That office building in Phoenix with the moldy server room

I got called out to a law firm in Phoenix last month for a server that kept crashing. Walked into the server room and the AC had been broken for three days. Temp was reading 98 degrees and the humidity was so bad there was condensation on the ceiling tiles. Pulled the side panel off the main server and found corrosion starting on the motherboard. The IT guy was just rebooting it every time it failed, never checked the environment. I told the office manager they needed to get a portable AC unit in there that day or that server was toast. That job made me start carrying a temp/humidity sensor in my bag. Now I check every server room before I touch anything. Anyone else run into situations where the physical environment was the real problem, not the hardware?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher_sullivan7d ago

Got a buddy who does HVAC work for small offices in Houston. He told me about this one dental practice he went to where the whole network kept dropping out. They blamed the router, replaced it twice. He walked in the server closet and the humidity was so bad there was actual mold growing on the back of the rack. The drywall was peeling. The dentist was just plugging along while his patient records were sitting in a sauna. My buddy had to rip out the whole AC system and run a dehumidifier 24/7 for a week before they could even think about putting new hardware in there.

paige4276d ago

So did your buddy ever figure out if the dental practice was just cheap and didn't want to pay for proper HVAC, or was it just straight up neglect from the dentist running the place? I've seen that a lot in small offices where the owner thinks IT gear is just like a microwave and can sit anywhere. Also, how long had that server been sitting in there before the network started dropping out? Because that kind of humidity damage is not a one day thing.

caleb_stone6d ago

Haha, "actual mold growing on the back of the rack" is giving me flashbacks. I once had to explain to a client that their server wasn't broken, their server closet was basically a swimming pool. I felt pretty smart until I discovered I had left my work phone in there and it ended up with water damage. So I guess the hardware problem was me, actually. Now I check humidity first and leave my phone in the car.