Technically speaking, it needs to be 158°F for a raw egg to become firm. The summer heat doesn't get that hot, but outdoor objects like sidewalks and car hoods that come in contact with it can. Thus the phrase, "It's so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalk!" When it's hot outside, you need to keep your server units cool inside.

On really hot days, your office building's air conditioning unit may not cut it. Sure, it may pump enough cool air to keep you and your coworkers comfortable, as long as everyone is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, but your company's server units are a different story (Hawaiian shirts covering a server would only exacerbate the problem). On the days when the building's AC is barely cutting it for the people, the AC is likely failing to properly cool your technology.

This is due to the fact that a server unit is a heat source in and of itself, meaning that a room full of servers needs additional cooling. Without extra efforts made to keep your servers cool, they will be in danger of overheating, which can cause serious downtime from data loss and even broken hardware components. Therefore, if your server room is tied to the same AC unit that's keeping your office cool, then an uncomfortably-warm day at the office may translate to dangerous heat levels for your server units.

These broiler-like summer days may require you to take extra precautions in order to give your building's poor AC some backup. One easy and economical solution to cool off your server room is to use a portable cooling unit. With a portable cooling unit, all you have to do is plug it in and point it towards the area you want cooled. A portable cooling solution like this will offset the heat being pumped out by your server units, allowing you to set your building's thermostat a few degrees warmer and save you money on cooling.

Running a portable cooling unit in your server room will also save your business money by allowing you to only run your building's AC during the parts of the day and week when the building is in use. For example, if your server room depends on your building's AC for cooling, you will have to keep the AC on at all times, even when the building isn't in use, just to keep one room cool. The savings you will experience from only having to run the AC during the workday will add up big time!

How much saving are we talking here? In an interview with Processor magazine, vice president of Atlas Sales & Rentals claims that, "A portable air-conditioning unit used in a permanent server room application typically costs only 20 to 30% as much as a non-portable system of similar capacity, while still performing the required function."

In the battle against the summer heat, you'll want to enlist all the help you can get. Network Synergy can help streamline your IT infrastructure with technology solutions that will bring down the costs of doing business, as well as the temperature, in order to bring up your profits! Contact us today at (203) 261-2201 to put downtime on ice!