The article specifically states itâ(TM)s not breathable oxygen. Why the clickbait?

I wrote MachDB for this exact purpose. Had a datacenter of a few hundred machines and needed to keep track of them in a better way than a wiki page. http://www.machdb.org./ It's automated on the back end and presents a web GUI.

Seriously? Why do they expect that line level workers shouldn't act like crooks when it's standard practice for executives? Step back from this article title and realize that crooked executives caused the recession and it makes perfect sense.

It cost us about $2500 for a refurbished 1.5 ton recirc unit in the ceiling adjacent to our 60 sqft server room (not above it). I had done some calculations to determine that it should be enough cooling to handle 3.5 racks of our 1U whiteboxes running a full tilt. You'd want to put it adjacent because they are full of water and past experiences of server-waterfalls have taught me not to have servers under AC units. :)

However, stop now. Don't do that. What we learned is that to do it right, you need a lot more than just some AC units. You need reliable power, internet, chillers, maintenance staff and building management. You need to be able to get an AC contractor that will be able to be on-call and respond to you within a few hours, even in the middle of the night or on the weekend. When it freezes up (they do it from time to time) and stops heating you have a situation to deal with and must implement emergency cooling measures until they arrive. Always a fun day. And that power and AC in an older (80's era) office building are not designed for mission critical support of high density servers. Room would get hot almost every weekend as the building owners conserved AC by turning off the chillers. Maintenance staff and building owners had no concepts of how to deal with our 'internet company' needs. Don't forget worrying about physical security too, don't want a rogue employee or maintenance staff getting into the server room and doing god knows what (plugging a vacuum/Flavia/heater into the wrong power outlet and blowing the circuit).

So we moved it all to a cage at a local datacenter and haven't looked back. Much better situation and a lot cheaper & easier.