[AusNOG] Airflow for Cisco switches in racks

[Mark Currie]

From the Cisco website....

Q.    Do the Cisco Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Series Switches support front to back airflow?
A.     The airflow on the Cisco Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Series is "front and sides" to back airflow.
Q.    Is the airflow reversible in the Cisco Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Series Switches?
A.     No. The airflow is not reversible.



-----Original Message-----
From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of John Edwards
Sent: Friday, 6 November 2015 4:36 PM
To: Radek Tkaczyk
Cc: AusNOG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Airflow for Cisco switches in racks

From the brainstorming-but-i-wouldnt-do-it-myself school of thought, could you flip the fans around to blow in the opposite direction?

If they then draw air in straight from a cold aisle, it seems unlikely that you're going to run afoul of some thermodynamic design issue unless you're running PoE or some other power hog.

The fine folk at the TAC may not agree with this solution, but then again it's probably not on their troubleshooting checklist either "customer changed the internal orientation of fans".

John




On 6 November 2015 at 13:19, Radek Tkaczyk <radek at tkaczyk.id.au> wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
>
>
> We always mount our network switches in our racks with the switches 
> facing the rear, so that when you cable up servers, you don’t have a 
> mess of network cabling going from the front of the rack to the back of the rack.
> This has worked well for us for the last 10 years or so, but recently 
> with providers like NextDC doing cold isle containment, this means 
> that switches are blowing hot air into the cold aisle, and some people 
> get unhappy with this.
>
>
>
> We use Cisco 3750 switches which are 1RU, and they blow hot air out 
> the back of the switches, some models have side-to-back airflow, but 
> it still results in hot air being sent into the cold aisle. I have 
> always thought that this amount of hot air was negligible, and 
> wouldn’t even matter in the overall scheme of things, as long as your servers were mounted around the right way.
>
>
>
> How are other people handling this situation? I’m not really keen on 
> changing our rack standards and having to re-do the entire cabling for 
> racks across the 4 of our data centres that are using cold isle containment!
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Radek Tkaczyk
>
> Ph: 0413 383 231
>
>
>
>
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> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
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>
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