2021-06-25.ucc
> I think we're still waiting on some quotes to turn the "$$$" estimates
> into some rough numbers.

There's been some recent discussion:
- https://discord.com/channels/264401248676085760/786476833117700116/1204256583627055116
- https://discord.com/channels/264401248676085760/264411219627212801/1205719374154178690
- https://discord.com/channels/264401248676085760/1182613702709620747/1213479393113149542
  (glass/plexiglas doors, not perforated steel)

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal
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