I worked for a startup in the back of someone's house. They had built an extension on the back of their house which was basically a greenhouse (it was like a steel and glass construction). The glass was supposed to be thermally coated but apparently it was installed backwards, with the thermal coating on the inside not the outside.
So the story goes, we had our server room and workstations all in this addition. During the summer it was routinely at or above 100 deg air temperature. I had a small portable AC unit we ran 24/7 and eventually they got a dedicated AC unit for the room. We also ended up covering the glass roof with tarp to try to block out the sun.
It was a pretty insane setup, but it was a cash strapped thing and the owners didn't want to do more than what they did. I was a naive kid fresh out of school, and thought it was so cool to work at a startup - even if it was sweating constantly in a noise filled environment working nights and weekends.
That said, the startup succeeded and grew into a company.
There was also that one time there was a rain storm and the "greenhouse server room" was not sealed against the side of the house, and the rain poured in through a crack. I will never forget when my colleague called at 1AM to let me know the server room was flooded, and that one server, which had it's case open, had the case fill with rainwater - while it was still turned on and running. And it kept running as most of the water collected at the base of the server chassis.....
If you think this sounds crazy, you're right, but I'm sure somebody else has a story just as crazy or even more so!
Ah, the early days, before the cloud... when we did it all ourselves. Yup, I had to wear the HVAC hat too.
I worked for a startup in the back of someone's house. They had built an extension on the back of their house which was basically a greenhouse (it was like a steel and glass construction). The glass was supposed to be thermally coated but apparently it was installed backwards, with the thermal coating on the inside not the outside.
So the story goes, we had our server room and workstations all in this addition. During the summer it was routinely at or above 100 deg air temperature. I had a small portable AC unit we ran 24/7 and eventually they got a dedicated AC unit for the room. We also ended up covering the glass roof with tarp to try to block out the sun.
It was a pretty insane setup, but it was a cash strapped thing and the owners didn't want to do more than what they did. I was a naive kid fresh out of school, and thought it was so cool to work at a startup - even if it was sweating constantly in a noise filled environment working nights and weekends.
That said, the startup succeeded and grew into a company.
There was also that one time there was a rain storm and the "greenhouse server room" was not sealed against the side of the house, and the rain poured in through a crack. I will never forget when my colleague called at 1AM to let me know the server room was flooded, and that one server, which had it's case open, had the case fill with rainwater - while it was still turned on and running. And it kept running as most of the water collected at the base of the server chassis.....
If you think this sounds crazy, you're right, but I'm sure somebody else has a story just as crazy or even more so!
Ah, the early days, before the cloud... when we did it all ourselves. Yup, I had to wear the HVAC hat too.