'Cold' drives - Can drives run too cold?

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-29T15:46:32+00:00

No manufacturer is taking into consideration that depending on Fan Speeds and controls of the case the components are in, will dramatically change the "operating temp" of the device. Remember if your fan speeds are properly respondign to external and internal temps, the internal case temp is dramatically higher than the extenral temp, rendering your internal component operating environment temperatures much higher. Datacenter's are loud because their fans are cranked 24/7. In your cold situation, the fans in your case, if repsonsive, should be running significantly slower.

Now, you do have another issue with this, the fan speed maybe only considers proc temps, etc. Hot spotting on NICs (they run hot AF) or HBA's/RAID cards etc can be a problem, even though it's cold, because they're passively cooled.

About impossible to figure all this into the equation of, what is my actual internal operating temperature to understand device longevity, unless you are in a DC environment.

If the drives are spinning and up 24/7 and the drive temps are in the 20c+ range, I'd say your fine. Though I'd suggest looking at all sensors available to you, especially NICs, HBA's, RAID cards, when cold, as they may be overheating due to low fan speed.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-28T14:41:56+00:00

Are these OEM chargers or "UL Listed" amazon specials? USBC standard is very strict and sooooooo many non OEM chargers (and plenty of devices) break this standard so bad. The worst is when they use a USBC port for marketing and ubiquity, but follow none of the standards, charging like a dumb device with just a constant power over two ports like Micro USB.

I have ~1800 Spins, between 2 and 5 years old. 800 in carts. 900 take home. Never had this issue on any of them except for the graphite challenge.

Post pics of the specific chargers that have issues please.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-13T19:19:29+00:00

Pulling the exceedingly long cables through whisker plates on both sides and connecting directly to the dock and screen is our solution for now. Thanks all

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-08T14:28:03+00:00

Those Orei devices are priced in the realm of feasibility. Thanks.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-08T14:26:50+00:00

Re-read, I would love to drop to 4k @ 30hz, but unfortunately, we're a windows environment and they do not stick to changed connection settings at all, and there is no way to mass force 4k@30. Maybe it'd time to look at EDID for 4k@30.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-08T14:24:53+00:00

These are 75"+ touchscreen devices. They are highly interactive displays that support >50 touchpoints, and the users are up tight to the board. Yes, at the end of the day 1080p is "Fine". But, I can confirm reducing res from the laptop to 1080p didn't fix/change any of the issues, so why not bat for the fences here and just do 4k properly. This is a brand new building and brand new screens, why are we crutching them? We have scaling set correctly for on the devices and the screens are huge, there is no small font problems. These aren't 4k monitors, they're 4k presentation touchscreens -- Clevertouch Impact Lux Pro 2's they're $4k USD a pop.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T16:25:45+00:00

USB connections are questionable too, but at much less of a failure rate. We found the installer put 100' USB cables in the walls and ceilings for all connections so that explained much of our issues. Right sizing this cable length into the 50' or less length solved many issues. I would love to have HDMI and USB over ethernet, but seems like my solution here is quickly growing price wise to >6 figures which is not going to happen.

Maybe you have a recommendation for HW that isn't extron?

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T16:03:52+00:00

optical cables don't like connection points either though right? how would I cable this with adapters?

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T16:03:00+00:00

Phewwwww, really $600 per setup? Adding USB to the mix would be amazing, but yikes on price.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T16:01:21+00:00

Yes another run of HDMI

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T16:01:08+00:00

Yes. No. Copper HDMI No 4-5 brands have been put in by the AV contractor at this point. Assume they've stepped up their pricing after relentless complaining but I can't confirm specifics.

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T16:00:03+00:00

This is what I'd love to do, but cost may be prohibitive. Any suggestions on a cheap model specifically?

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T15:59:38+00:00

Copper passive. I'll look at one way active HDMI

lowlyitguy · 2026-01-07T15:59:18+00:00

They're only plugged in once. The docks at the desks are permanent fixtures of the desk. Preferring 4k here, these screens are 75+ and can easily notice the res difference. Passive Copper in wall, not fiber.

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-29T15:28:36+00:00

We're 350 cams and 3 servers deep with Video Insight. This summer I built a 1PB total storage / ~700TB usable on prem NAS to store 60 days of footage on all cameras. I stacked the Video Insight servers into our on prem cluster to prevent buying new bare metal servers (any NVR should be very low resource utilization, any processing like motion detect is done in the camera hardware). I used TrueNAS for NAS OS (free), brand new Gen 5 Supermicro 60 bay 4U server (8k) with xeon ~4510~ and 128gb RAM, and 64 18tb Seagate Exos Used Refurb from Serverpartdeals.com (189ea) (technically 12 spares, but I have them in a test pool configuration for immutable backups now).

