Tech chat - an occasional blog about stuff I find interesting
Discussions and thoughts around (but not limited to) technology/IT as seen by a sometimes dyspeptic but still relatively engaged hack
Wednesday 18 June 2008, 11:59 AM
A new threat from the datacentre: you're making your staff deaf!
We're talking risk of deafness.
The threat is the sheer noise building up in busy server rooms, as they crank up the volume to cope with all the heat they need to dissipate. Think about it: with their tiny processor fans, how hard do those little machines have to sweat to cope?
The law says the minimum above which danger to hearing can occur is 80 decibels on a daily/weekly exposure - that's about as loud a sound as loud singing from 3 feet away or a noisy car driving by as close as 25 feet from you.
I'd say in my experience we are easily meeting that level in busy server farms!
FYI, according to the government (http://www.hse.gov.uk/noise/), the latest iteration of legislation around noise hazards in the workplace specifically state, 'By law, as an employer, you must assess and identify measures to eliminate or reduce risks from exposure to noise so that you can protect the hearing of your employees'.
Another argument for consolidation/virtualisation/green IT, I'd say.
PreviousComments on this post
Why not try noise cancellation?
The ambient sound of the fans/ drives etc is most probably constant and therefore an opposite wave could potentially be generated.
thinkfeeldo
Interesting idea but I don't as yet know the physics of this - and am not sure anyone (e.g. a supplier, an analyst house) has researched this yet. Watch this space, I shall investigate.
Interesting!!
If this was was picked up by health and safety, people would be forced to wear ear plugs.
regards roger
I am beginning to think this is one of the great unknown dangers of IT, Roger, and worth further research - what do you think?
Well....it is surprising that this is happening anywhere in the IT industry. I work in engineering at the moment and I will say that the directors and managers (as far as i' m aware) in this field know the trouble they could get into! As a result ear defenders have to be provided, when any heavy machinery is used....
.....So yes I do think further research is necessary, and hope the whistle gets blown on this. It make me shudder to think of the misery that could be caused latter on in peoples lives .
As the law stands at the moment, we, re talking about fines in the region of tens of thousands of pounds and job losses at some very high levels, not to mention compensation for any instances of ringing in the ears and deafness!!
Sound cancellation would be tricky when dealing with multiple and speed varying fans...because the frequencies would be all over the place. As far as i' m aware sound cancellation is in a very early and basic stage, but I do expect we will get there one day.
Liquid cooling is a viable option. another idea of my own would be to have pipes attached to the outside and the fans placed at wall level, much like boilers have in domestic houses, and just pipe out the warm air or even recycle it into heating systems
regards roger
Great comment Roger, couple of things back:
But isn't cooling part of the bloomin' problem? I keep being told datacentre managers are all for sensible redesign of the spaces, with hot and cold rows and better underfloor ventilation and what have you, but isn't this a bit like insulating your house - yes, great idea, I'll get round to it some day, tun up the thermo love I can't be bothered to go and get a jumper?
Or is that me just being exasperated... You don't have to be Al Gore (or even Leonardo Dicaprio!) to know we have to do something soon on the green thing, and IT is rapidly being identified as a big part of the problem here. Pop quiz: can you tell me the single biggest consuming organisation of electric power in the UK? BT!
So yes, new heating and plumbing is part of it - noise cancellation another - but I suspect it'll be a constellation of tecnonologies and solutions that will fix this and other related environmental impacts of servers in one go.
....Yes I know what you mean.
The cooling thing, hmmm....so it seems we may be dealing with complacency here, again the legislation is all there concerning the noise levels, the law just needs to get a move on or at least pointing in the right direction. It is sad about the IT and energy consumption problem, but there is so much that could be done! How many directors/shareholder cartels will end up kicking themselves when the costs of energy become prohibitive or the source becomes highly unreliable, energy self sufficiency of some kind will become essential.
As for the cooling thing I must admit, I m a little stuck on this one.
Again, good comments Roger - I think these elements are the main ones in IT, going forward!
