When your Air Conditioner tried to kill you...

I don't think I've ever worked in an IT environment where the server room wasn't plagued by air conditioning issues.

We have two in our computer room,
a. The standard building air conditioner
b. An extra unit

They draw their power from different circuits, so they have a degree of redundancy but... ...both draw their water from the same source, a water tank on the roof of our building.

Late last night I got a warning from our security company about the air conditioning. They report when it hits 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 F).

I live quite a distance from the city and while I have keys to the building, our floor and the computer room, I don't have keys to the air conditioner reset itself.

I decided that since I only had a few hours to go, I'd finish sleeping and arrive at my usual time 6.30am.

By the time I got there, the room temperature was 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 F). I left the computer room door open and it cooled to 27C (80.6 F) within 30 minutes.

I'm obviously going to have to find some way of doing a remote-reset. Not that this works when some looney-toon has turned off the water supply to the air conditioner.

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