Here’s one you don’t hear about every day: A massive air-conditioning failure at a Florida office complex in Tallahassee is threatening to disrupt state government computer traffic statewide today. A least 11 buildings have lost air-conditioning so far because a chiller plant at the Capital Circle Office Complex in Tallahassee began leaking Monday night, according to a Pensacola News journal story. The lack of cool air threatens to overheat the government’s servers, and officials are warning that the state’s main Web page will be out of service periodically throughout the day. The state Emergency Operations Center is also located at the complex, but its functions will not be interrupted, the story said.
The campus of government buildings southwest of the Capitol is home to 4,500 state workers in various agencies, including the Division of Emergency Management, the Department of Management Services, the Department of Health, and the Department of Community Affairs. While it wasn’t clear what servers Florida’s government is using, the notion that they could easily overheat points up an industry issue that has gained lots of attention in recent months. A recent study from Forrester Research said management of heat in data centers has become a major challenge as data centers grow larger. Those data centers produce tremendous amounts of heat. “The problems associated with data center heat and power management have come roaring back over the past two years, thanks to complex interactions between multiple factors, ranging from chip technology to data center design,” the report states. “A combination of rising processing requirements, potentially increased demand for rapid scaling of processing capacity, energy costs, and the politics of conservation have also driven power and cooling onto IT’s priority list.” Apparently not in Florida though.
