I live in Montreal, where the temperature oscillates between a max of 27 celsius in summer and a min of -27 celsius in winter. I am currently in the process of purchasing a cheap decommissioned 2U server with enough cores and RAM for computational scientific work, and I need to find a place for it. It came to my mind that with a waterproof outdoor rack putting the server in the balcony may actually be a possibility!
I have heard many debates about the optimal operating temperature of rack servers (21-27), but most discussions focus on the cost of air conditioning. What if we can keep the temperatures naturally low? What are the consequences of such a treatment? And what about the humidity tolerances of the servers? How much humidity is too much?