I am painfully reminded recently that many of our customers are not paying attention to the fact that they are now charged with the care and feeding of a brand new, not so little, server. For many of them, this is the first time they have ever had a server class PC under their care. After all the Airship DVR is indeed a server, a video server running 24 x 7 in most instances and as such really should be fed differently than a PC.
Feed it you ask, feed it what? Why clean air and clean power is the answer. That usually brings up another puzzled look. And I can sympathize with their confusion over my statement, so let me explain myself and stop being so cryptic.
Starting with clean air, your DVR needs to breathe. That is how it keeps cool and the electronic components stay happy. Most of the time people put these in a closet, down low to the ground or stuff them into a corner. They do it because they are big and they are loud and I can’t blame them. But the reason they are loud is they move a lot of air through them. In fact they move a lot more air through them than your typical computer. And you run them 24 x 7 so they never shut off which means they are always sucking in lots of air, and whatever else that is floating in that air.
So when those other things (dust-bunnies, dirt, sawdust, pollen, etc...) get trapped inside the DVR they impede the airflow which eventually makes the electronic components run hotter than they should which in turn leads to performance issues and eventually, component failures.
Of course this issue can be dealt with. Periodic maintenance, which includes cleaning, is always good and is exactly what the guys that run servers for a living have to do. If you don’t know how to take care of your DVR server then hire someone who does. It shouldn’t take them long and they won’t have to do it very often…unless the environment you have the DVR in is really bad. By really bad I mean dirty and dusty.
In that case you need to find another place to put it. If that isn’t possible then you need to find a way to keep its intake air clean. Filters work but they have to be changed and / or cleaned regularly or the airflow will become impeded which leads to the same performance issues as in the previous paragraph. Every once in a while you hear about someone who has had a fire or a sack of cement, flour, stone dust, take your pick broke open and made the environment hard to breathe. While all the employees left the area until it could get cleaned up don’t forget that the DVR kept right on breathing and is now full of whatever went into the air. Make sure to get it cleaned ASAP or it will affect its life. Take care of the air it breathes and it should give you years of good uninterrupted service, that is unless it gets fed bad power.
Power problems are one of the most common causes of problems for any computer. Power problems usually come in one of 2 general varieties, Power Outages and Power Surges.
Let’s talk about power outages first. When the power goes out, the computer or DVR is right in the middle of working. If you are lucky, when the power comes back on your computer will wake up and start its day all over again. But usually that isn’t the answer. A DVR is a computer working hard all the time, or at least most of the time. It is writing to files and using services all the time. As we have all experienced, when you “shut down” a computer the right way it takes a while for the computer to do so. What it is doing is being a good computer and putting all its tools and services away and writing little notes to itself so it can remember to take up right where it left off. When it experiences a Power Outage it can’t “put everything away” and often something won’t work correctly when it reboots. Sometimes it loses track of something really important and won’t work correctly at all. Then we get to reload the OS because it is hopelessly lost. Of course nobody want to do that because it usually means you have to load a bunch more stuff that is necessary to make it run like it did before…if you can find it.
But the answer to the Power outage problem is usually pretty simple, get a UPS. These little devices usually do a pretty good job of keeping everything running until you can shut them down safely. Many of them can even tell your computer when they are going to run out of power and ask the computer to shut down without you having to be there. All in all a very good thing and a simple fix. Of course they are electronics too and you need to keep them happy and healthy. Which especially means keeping both of them away from Power Surges.
Power Surges are just what they sound like, too much electricity in the wrong place. Surges can come at a piece of electronics through a number of different directions, none of them good. The case can get charged, the wrong line can get energized or too much power can come in the right way. All in all there is no good way to experience a power surge. So you MUST protect your equipment from it.
Get a Surge Protector!! Do it now!!
It should be the first thing that plugs into the wall and the UPS comes next then the DVR. The Surge Protector is cheap insurance and you cannot afford to be without one. There are companies like Brick Wall which make the most amazing surge protectors, but they can cost as much as a UPS. I think they are worth it but they don’t fit into everyone’s budget. But everyone can afford a basic Surge Protector with MOV elements. Be sure and get one which protects the Hot, Neutral, and the Ground wires. Like I said you don’t know how the Power Surge will arrive, but you don’t want it to get to your equipment.
One thing you need to know about the Basic Surge Protectors with MOV elements is that they die. The next thing you need to know is that they are supposed to. Much better a $20.00 Surge Protector dies than an expensive DVR. Buy them in pairs and put the other one where you can find it. When the first one dies and you replace it with your spare, go buy another spare. Yes, it is a pain to keep replacing these but it is much better to replace these than it is to replace a DVR.
Now about that painful reminder I mentioned at the beginning. It is painful because it is about current Power problems we are dealing with for a couple of our customers. One is suffering from too many Power outages and has to reload his OS and Programs. He didn’t have a UPS. The other, because he is in the land of dirty power, experienced a Power Surge that took out his UPS and the memory on the DVR. He didn’t have a Surge Protector. Protect yourself with both a UPS and a Surge Protector, with the UPS into the Surge Protector and the DVR into the UPS. You’ll thank me when that Surge Protector blows and you have to replace it. Because if you weren’t replacing it, you might be replacing your DVR.
Doug O
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