A couple years back, our workplace was converting some offices into clinic space. As such, a major demolition had to occur on the same floor as our server room. The good news: the construction crew did not have to do any work with the server room, nor interfere with any of the data cabling – the only thing they had to do was make sure our server room was putting out positive air pressure to keep all the dust out. Easy.
Apparently, one day the electricians were hooking into the circuit where our server room auxiliary air conditioning unit was also powered.
They neglected to turn the circuit back on…on a Friday night.
Now it almost goes without saying for the sake of this story that we didn’t have any kind of environmental monitoring set up in our server room at the time (after all, that’s why you are reading about it here).
We learned an important lesson very quickly.
When Monday morning rolled around, I came to work to a few people saying “The EMR is running slowly” – to which I thought “well, it always runs slowly.” However, as I rounded the corner to the server room, I heard the distinct sounds of many fans running at a speed I’ve never heard before. The doorknob to the room was extremely hot to the touch. Upon opening the door, an overpowering blast of super-heated air came at me – it took my breath away…the temperature? 116 degrees F.
Propping the door open with a bunch of box fans blowing the hot air out cooled things down within a couple hours – – No need to justify this purchase; we acquired an environmental monitoring appliance that week.
[Picture Source: eliduke (CC)]