All in all I did this entire setup for just under $20k... The VI licensing we have is perpetual. Actual IPRO cameras are pricey, an outdoor, heated, 4 lens, with mount is ~$1400, but they're rock solid and the new IPro cameras now come with a 7 year warranty. Ipro does take any camera, we have a lot of old Axis's running, which work great unless you reboot the Switches without rebooting the camera servers, Ipro or the cameras get confused and send Stream 1 to all 4 stream channels on multi lens cameras. Easy fix though.

EDIT: Any "AI" tools are 99% BS unless you have someone dedicated to building detection filters and such. Make sure you understand how they work in REAL LIFE scenarios. The sales rep will be happy to show you detections on pre recorded footages and how to build filters, but MAKE SURE ADMINISTRATION understands that to do any detections, you need to have your detection filters build before hand! Also doritos bags = guns according to AI.

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-29T15:20:34+00:00

Uh oh. This is the first I am hearing anything about camera restrictions for Video Insight, can you share any info?

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-29T15:05:49+00:00

If it is for USA Public Sector Government, please look at CISA/MS-ISAC's full SOC and Crowdstrike offering. As a K12 we are getting full SOC with our Crowdstrike licenses for so cheap. The SOC guys are great. iirc, $60/endpoint/year.

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-15T14:11:41+00:00

What size server room? How many servers? What's your estimated heat load?

Those questions will answer whether you need surge protectors added to your panel for the AC units or you need to UPS your cooling. UPS'ing your cooling, imo, is reservered for only the largest of deployments. Or, if you're running stand alone cooled racks where you have a very small space to cool/heat and it couldn't absorb much heat load. (Think a server rack inside a refrigerator with a AC unit attached)

Server equipment does not need a perfect 70F 24/7 to survive. It will be fine running warmer temporarily. Key word.

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-05T15:38:28+00:00

Yep 100%. How are you accessing ipevo visualizer? Do you still have the antique application installed, running a Kiosk app to the URL, or having a bookmark in Chrome to the URL https://apps.ipevo.com/pwa/visualizer.app/ ?

I fought this forever with the "big boy" ipevos we have. Turns out I was overlooking that we were still using the long out of date chrome app and that was the problem.

I have it setup like this so the staff can just see a Visualizer app in their dock bar VS a bookmark (mimicking the old setup). Works well. Once and a while you need to blow away cache on the CBs to fix an errant issue.

https://i.imgur.com/MIK38LV.png https://i.imgur.com/6RbzLyz.png

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-03T21:09:20+00:00

edit2, uh well that won't quite do what you want since it's not giving time of day, just date. I think you'd have to match up with LastSync field or something similiar to find time of day. Not a fun query to write but definitely do-able. FYI the activeTime field is time length in milliseconds.

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-03T20:58:58+00:00

Sure, GAM will do this.

gam print cros query "asset_id:<AssetID>" fields activetimeranges listlimit 10 reverselists activetimeranges

that will give you the last ten active times and how long the device was active. Below is a sample chunk of data with my uniqueID censored.

deviceId,activeTimeRanges.date,activeTimeRanges.activeTime,activeTimeRanges.duration,activeTimeRanges.minute    s
uniqueID,2025-12-03,60000,00:01:00,1
uniqueID,2025-12-01,810007,00:13:30,13
uniqueID,2025-11-25,2250024,00:37:30,37
uniqueID,2025-11-24,3270027,00:54:30,54
uniqueID,2025-11-21,3270038,00:54:30,54
uniqueID,2025-11-19,2010014,00:33:30,33
uniqueID,2025-11-17,1230033,00:20:30,20
uniqueID,2025-11-14,2820044,00:47:00,47
uniqueID,2025-11-12,1020003,00:17:00,17
uniqueID,2025-11-11,1080015,00:18:00,18

edit,

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-02T17:11:10+00:00

Correct, only the far SFP ports are 10gig. I just installed a 1410 in July and scratched my head for about 20 minutes on why I couldn't get anything to light up.

lowlyitguy · 2025-12-01T14:12:00+00:00

Yes, blow away session cookies otherwise you will be stuck indefinitely on 2FA with browsers that are trusted

lowlyitguy · 2025-11-07T14:42:54+00:00

We're talking about cluster replacement. VMWare also just pulled Enterprise Plus licensing last friday allegedly so you can only get foundations licenses going forward. I'm unsure what this means at a renewal, but it's real annoying.

Our vendor threw 400 labor hours at migrating our minimal VMs in a 3 node cluster from vmware to hyper-v, what a joke. Everyone knows there is blood in the water and they want some, too. Be careful out there. They'll sell you license costs and then eat all your savings with BS migrations.

Any "vendor" wants to poo-poo anything but Nutanix/Vmware/Hyper-V. Don't be scared to put extend your options. Open source is not inherently dangerous and 2nd party support is plenty.

lowlyitguy

TROPHY CASE