Walked into a client's server room last Tuesday, found 14 years of dust and one working fan

I did a site survey for a small law firm in Akron and their server room had no airflow at all. The IT guy they had before me never cleaned the filters, and the ambient temp was sitting at 91 degrees when I walked in. My first thought was to either push them toward a proper cooling setup or just tell them to outsource to a colo, but the senior partner was dead set against spending anything over $500. So which way do you lean when you see neglect like that, do you fix the immediate issue or try to convince them to change the whole setup? Has anyone else dealt with a place that just refuses to pay for basic maintenance?

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scott.drew14d ago

Had an office once where the AC died and nobody noticed until the backup tape melted into a sad little puddle, so I get it. Sometimes you just have to clean the fan and hope for the best before your own hardware gives up the ghost.