Malone G29 Server Room

The Computer Science Department has a server room in Malone Hall Room G29. This page is for CS faculty/researchers who have already been allocated space in that room or want to request space in the room. It also describes how to make the best use of your space allocation.

Please read the below sections first. Then, if you would like your server hosted in our server room or have questions that are not answered here or need to make arrangements with us if you've been allocated space in the server room, please email us at support@cs.jhu.edu.

Services Provided (and Not Provided) by CS IT Staff

Things We Will Do for You

CS IT will:

• Provide you and your designees J-Card access to the room
• Provide you up to two 1-gigabit network connections for your rack
• Provide you access to the floor power
• Add you to a Malone server room mailing list for server room-related announcements, etc.
  • (However, you should continue to check the CS IT Support Wiki Notices page if you experience issues such as network, etc. that could be affecting your systems in the server room.)

Things You Will Need to Do Yourself

CS IT will not:

• Install your systems on your rack
• Make network or power connections to your systems on your rack
• Administer your systems

NOTE: CS IT Support does not administer research systems. Please see our Scope Of Services and Research Computing pages for more details.

Physical Space

Each rack is labeled with a letter and number. If we assign you a rack, we will provide you the rack letter/number combo.

NOTE: Previously racks were labeled for the faculty member responsible for the equipment in that rack. As of 2024, racks are being converted to shared racks, shared by faculty members/researchers.

Airflow/Cooling

The server room is set up in a "hot aisle/cold aisle" configuration. The front of each rack, which is the end with the single, wider door, faces a "cold aisle". The cold aisles are also marked by perforations in the floor tiles. Cold air from the air conditioning units enters the aisles through these perforations. The back of each rack faces a "hot aisle", which does not have perforated floor tiles.

When installing equipment in your rack, you should orient the equipment so that the fans pull air in from the cold aisle and exhaust air out to the hot aisle. This ensures good cooling efficiency for the entire room. Equipment installed backwards may overheat and may cause adjacent equipment to also overheat.

Networking

We can provide up to two network connections to each rack. You will need to email us to request the connections. If you will be using CS Department IP addresses, you will also need to follow our procedure for requesting a static IP address.

If you will have more than two devices connected to the network on your rack, you will need to procure your own network switch (or switches) and install it (or them) in your rack.

Our network connections are 1-gigabit ethernet running over RJ-45 terminated copper cables. If you need other accommodations, please contact us and we'll see what arrangements we can make.

Access to the Server Room

Server room access is controlled by J-Card. In order to grant someone access, the faculty owner of the rack space should email us and request it. The request needs to contain the name and JHED ID of the person who should be granted access, as well as an estimate of how long you expect the person to be using the room.

Other Notes

The server room is fairly loud. If you want to use ear protection while you're working there, you can use one of the headsets that are hanging on the wall all the way to the right after you enter the room. Please return the headsets to their hangers when you're done with them.

Please turn the server room lights off when you're done in the room.