Unused vertical space in open frame racks and rack enclosures creates an unrestricted recycling of hot air that causes equipment to heat up unnecessarily. The use of airflow management blanking panels can reduce this problem. This paper explains and quantifies the effects of airflow management blanking panels on cooling system performance.
Rack power of 10 kW per rack or more can result from the deployment of high density information technology equipment such as blade servers. This creates difficult cooling challenges in a data center environment where the industry average rack power consumption is under 2 kW. Five strategies for deploying ultra-high power racks are described, covering
The physical and power infrastructure of data centers and network rooms is typically oversized by more than 100%. Statistics related to oversizing are presented. The costs associated with oversizing are quantified. The fundamental reasons why oversizing occurs are discussed. An architecture and method for avoiding oversizing is described.
Scaling the power capacity of legacy UPS systems leads to hidden costs that may outweigh the very benefit that scalability intends to provide. A scalable UPS system provides a significant benefit to the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of data center and network room physical infrastructure. This paper describes the drawbacks of scaling legacy UPS
Both hot and cold air containment can significantly improve the predictability and efficiency of data centre cooling systems. While both approaches eliminate the mixing of hot and cold air, there are practical differences in implementation that have significant consequences. This paper examines both methodologies and highlights the reasons why hot aisle containment emerges as the
In the wider discussion about how to save costs and energy in the data centre, physical infrastructure preventive maintenance (PM) is sometimes neglected as an important tool for controlling TCO and downtime. PM is performed specifically to prevent faults from ocurring, but IT and facilities managers can improve systems uptime through a better underderstanding of
Traditional methodologies for monitoring the data centre environment are no longer sufficient. With technologies such as blade servers driving up cooling demands and regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley driving up security requirements, the physical environment in the data centre must be watched more closely. Find out more about the threats that exist regarding a class of
New breakthroughs in power and cooling technology allow for a simple and rapid deployment of self-contained high-density zones within an existing or new low-density data centre. The independence of these high-density zones allows for preditable and reliable operation of high-density equipment without a negative impact on the performance of existing low-density power and cooling infrastructure.
Data centre electrical efficiency is rarely planned or managed, with the unfortunate result that most data centres waste substantial amounts. Today it is both possible and prudent to plan, measure and improve data centre efficiency, thereby reducing electrical consumption and improving power densities, so that more IT equipment can be installed in a given site.
Data centre professionals can rid themselves of messy racks, sub-standard under floor air distribution, and cable sprawl with a minimum of heartache and expense. Whether the data centre mess is created over years of mismanagement or whether the cable-choked data centre is inherited, solutions for both quick fixes and longer term evolutionary changes exist.