Question
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Topic
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Network Rack Cooling
Hello all. I have a question regarding cooling solutions for my network rack at home. Here’s what I have going on. I recently bought a home and had an electrician run ethernet cable to a number of rooms in the house for my TVs and computers. All of the network drops are living in a closet in my office. In addition to the network switch that I have rack mounted, I have a number of Ubiquiti pieces of equipment that all go together to make up my home network. I have a 24 port managed network switch, an 8 port Ubiquiti POE switch, a Ubiquiti USG firewall and a Ubiquiti cloud key for remote management. In addition to all of that I have a Synology NAS rack unit as well as my 3 game systems so that I can play my games in any room of the house without having the game systems in the rooms of where I want to play. I also have 2 APC UPS battery backups that are full to capacity to allow everything to run 24/7 in case of a power outage. On a side note, in addition to having all of that equipment on all the time, I had to have my electrician run 3 new dedicated circuits to my electrical panel in the garage to compensate for the power load. Everything is working perfectly. I’m only running in to one problem, the cooling. I have 4 rack mounted cooling fan units plus a 5th rack mount cooling fan blowing in a different direction than the others. I had to have my a/c company add a return vent in the closet so that there would be a place for the hot air to escape. The downside to this setup is even with the return vent added and the cooling fans running at 37 degrees Fahrenheit (which is what each fan is set to), the coolest it’s ever gotten in the closet even with the door all the way open is 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Even if I crack the door open, it gets as hot at 85 degrees in the closet. I obviously don’t want to close the door completely or the closet will overheat. Can anyone think of anything else that I haven’t tried to help keep the closet cool so that I can keep the door closed without having to listen to the noise of the fans running? Thank you.