Thank you Gary
Something has just occurred to me about the cooling theme. Maybe there is a way to convert this heat into light before it gets too hot, then perhaps this light could be focused through a magnifier of some kind and ejected from the system, or even recycled to the monitor ports, what do you think? A little far fetched perhaps?
In cold climates the processors in server farms could be exposed to the elements, water proofed of course!
Again I do wonder how we could get round the management problem.
sometimes I despair at the raw talent that i ve seen held back by insecure managers! In our firm, the management told us that we don t talk to the directors, we go through them (the managers).when I did phone a director in london, he was only too happy to talk to me, was really nice and wanted to hear what I had to say. I fear this is a common pattern in many work places. Maybe this is a topic for another discussion.
In my experience of the HSE, the bark is louder than its bite.
I managed to find an report which ran roughly as follows:over 1 year of 600 cases, only 10% of cases were taken to court. Of those only half received sucessful prosecutions due to technicalities. And of those that were sucessfully prosecuted only half received actual fines. The others were just given a written warning not to do it again.
So from 600 cases only 7 received fines with no jail sentences or suspended sentences.
Mark Thomas the british political activist (ex Channel 4 etc) was trying to make a case for stiffer penalties like jail sentence for execs who have effectivly killed their employees through negligence, and I believe he is still battling on.
Then the government went and cut another 300 jobs from the HSE about 6 months ago on top of that.
My that is quite depressing really.
No probs,
welcome to the club
or maybe try and support mark thomas et al in move things forward.
One of the key factors in this is the EU who are getting through legislation to have more protection for employees.They already have the 35hour week. The UK is faltering due to their obsession with remaining globally competitive..... and basically I dont think China has a HSE department.
The UK is already getting exemptions from the EU employee protection laws. The key thing is just to pressure our goverment to remove these exemptions.(where applicable)
I am not a big fan of Europe, its just that the law in this country is pretty behind in general. EG big stars like Tom cruise come over here to sue the press for libel rather than anywhere else in the world because they cant get it to stick anywhere else.
The harder (but slightly better) slog is to change the UK law directly
China has no HSE department! Well said, Matt.
I think the issue here is to do the research (I am looking into this btw) on how widespread this danger is - and then shame managers into doing something about it. What do you guys think?
This comment has been deleted at the users request
Guys,
I think you may find noise cancellation has moved a little beyond the basic stage. Even so, I think Roger's comment about the different frequencies may be incorrect as the cancellation algorithm would focus on the total sum of the frequencies produced which would, for the most part, be within a similar frequency range. I also don't see a problem with suggesting data centre operators provide noise cancellation headphones either.
TFD
Of course headphones, an ideal solution, they do work extremely well,
I can vouch for that....
Thanks for the pointer on sound frequencies ...this is something I am guilty of theorising about, It makes total sense that the frequencies would almost become one.
Rog
Active noise cancellation works by emitting a waveform from a speaker that should cancel out the sounds coming into the vicinity of the ears. The problem is that it has to be as loud as the sound would be at the ear itself, just inverted in phase. Any discrepancies in sound frequency, phase or volume will come out at least in part as a low frequency noise below human perception. So the first task is to block enough sound out so that the drivers for the speakers in the earcups can handle the rest of what gets through the headset. The problem is that your ears will still get pummeled some by sound and the full around the earlobe types of headsets cause your ears to sweat.
A cheaper solution is to buy a shooter's headset. It doesn't require batteries but it will protect your ears.
A much cheaper solution is to just provide those annoying foam ear-inserts. I get mine from a local home improvements store, 180 pairs at a time, much cheaper than a local drugstore. That's likely what the managers will do long before you get a company purchased set of noise canceling headphones.
Schedule an appointment with an audiologist after asking HR for an insurance supported practitioner referral. Start wearing ear plugs at work and let the bosses ask you why and then tell them. They'll get the point pretty quickly if they care at all. Especially when you have them follow you out of the server room a few times to talk to them, instead of shouting over the server noise!
I wear the foam ones when I have to work on oil rigs all the time I'm there. I also wear them in the office to shutout the phone and the PA announcements and pages, helps a lot with my software!
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