Choosing a server for the Antarctic station: will the temperature regime pull?

Question

Iron

The question arose about choosing a server for the neutron monitor at the Antarctic station.

Requirements:
Operating temperature from zero degrees Celsius and above.
Low power consumption.
Reliability, of course.
Super performance is not needed.

I settled on a Supermicro SuperServer 5017A-EP or something similar on the Atom.
The declared operating temperature range is from +10 C to +35 C.

The main question now is: how will the server behave at a temperature near zero? Is it possible to improve reliability at low temperatures? So far, it has only occurred to me to replace magnetic hard drives with SSDs, but I also have questions about them.

I would be glad for any practical advice! If there are alternative computers - offer!

PS Additional question: Are magnetic disks or SSDs a more reliable solution for long-term storage of information at a temperature of +0 - +10 C? The added data volumes are small (tens of megabytes per day). RAID 1 is planned.

Answer 1

look towards industrial PCs operating in an extended temperature range.
for example, in the PC / 104 form factor
, there is also an atom, and there are also more powerful processors.

Answer 2

Here on Habré there was somewhere an article about the operation of the Rasperry Pi in extreme cold conditions.
Of the pluses - cheapness and simple replacement (took out the SD from one, inserted it into another - it started)

Answer 3

And what prevents you from installing a computer in a sealed chamber with heating?
This is the surest and cheapest way to increase reliability by compensating for temperature differences inside the electronics.
Well, it’s not worth talking about any reliability in the case of atoms, unless it’s an atom in a radiation-resistant package for military use.
And at least ECC memory should be used in such conditions.

Answer 4

There is such a device:
OutdoorBox_1
OutdoorBox_2
OutdoorBox_3

Answer 5

If you need super reliability, you should foresee a banal server failure and look towards a failover cluster, with at least 2 nodes and 1 storage system. In addition, Windows Server 2012 has some very tasty goodies and fault tolerance has become even more fault-tolerant :)

Answer 6

It is proposed to consider a thermal case (industrial) with bipolar plates on the Peltier effect. Basically solve the problem with condensate. The optimal price of the complex. Electronics at low temperatures throws out different tricks from high-voltage breakdowns between tracks to cracks in tracks. I need a climate controller - I'll tell you.