server in the desert

[Chassidy Rentz]

What is the best option if you are looking for a server that is compact and easily moved from location to location, but is powerful and able to withstand the desert elements with minimal downtime for maintenance?

[Naveej.K.A]

hi,

Good power and accurate cooling keeps your downtime to NIL. when you talk about mid range servers of HP9000, they have an operating temperature range upto 35 degrees. But in a desert, you still require an air conditioner to keep them running. If you can keep it below 20.. its cool for the server as well as for you.

with best wishes
Naveej

[Eric Watson_2]

Hi,

You might try looking at a telco or carrier grade version of one of servers. They can tolerate much higher temps if cooling is an issue.

Eric

[Thomas Bianco · Accepted solution]

there is not much that can withstand a sand desert.

consider that you may not need a server at all. when I was with the army, we had a "mobility server" A supercharged toshiba toughbook running nt server and exchange 5.0.

It went out on deployments first. it wasn't fast, but it got the brass email until a proper Info infrastructure (with cooling) could be set up.

modern laptops are more powerful, and could probably run very well given enoough ram and fast enough (probably external) storage.

[doug hosking]

What exactly do you mean by 'able to withstand the desert elements' ? I have visions of a daily cron job that reminds you to shake the sand out of your chassis after each sandstorm. :-) Sand resistance is not one of the typical design criteria for most servers.

"Powerful" is such a relative term that I don't know where to start. Are these in the range you're thinking of? The rx1600 wins for being compact (only 1U high). Something like an rp3440-4 is only slightly bigger but supports up to 4 processors.

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/entry_level/rx1600/index.html

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/rackoptimized/rp3400_series/index.html

Perhaps if you could be a bit more specific about the intended use/environment we could give you more helpful answers. Are you thinking of something as portable as a laptop or just something that's reasonable to lug around in a truck, tank, etc.? Can we assume that you would have normal power available or are you looking for something that could run from batteries? Any special requirements with respect to vibration resistance? If you're able to answer questions like that, we can probably give you much better help.

[Bill Hassell]

A 'server' implies a network connection, otherwise, there would be nobody to serve. If this is a tent on a sand dune, then your biggest problem will be the very long extension cord followed by the regular replacement of the entire system after a sandstorm and/or temps in the 120 degF (48 degC) range.

Seriously, you have to define the actual environment. If it is mounted in a vehicle, will it have AC power or DC only? Will the unit be operational in temps above 110 degF (43 degC)? Define 'compact' and moveable. If you have a giant truck and trailer, then it's easily moverable. Repair? In the desert? If money is no object, just keep a couple of spares on hand with a disk copier. Oh, what about backups? If you store data on this box, you'll need a method to restore the data on a new box. If you have a network connection, you can use a network backup, but the details are very different if you choose HP-UX versus Apple versus Windows boxes. Need more details...