Precision Cooling Overview
- Options for Mission Critical Cooling Systems
- Assessing Cooling Issues and Identifying Solutions
- Understanding Air Flow
Cooling Systems and Options
Research shows that within a data center facility, the mixing of hot and cold air should be minimized by separating hot and cold aisles with containment systems to make the operation of the data center more energy efficient.
IIS Group provides proven, state of the art, precision cooling solutions for all types and levels of data centers and other mission critical environments. Our critical power and precision data center cooling products, along with other physical infrastructure solutions, protect the essential equipment housed in your facility. Utilizing industry proven “best practices,” IIS Group’s precision cooling solutions improve availability, increase reliability, and lower the total cost of ownership of your critical electronic and network equipment.
Servers, storage units, and other data center computer equipment require a stable environment for optimum performance. Precision air conditioning is equally important to protect the sensitive gear found in telecommunication centers, digital switchgear sites, clean rooms and labs, and healthcare facilities. High temperatures reduce the reliability of internal hardware components, leading to distorted or lost data and even complete system failure. Humidity levels are also a factor in maintaining equipment performance in a mission critical environment. Finally, airborne contaminants pose a danger, and sophisticated air filtration systems must be considered when designing and managing a mission critical environment.
Air flow is another important consideration in cooling performance and operating costs. Your physical infrastructure works best when you can reduce operating expenses while improving your power utilization effectiveness. From Blanking Panels to Hot Aisle Containment Pods, creating an efficient barrier between cold air supply and hot air exhaust can have a huge impact on the health of your facility. Many options are available to keep your temperature mix reliably steady. Dynamically controlling airflow, and doing it with improved infrastructure efficiency, is the goal of IIS Group.
IIS Group offers:
- Advanced In-Row Cooling
- High-Capacity CRAC/CRAH Solutions
- Packaged and Free Cooling Chillers
- Ceiling Mount and Wall Mounted CRAC Units
- Adiabatic Humidification and Cooling
- Indirect Evaporative Cooling
- Dynamic Airflow Management
- Mobile Air Conditioning Units
In the past, facility managers sometimes over-cooled their IT space to solve the dilemma of localized hot spots. With current technology, you have a choice of remediation solutions, all available without ever having to crank down the controls. This includes products such as under-floor and overhead air movers, and intelligent airflow distribution and management.
Assessing Cooling Issues and Identifying Solutions
If you are running a mission critical environment and experiencing issues with cooling, we will develop solutions after considering:
- Load Calculations
- Bypass Air Through Racks
- Improper Rack Configuration and Cable Blockages
- Raised Floor Height
- Unsealed Floor Openings and Leaky Floors
- Unnecessary or Poorly Located Perforated Tiles
We also look at other factors such as air conditioner placement and setup, under-floor blockages, outside air infiltration, doorway seals and other room envelope openings (vapor barriers), and humidity issues. Our services team uses sophisticated modeling tools to assess conditions in an existing facility and design cost effective solutions. Once we make a careful assessment of current conditions, we can recommend solutions to improve cooling effectiveness, or reduce operating cost, or in some cases both.
Understanding Air Flow is Essential
In dealing with today’s high density loads, you need to look carefully at your facility to understand your limitations and identify the best options to improve performance. It is easy to build-out a blade server rack to 30KW of load, but can your facility accommodate it and maintain performance? Data centers are much more often found to have airflow distribution problems than to have HVAC capacity issues.
IIS Group has the expertise to help you identify and implement best practices to eliminate airflow distribution issues. For example — hot aisle/cold aisle containment, blanking panels, cable entry seals, and perforated or grated tiles properly located in front of equipment, to name just a few. Targeted cooling solutions can also supplement existing HVAC systems to allow for blade or high density deployments. This includes variable speed fans, in row cooling, and hot/cold aisle containment. New scalable solutions for overall cooling may also merit consideration.
IIS has the experience to understand your issues and needs, assess room conditions, and identify and deploy the optimal cooling solution.
View
APC White Paper 130: Choosing Between Room, Row, and Rack-based Cooling for Data Centers