The server room cooling failed and the temperature is climbing.
Above 35 degrees Celsius servers throttle, above 40 they start thermal shutdown. Don't wait for the failure, drop the load and bring in cooler air first.
Try this first
- 1Power off non-essential VMs and test servers, that immediately reduces heat. Print and file servers with low load can pause too.
- 2Open the door to a cooler space and use a temporary fan to pull in outside air, if outside is cooler. On a hot day: useful only at night.
- 3Call the AC vendor for emergency service, but first ask whether there is a restart or reset you can do yourself. A leak or dead compressor will not be fixed the same day.
- 4Monitor temperature via iDRAC/iLO ambient sensor or an external thermometer with logging. Document peaks for warranty or insurance claims.
- 5After recovery, plan a real fix: a second AC unit for redundancy, or a NetBotz/Sensaphone with SMS alarms on temperature and water.
When to bring us in
With heavy overheating (>45 degrees, more than an hour) plan a phased shutdown of non-critical servers first, then critical, before hardware dies. A day of downtime is cheaper than a new SAN.
See also
- One DC or two DCs for an SMB office?Two is almost always the right answer; one DC is a single point of failure for logon, DNS and GPOs.
- Should I split FSMO roles across two DCs?For a small domain all on one DC is fine; with two DCs splitting is tidier but not required.
- How do I know my AD replication is healthy?Replication errors creep in silently; they only surface when logins or GPOs misbehave.
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