Protection
Where should our server actually live?
In a space with airflow, stable power, no water above it and a door that locks. Heat is the most common environmental killer of business equipment, and the room that is fine in March is a different room in July.
Answered by Nate Weigel, Protection Director
Heat is what actually kills it
We have opened a cupboard and found a firewall cooked to death. The room was south facing, built of cinder block, with a window, a very high ceiling and no airflow to the rest of the building. In summer it sat close to a hundred degrees. The equipment did not fail; the room failed and took the equipment with it.
Electronics in heat do not stop cleanly. They behave strangely first, which is worse, because you spend weeks chasing an intermittent fault that is really a thermometer problem.
The checklist we use
Airflow to the rest of the building, or dedicated cooling. Stable power on a circuit that is not shared with something that cycles hard. Nothing plumbed above it, because water finds equipment. A door that locks, because physical access is access. And enough space to actually stand and work on it, which sounds obvious and is routinely forgotten.
What we do about a room that cannot be fixed
Sometimes the room is the room, especially in a leased building. Then we reduce what has to live in it, improve what airflow we can, and fit an environment monitor that watches temperature, humidity and power and texts a list of people whatever the time or date. It is inexpensive and it has saved equipment more than once.
The worst one we have seen
Servers under a desk in an office. Not in a cupboard, under a desk, with somebody's feet next to them. It happens more often than you would think, and it is usually the result of a move where nobody asked the question in time.
Where we did this
Order the internet circuit the week the lease is signed. Carriers take six to twelve weeks. Nothing else on a move fails as often.
The relocation checklist Did you knowA backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. Ask for the date of the last tested restore.
What to actually testPeople also ask
How warm is too warm for our server room?
Equipment is designed for roughly 18 to 27 degrees Celsius, 64 to 81 Fahrenheit, measured at the front where it draws air in. The number that matters is not the one on a Tuesday afternoon; it is the one at 2am on a Sunday.
The full answerWhat is a server room reorganization, and is it worth paying for?
It is making the room possible to reason about: inventory, cable management, labelling at both ends, documentation, power and airflow. It turns a two-hour outage into a twenty-minute one, and it is far cheaper scheduled than done in an emergency.
The full answerEvery IT company says they are proactive. What does it actually mean?
Work that gets done while nothing is wrong, funded on an argument rather than an emergency. In 2019 we replaced open remote access with VPNs across our client base because we did not like the exposure. A year later every client had to send staff home.
The full answer
"Draven was great!"
Jake, insurance brokerageMeet Draven- A technician who knows your setup takes every request. Not a dispatcher, not a queue.
- Every closed ticket is surveyed and a partner reads every response.
- 99.5% of surveys come back positive.
- Family-owned since 2005. 21 years in the same corner of Wisconsin, not going anywhere.
"Another great job by Midwest IT. Our company just loves your fast response to our issues."
Client, 2024 surveyTalk to a partner, not a sales script.
Tell us what is going on. A partner will call you back the same business day, look at what you have, and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. No pricing pressure, no pitch deck.