Inflatable, portable "clean room"

The Servershield is an inflatable, ventilated portable "clean-room" (not actually hermetically sealed) for servers, presumably useful if you have to keep computers running on the playa or other disaster area. Inexplicably, it's advertised for "mainframe" computers, which bodes poorly for the technical know-how of the manufacturer; surely that's a standard commodity rack beneath the cocoon?

Four small ventilator/filter units provide a clean ventilating airflow keeping the machine temperature stable and importantly clean and dry.
The cover simply drops over the machine and forms a semi airlock/seal as it rests on the floor around the machine. The machine requires no modifications whatsoever and continues to work as originally designed taking air through the body of the machine and exhausting around the top rim .
A small independently powered digital temperature readout is fixed to the cover showing machine working temperature within the cover.
Openings in the cover are provided to allow quick and easy access to the machine without removing the cover.

Servershield (via Red Ferret)

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Narual

dunno.. looks about the size of the IBM mainframe we used 3 years ago (around 3.5×4 feet and 5-6 feet tall)
Cory Doctorow

OK, but how often do you bring a mainframe to a disaster site or on a camping trip?
Daemon

It would be a decent way to protect your racks from dust/etc. if there’s construction going on in the same room. Or if you have to set up somewhere in less-than-ideal circumstances – a temporary solution to get things up and running quickly after a natural disaster maybe?
Anonymous

#2

Duh, I regularly backpack with my IBM mainframe. River crossings have always been a challenge.
Anonymous

Why wouldn’t you house the mainframe offsite to eliminate possible problems? Why would you ever need this?
Anonymous

It really should be a bit larger so you can drop it over a standard rack.
bcomisky

No experience with mainframes, but your average server is remarkably tolerant to humidity and dust, and higher ambient air temps than you would expect.

I’ve got a 8-server rack in a garage with the door kept open, covered in dust and running 64 cores near 100% all the time.. with uptimes in months. Only failures have been some fans, but those 1U fans are running at pretty high RPMS since the CPU usage is so high. No AC.. it’s southern Cal, but it hits 90ish occasionally.

Intel’s “free cooling” experiments have similar findings: 64-92 deg ambient air, 4-90% humidity variation, dust everywhere and less than 1% difference in failure rates (with big energy savings).

http://www.intel.com/it/pdf/Reducing_Data_Center_Cost_with_an_Air_Economizer.pdf
icky2000

@Anonymouse: One reason you wouldn’t house the rack offsite is uptime. The time it takes to move a full rack of gear to an alternate location and get it up and running would be several hours at least. Banks are generally looking for at least 5 nines of uptime (99.999%) which allows just 5 hours of downtime for an entire year. That would give you enough time to move it offsite…but you’d have to wait until next year to get it back! :)

Another reason for not moving it is risk. Even if you move the rack properly on air cushions to prevent vibration problems, the risk is pretty significant that you might cause a problem that would prevent things from coming up perfectly after the move.

I’ve been involved in one major project where we remodeled an entire building but left intact the data center on one floor for similar reasons. In that case, we had the benefit of walls surrounding the data center to keep the dust out but the extra effort to keep the power and HVAC in the data center running required a gazillion dollars of union electricians working nights and weekends. Some systems just simply cannot go down without causing pissed customers or lost revenue.
hisdevineshadow

Haven’t been around any Mainframes in a while? The IBM 390 I work with 7 years ago would fit perfectly in there.

Okay, a little quid pro quo. What is a playa?
icky2000

The link explains they were hired by a bank to devise a solution to keep a mainframe clean during a branch renovation. So the idea was to protect the rack from construction indoors. Not intended for camping. :)
wackyvorlon

These are pretty old. There was a time in the mainframe world when a hard drive crash could be repaired by having a tech – with a portable clean room – open up the drive, and replace the heads.
Anonymous

As mentioned most mainframes these days would fit fine in the environment. What I don’t see is any accommodation for the typical front-to-back air flow that all modern rack-mount servers use. It looks like they are trying to pull air in from the bottom and blow it out the top.
Takuan

the playa is where you playa for Burning Man
Takuan

weren’t you asking for a source for ruggedized computers for use in rural Africa?
Anonymous

#4: “Okay, a little quid pro quo. What is a playa?”

Salt flat / dry lake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playa
Anonymous

At what point does it start yelling “Exterminate! Exterminate!”?
Anonymous

Playa is also Spanish for beach.
Maneki Nico

Does this remind anyone else of the Cone of Silence?
Anonymous

Not much info on the site. Anyone know the price range, and how cables are accomidated?

Much of the equipment I know of is in racks that are side by side with no space on the sides to have the bage slip over, but having a way to isolate the equipment when work is going on makes sense.
arkizzle / Moderator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playa
John Hudgens

Carcoon? Is there a Sarlacc in that thing? :)
legion

Quick! Somebody get one of these to Hannelore of QC!
rebdav

The OSCARS (ham radio satellite) assembly volunteers have made clean rooms from plastic sheet and HEPA vacuum cleaners. I bet this tent is a sub $100 product sold for several $K.
These amateur satellite makers use stuff like measuring tapes for antennas it is a really amazing DIY thing where they piggy back on extra space on a launch vehicle.
Anonymous

I’m a commercial builder.
I have seen $80K of ultrasonic cleaning required to repir construction dust ingress.

I like this idea.