NAS Recomendation Needed for Hot Climate

[buellwinkle 0]

We are in a warm climate in So Cal and some days, like yesterday, the temps soared to 90F (yes, in November) and that seems to kill our NAS. We have a fairly large NEMA enclosure (like 3' square, 1' deep) with other stuff like router, PoE switch, access control board and an exhaust fan. It's a Buffalo desktop NAS. We used to have an OpenEye NVR in there, but the heat killed that puppy also. Or it could be just a bad NAS. At another location, the NAS is in an equipment room, no A/C, no fan but not problems there, not subject to the same heat transfer as a metal enclosure.

 

Any ideas? And before you say this was a bad idea, I told them so months ago before this project started, nobody believed me, now they do

[voip-ninja 0]

Most of the NAS units designed for SMB (not just consumer) use have higher operating tolerances. Synology says ambient temp can be up to 95 Fahrenheit on their newer gear.

 

However, higher temps are going to shorten the life of any electronics.

[buellwinkle 0]

95 is too low, I need 110-140F. The highest temp NAS I saw was from QNAP and Netgear ReadyNAS and they were 40C which is 104F, which is fine if it's outside, but inside a cabinet it will get hotter. All the other brands seem to be 35C which is 95F and ambient temps of over 100F can occur a few times a year.

[Kawboy12R 0]

Better ventilation or targeted AC if they don't want to cool the whole place. Maybe a heat pump to cool that area at the expense of another if it is away from an outside wall? Call an HVAC guy and see what he recommends. Get him to quote you while he's there.

[buellwinkle 0]

It's a NEMA enclosure mounted to the back of a monument wall for a gated entrance. It already has a fan, albeit a noisy fan so maybe it's on it's last legs. The NAS has it's own fan. I think we need some tiny a/c that sits inside the enclosure.

[Kawboy12R 0]

Gotcha now. I've got no experience with mini AC units, etc for inside the enclosure, but if that box gets any direct sun then an insulated shell with holes for ventilation will make a big difference on sunny days. If it wouldn't be too ugly, then maybe a small window AC unit mounted on the shell would be even better.

[Peter_ 2]

Maybe something from this company? http://www.iceqube.com/

[buellwinkle 0]

That looks interesting. They will replace the NAS tomorrow but I think it will die again come summer. I keep hoping I can find someone that really knows wireless and can setup a link between the gates and our park building. It's a tough nut to crack because everyone that comes out takes a look at our terrain and runs. It's really not that bad and to go 800', I can't imagine they can't make it work.

[thewireguys 3]

I have done a fair share of wireless. What are the gps coordinates of the Station and AP?

[buellwinkle 0]

The gate is at Lat: 33.553269 Lon: -117.683530. The building is at La: 33.550952, Lon: -117.686410. There's a tennis court where we have ethernet to from the building for access control that's about 200' closer and more importantly, sits atop the fence which is about 12' high and the light fixtures where an antenna can be mounted are higher, maybe 15-20' if that helps at Lat: 33.551570, Lon: -117.685992. At the gate we can mount an antenna atop a light pole.

[voip-ninja 0]

I don't think you're going to find much that works at 140F. The company that I work for builds enterprise grade data and telephony gear, and provides system to DOD among others, and we don't have anything that reliably operates at 140F.

[buellwinkle 0]

That's why I'm trying to get a wireless bridge back to a better location, the problem is getting people locally that know what they are doing.

[MaxIcon 0]

You could try a Peltier cooler. These used to be popular for CPU cooling, and were still used in small car refrigerators 10 years or so ago. They're a bit current hungry and not super efficient, but the ones I used to use would frost up in seconds when they were unmounted from the CPU.

 

Looks like you can get them up to a couple of hundred watts on ebay.

[thewireguys 3]

How much bandwidth do you have going from your cameras to the NAS

[buellwinkle 0]

7 Mobotix D14 (3MP) at 30FPS. The cameras don't send video to the NAS unless it's recording an event but it's buffered not continous. The only thing would be if one was to look at live video from all 7 camera at full resolution at once, but likely use the second stream which may be VGA resolution but really they haven't live viewed any of the cameras in 3 years other than to check their operation. So in a perfect world, probably 8Mbps * 7, but probably not that much will be needed. My thoughts were to use a Ubiquiti Rocket M900, but nobody around here wants to touch Ubiquiti, it's like the way we feel about Foscam, haha.