Take the 2-minute tour ×

Following are links of my DIY 6-Node Hadoop Cluster using i3 Machines,

What is the best possible way to protect my design from dust & provide better heat transfer? What should I use to cover four side of my rack in order to protect it from dust?

share|improve this question
It's kinda adorable. In a strange kinda way. –  Tom O'Connor Jan 7 '13 at 14:32
How's the performance? –  ewwhite Jan 7 '13 at 14:34
good air conditioner. If you can get +15 °C then dust will be less. Much less. Also you can put 400 or 450w PSU because they are designed to provide more power and cool down PSU. So they will produce less heat. –  Guntis Jan 11 '13 at 7:59

4 Answers 4

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Here's what I'd do.

Get some large sheets of thin Lexan (or even foam board / corrugated plastic board - I know this as Correx, YMMV).

Punch some holes through it, and bolt it to the holes on the uprights. Build about a foot or more higher on the top, cut out a hole and then mount a 12v automotive radiator fan on the top. You'll also want to build in some air-path through the "rack". One way to encourage airflow up and across would be to block alternate shelf-sides, and then build out a "box channel" for it to flow through. Side view.

                           || Fan Out
            | +-+--------->++          |
   And Up   | ||                       |
            | ||                       |
            | ||                       |
            | <--+                    ||
               |                       || |
               |                       || |
               |   |           |       |+ |
               +---|Filter IN  |-------+--+
               |   |           |       |

Cut out a panel at the bottom, and mount in that hole a filter from a ducted AC unit..

The theory is that air will be drawn up from the bottom (where it's cooler), through the filter panel, up past the servers, and out the hole with the fan in, on the top.

Or just buy a few 2U rack server cases from somewhere like Xcase, and then get a second hand rack to put them in.

share|improve this answer
+1 For the ASCII diagram effort. –  Anonymous Jan 10 '13 at 15:08

Use real server cases with good cooling/ventilation paths.

share|improve this answer
+1. Exactly what I was going to write. There's a good reason real server cases have all of those plastic ducts - to direct airflow directly onto and away from the components that produce the most heat. –  EEAA Jan 7 '13 at 13:37
@TomTom Google started in an era before server hardware was the sort of commodity product it is now. Cargo cult "Google does this, so we can" thinking can be harmful. –  ceejayoz Jan 7 '13 at 15:15
"google does this" - yes but google does 'this' (whatever 'this' we're talking about, server hardware right now, sure, but other things too) because google have looked at their needs and come to that conclusion. They're not doing it because "altavista did this", and you shouldn't be doing it "because google does this". Now if you look at something google is doing and it makes sense for you too, then fill your boots. Otherwise... not so much. –  RobM Jan 7 '13 at 15:26
@TomTom OP does not appear to be doing anything like that. –  ceejayoz Jan 7 '13 at 18:35
that rack is holding 6U of stuff in 42U of space. Microsoft experimented with putting servers in a tent outdoors. That doesn't make it a good idea. –  Sirex Jan 7 '13 at 22:38

Honestly? Unless its in a very dirty or very hot place (ambient temperature of above 30c in the room), nothing.

Those computers aren't going to generate much heat and there is loads of room around them to dissipate the heat they do generate. Not nearly enough to worry about in any case.

share|improve this answer
And if you stand the boards on edge dust will be pretty much a non-issue, as it will tend to just fall down. –  John Gardeniers Jan 10 '13 at 9:09

Use mini-itx.

No heat. No dust. No noise. (almost) no electricity bills.

I've been running hadoop 8 nodes cluster for a month+.

The cluster is described here: http://www.pault.com/p/table-t

The cluster is used to datamine hadoop urls: http://hostedrobots.com/hadoop/

share|improve this answer
How about raspberry Pi? –  Tom O'Connor Jan 10 '13 at 15:45
Or soekris, yeah, right. No comparison. Raspberry Pi is an R&D toy. Mini-itx is different league, supported by intel and other big names. But then again, I think you were joking, right? –  PaulT Jan 11 '13 at 0:48
Er. Kinda.. Not really joking, more just idle ponderings. –  Tom O'Connor Jan 11 '13 at 10:13
Found this one for you then: serverfault.com/questions/405834/… –  PaulT Jan 11 '13 at 19:42

Your Answer


