We have a small server room and the humidity level inside the room is far from the ideal. We have been measuring it between 60% and 68% for 3 months. Ambient room humidity inside the building is about 50%.
Using dry mode of the air conditioner did not help to reduce the humidity. I heard that using a dehumidifier can cause static charge buildup in the room.
What are my options to solve this issue?
The layout of the server room is as follows:
Best Answer
That depends.
"Ideal" usually means 0%, as no water based corrosion will be possible at all. Of-the-shelf servers, switches and equipment usually does operate at ~65% relative humidity without any problem, when the temperature is high enough to prevent condesing.
From the HPE ProLiant Guides:
This is somewhat true; the static charge buildup is not directly caused by the dehumidifier, but by dry air (and moving parts inside your servers). It is very common in plastic industries, for example, to prevent electrostatic discharge with high humidity.
Constant air humidity can decisively contain static electricity environment. Above an air humidity of approx. 55%, the conductivity of the air is sufficient to discharge the electrical charge into the atmosphere - without causing any damage.
From your drawing, I conclude that your server room has about 20m³. To get that ~60% humidity out of the air, you can use electrical dehumidifiers or a chemical one. While the chemical one is usually good for one or two drying-sessions (around 3$ for ~500ml, good for 20m³), for long-term usage I would go for the electrical one. It's cheap, around 100$, and you can just get one from your local hardware store. Most "at home" devices are made for ~100m³ and will fill your needs (close the doors, windows and ceiling fans).
My personal opinion is, just leave it. A humidity level of 50-80% is very common in server rooms (of this size) and most of the usual equipment does not have any problem with it. Just keep a close eye on the temperature; you want to prevent condensing at all cost.