I have a norco style 24-bay 4u case. The drives are hotswap caddies in front, followed by a fanwall into the ATX compartment at the rear. Airflow is front to back

 

All is good, except I see a lot of dust build up within a week accumulating in drive bays. At lest this shows that airflow is working, but cleaning is tedious as I have to pull out drives and open the case etc

 

Do others have this issue? What solutions have you deployed? Is there a 4u mesh cover type things available? I am happy to DIY things if needed

 

Any real world advise will be appreciated

 

EDIT: my case for reference - https://www.macase.hk/4U-Servers-case/28875.html

 

Edited February 9, 20233 yr by apandey

Where did the dust come from ? Eliminate at source.

 

Put a huge hepa filter infront of the case.

 

My personal kinky preference goes as far as to submerge the most parts in a solution with antistatic chemicals, spray and wipe with antistatic products.

 

Right now in my room I have 3x hepa air filters.

 

I have 1x hepa robot vacuum in the premises auto scheduled.

 

I control airflows through out the entire apartment block of 30x apartments to eliminate dirty air coming in the apartment.

 

Some dirty vehicles were parking near my windows and I sabotaged that 3x ways some lawful some not so. No humans or hard drives were harmed. Yet.

 

I bribed the authorities to sabotage dirty vehicles and dust creating construction work, that the wind could sometimes blow this way.

 

I put extreme outgoing fans that I had to import from exotic places and custom hotwire.

 

I rebuilt the chimney system in the apartment block to increase airflow.

 

I killed an expensive HVAC system and an expensive heating system that were contributing to dirty air.

 

I put sensors for 4x types of pollutants and automated extreme outgoing turbines that cause the building to shake when they turn on.

 

I bought cleaning services of 2x sexy-ass maids and put them "on rotation"

 

However I just let the dust collect in the machine until it starts showing problems from the dust such as temperatures. I clean the machine only when it starts underperforming or smelling.

Edited February 9, 20233 yr by GRRRRRRR

That was some response, I may have to read it a few times to pick my favourite OCDs to follow 😆

 

42 minutes ago, GRRRRRRR said:

However I just let the dust collect in the machine until it starts showing problems from the dust such as temperatures. I clean the machine only when it starts underperforming or smelling.

This is pretty much what has been happening. The usual things over time are slight rise in temps, and more annoyingly the fan hum becoming annoying. I cannot significantly control the dust in the environment, so I have settled down on trying to reduce its flow into the case to increase the time between cleaning cycles

 

Filters, yes, that is one obvious one. But I am not sure what type of stuff I should be looking at, where to procure it etc. More importantly, if there is something readymade I can buy or adapt, of if not, any ideas on DIY solutions. I learn better from looking around and seeing what else is happening

 

Any other ideas / inputs from people in a similar boat?

the simple help is to put a flea net in front of the bays. I usually fix them with magnets on top of the case and put some weights on the bottom to keep them straight down.

Every few months I take the off and wash them out.

They catch amazingly much dust, I did not need to clean the internal fans for some years now already.

Cheap, ugly, but effective.

Nothing is cheap end-to-end.

 

What is this flea-net that stops all the dust entering? Is it a finer net ?

 

I disagree with the flea-net. I can agree with hepa however even these are up to 0.3 uM

 

Edited February 10, 20233 yr by GRRRRRRR

I mean the cheap stuff you can put inside your windows. The net is not really fine, but its enough to catch the dust and make it stick to the net.

 

you can get them for less than 10€ / $ and you jst cut out the size you need for your server (one net is enough for 3-4 servers 🙂 ))

 

(once the black net is getting grey/white from dust, its time to clean it. Take it off and wash it under water or suck it clean with a vacuum cleaner)

 

 

Edited February 10, 20233 yr by MAM59

The point with too tight filters is, that they limit the airflow dramatically. Done wrong, your server will be dustfree but burning because of overheat.

