Computer Room Air Conditioning

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Computer Room Air Conditioning

Computer room air conditioning and datacenter cooling is a major concern for datacenter building managers. Excessive heat and humidity can negatively affect the performance and life cycle of sensitive equipment. The optimal temperature for a computer room AC is 68 ° to 77 ° F. Maintaining that temperature when you are housing high-density computing clusters and other equipment can be a challenge.

Computer Room AC and Advances in Technology

An increase in the use of blade servers and virtual servers has dramatically increased the amount of power consumed and heat generated per rack. The amount of heat thrown off by a 2 ft by 2.5 ft rack is approximately 10 kilowatts. That is expected to increase by 4 or 5 times in the next few years. The rule of thumb has been that semiconductor performance doubles every 2 years leading to increased power usage and heat loads. A qualified facilities management team can help you design a computer room AC system that is scalable and can adapt to inevitable increases in cooling load requirements.

Data Center Cooling and ...
... Hot Spots

Hot Spots are just thatareas in a datacenters where temperatures exceed recommendations for optimal equipment performance. Hot spots are often caused not by lack of data center cooling but by poor air distribution. Vertical hot spots can occur when computer equipment at the bottom of a rack takes up all the cold air and equipment higher up on the rack draws hot air from near by servers.

Way to Improve Datacenter Cooling

Building managers can take a number of measures to improve datacenter cooling:

• Choose racks that use intelligent and space-efficient design
• Have an experienced facilities management team design a computer room air conditioning system that maximizes energy efficiency
• Employ an environmental monitoring system that enables you to monitor server room temperatures and address hot spots remotely in order to protect critical applications from failure