Cold / Hot Weather NAS

[Kelset]

Hello all,

 

Looking for some assistance with a NAS backup that I have been thinking about.

 

I live in rural MB Canada, and was thinking of running a 2nd NAS in one of the other buildings on my property as part of my backup plan.

 

The buildings are over 200 Ft from the house, so if something happened to the house the storage in the building would be safe.

The buildings have power, but no heating/cooling as they are storage for equipment and such.

I would be using a Ethernet over power solution for the network connection.

The biggest issue is the temperatures in my area, which can go from 45 C (113 F) High to  -45 C (-49 F) low

 

So I am looking for some sort of NAS solution that could support those outside temps while having 10+ TB of potential storage.

 

Any advise would be welcome, Thanks.

 

[Bersella AI]

Networking via power grids would not seem to be optimal, as the transferring rate is fairly limited compared to dedicated cables, and it is more likely to get interfered by fluctuations in the local power grid. Is there convenient to set up an optical connection between the house & your "another building"? Or, a wireless bridge between two locations? (Linus has actually made it working 3 years ago.)

 

Also, do not refer to outdoor temperature in considerations of cooling. It's actually room temperature that will affect electronics placed in a room, and that doesn't fluctuate as much as outdoors. I recorded the highest temperature of 34 C on first floor with up to 40 Celsius outside. You may wish to utilize a thermometer or a thermal sensor (such as Sensirion SHT series) in this room, and make sure this room is not getting too cold or too hot.

 

With light workload, even the hard drives, one of the most temperature-sensitive electronics, can survive in 36 Celsius of room temperature without airflow (recorded as high as 52 C), but insufficient cooling is still not recommended for them. You may need to utilize powerful, and if needed, quiet fans to cool them in hottest days. As alternatives, SSDs can sustain under further higher temperatures, and are recommended for extreme scenarios. For other components like processors or GPUs, temperature would not matter too much.

Hope these would be informative for you.

[Alex Atkin UK]

52 minutes ago, Kelset said:

Hello all,

 

Looking for some assistance with a NAS backup that I have been thinking about.

 

I live in rural MB Canada, and was thinking of running a 2nd NAS in one of the other buildings on my property as part of my backup plan.

 

The buildings are over 200 Ft from the house, so if something happened to the house the storage in the building would be safe.

The buildings have power, but no heating/cooling as they are storage for equipment and such.

I would be using a Ethernet over power solution for the network connection.

The biggest issue is the temperatures in my area, which can go from 45 C (113 F) High to  -45 C (-49 F) low

 

So I am looking for some sort of NAS solution that could support those outside temps while having 10+ TB of potential storage.

 

Any advise would be welcome, Thanks.

 

 

I don't think this is possible.  Just looking at Seagate IronWolf drives, they are only rated to operate at 5C lowest, and most electronics becomes unreliable below freezing.  The case fans themselves the bearings would likely freeze.  That's before you even consider condensation.

 

1 minute ago, Bersella AI said:

With light workload, even the hard drives, one of the most temperature-sensitive electronics, can survive in 36 Celsius of room temperature without airflow (recorded as high as 52 C), but insufficient cooling is still not recommended for them. You may need to utilize powerful, and if needed, quiet fans to cool them in hottest days. As alternatives, SSDs can sustain under further higher temperatures, and are recommended for extreme scenarios. For other components like processors or GPUs, temperature would not matter too much.

Hope these would be informative for you.

Indeed, heat is not likely the big problem here, its the extreme cold that will kill everything.

 

Although having equipment in a building people aren't in all the time, keeping it clean and critter free, insects would probably infest it too.

[Bersella AI]

7 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Indeed, heat is not likely the big problem here, its the extreme cold that will kill everything.

This should be not that terrible, as in such cold days, there will always be something, fire or heater, heating the rooms (or people would become frozen to death before electronics did), near which these electronics will survive. But yes, a heater will always be needed in such a room with or without someone living, adding up additional costs.

[ToboRobot]

Run fibre for a 200 ft run.  It's not expensive, and there is less risk frying electronics.

You can always build an insulated cabinet or rack to use the waste heat to keep things warm in winter.

[seanondemand]

All things considered… the time and expensive in building a functional enclosure (bugs, temperature) and running fibre (because power line will not give you the kind of speed you want for a NAS)… probably far outspends many years of cloud storage. 

[Blue4130]

10 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

This should be not that terrible, as in such cold days, there will always be something, fire or heater, heating the rooms (or people would become frozen to death before electronics did), near which these electronics will survive. But yes, a heater will always be needed in such a room with or without someone living, adding up additional costs.

You've never been to rural Canada I guess. I am from the next province to the left and our winters are similar. Out-buildings are not heated and often not insulated. It's easy for the indoor temp to drop to -20 or lower.

 

@Kelset Have you thought about squaring off a small cube of a room/cupboard and tossing a space heater in it for winter? Would not need much if it's basically a cabinet for the NAS.

[Kelset]

Thanks for the ideas.

 

Was considering a fibre run at a later date, the Ethernet over power was just a starting solution mostly to get things running and spread the budget out a bit.

This would not be a constantly running in use NAS,  this would have been a backup of my NAS in the house, so massive speed to start is not a huge issue after the initial setup, just differential backup once a week or something.

 

I will look at the cost of a small insulated cabinet, with small space heater/thermostat for the cold months, with possible cooling fans for the hot months.

 

I'm old school and not a huge fan of cloud storage - It's my data, and I want control of it, not leaving it for some other organization to manage it.

Right up there with when I purchase software, I dont want to 'lease' it till the organization changes its mind or some other shenanigans happen.

[Bersella AI]

9 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

You've never been to rural Canada I guess. I am from the next province to the left and our winters are similar. Out-buildings are not heated and often not insulated. It's easy for the indoor temp to drop to -20 or lower.

You're right, I'm living near the Tropic of Cancer and never went beyond latitudes higher than 30. I think though that there are still some workarounds that may protect the server from freezing. For example, an Arduino and a thermal sensor, both of which can sustain under -40 Celsius, can be utilized to monitor the room's temperature, and to proceed a shutdown on the server once temperature goes below zero. They can also be programmed to control a bunch of fans to blow more air in the hottest days.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Bersella AI said:

proceed a shutdown on the server once temperature goes below zero.

That would literally be for six months of the year. (I am not even joking)

[voyager_]

Im sure you could make it to work Cat6 can do up to 320ft but I would not do poe and fiber may be better. If you do run ethernet make sure to run a backup cable. If you can run a trench and bury conduit and add some pull strings for the future. If there is power connect the switch and computer to a ups. You will need an enclosure that can keep the system warm and clean. Cooling may be another issue though. If there is something like a closet that you can insulate and seal off from dirt and other junk you could add a small heater and small window ac. You may be able to find a unit to do both, heating you could do a space heater and keep it as low as possible but I don't trust space heaters just due to fire concerns.

[Bersella AI]

On 4/1/2024 at 5:42 PM, Blue4130 said:

That would literally be for six months of the year. (I am not even joking)

That sounds terrible... I would rather consider a cloud backup to avoid such extreme scenarios. An 1TB storage hosted by Backblaze costs $6 per month, no worries about weather anymore.

[LIGISTX]

Without reading all the previous posts….

 

The only way your drives will not cool themselves or have issues with potential CTE mismatches and thus suboptimal expansion and contraction in the sub freezing, is if they are SSD’s. I’d be pretty surprised if harddrives were able to deal with those sorts of temps for very long. I’d have much more faith in SSD’s.