So you need to find a fine balance between airflow and catching the evil.

Small Particles are usually no problem, they dont stick to the fans and are getting blown out again at the back. But longer/bigger stuff can stick to them, pile up and at the end block your fans. These are caught by the simple net in front of the server. It is wide enough to let the air flow without problems but tight enough to catch the evildoers 🙂

But, thats only my personal practical experience build up during the last 30yrs of running servers 24/7 🙂

 

Good job.

 

I also use wet wipes, when they are dry, to catch dust infront of air filters and fans.

There are also 'disposable kitchen towels' aka 'absorbent rolls' for home and industry. They are pass air you can use for cheap dust filters. Those would be the products with more cotton than paper.

Edited February 12, 20233 yr by GRRRRRRR

Actually, it should also work to put cotton cloth / towel Infront of the machine this way you can have choice of color etc. and wash it with the laundry.

 

The towel will also absorb some of the noise.

The trick is to have a big intake area.

1 minute ago, GRRRRRRR said:

The towel will also absorb some of the noise.

This is a bad idea 😞

According to the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy you need to always have your towel close to you!

 

What? Why?

 

I don't see why not to put the correct quality towel, infront of the dust intakes ?

 

Everything said and done, looks like the best dust filter for the task.

 

Can even put a cool t-shirt with some picture infront of that.

 

I didn't understand your 'metaphor' ? Or am too lazy to research that part of the movie. Is it a sex joke?

 

There are also airfilter materials for different purposes such as for vacuum cleaners however those are not the right size usually and one time use as well as will look worse.

 

So to get a cool looking machine you are limited to specific things to put infront of it.

1 hour ago, GRRRRRRR said:

I didn't understand your 'metaphor' ? Or am too lazy to research that part of the movie. Is it a sex joke?

No sex joke, and the 2005 movie is pure shit!

You either read the book or watch the 80s tv series to get enlightment about the towel

Watch Part 1 at around 25:20min to learn all about towels!

Anyway, never leave withou a towel!

A Vogon Constructor Fleet maybe nearby!

 

You can also worship your towel at "towel day", may 25th!

 

Edited February 12, 20233 yr by MAM59

On 2/12/2023 at 11:06 PM, MAM59 said:

You either read the book or watch the 80s tv series to get enlightment about the towel

IMO, you have to read the book. It took Douglas Adams pages and pages and pages to drill the details firmly into our brains, and I think the screen adaptations just Skim to the conclusion. They are probably OK to make the 42 joke, but any more detail is lost in translation

 

Back to the topic, thanks for the ideas. I am leaning to make my own DIY thing with the PC dust mesh (rolls of material that they put on PC case inlets). That way I don't have to worry out picking the right pitch for the application. I don't need it 100% dust free, just something to slow down the accumulation and easier to clean outer layer until I hit the inevitable maintenance window on the bays

 

My Temps are good now. Can always look at before / after trend on grafana to see if I have overdone it. Also open to put another fan-wall outside behind the mesh if needed

 

The first task is of course finding the right frame material. This might take a while doing at low priority, but if I do manage to do something, I'll post back 

Edited February 14, 20233 yr by apandey

I finally manage to put something together, which looks good and works well. So as promised, sharing back

 

Here is what I ended up with

 

The parts I used are: 

1. 4u vented panel with larger holes

2. PC mesh - large roll which I cut to 4u size, and stuck adhesive magnets on the border to stick with panel. It's right behind the panel. 

I mounted them on a 4u wall mount frame which I just can lower as a cap (it has no bottom or back) 

 

I was also planning to add a 140x3 fan wall between the panel and server in front, but my server fan wall behind the drives is doing a good job and Temps aren't affected, so I haven't pursued additional fans

 

Parts used are these. The mesh comes as a roll without the magnetic strip attached. It can be cut to custom size and then magnet can be cut and attached as a tape accordingly

 

 

Edited March 7, 20233 yr by apandey

Productize it. 😎