Last week I met with my friend Steve Sole of Nubis who wanted to tell me about the work they have been doing in data centers around improving energy efficiency. Nubis make demountable Aisle Containment systems – they don’t care if it is Hot or Cold Aisle – the objective is to stop the air mixing.

Aisle containment has a number of well known issues mainly around safety and fire supression. Steve has a design that is optimised to get out of the way of fire detection and fire supression systems with two drop-down roof panel options ; Fusible Link and Water Soluble.

It is often the case that existing water-based fire suppression systems must be extended through the roof panels into the aisle to be effective, creating additional work, cost and disruption within a highly sensitive area of the business. Nubis recognises that in existing data centres enterprises want to preserve this investment.

In the event of a fire in the data centre Nubis’s Fusible Link roof panels fall away at 58C to allow the fire suppression system to be effective (fire suppression systems typically kick in at 70C). If Water Soluble roof panels are deployed then water sprinklers simple dissolve them.

Gas fire suppression is usually deployed through the floor tiles and in these cases the Nubis Gas Roof Panel provides an air tight seal to contain the gas and extinguish the fire.

All the panels are quick and easy to remove by one person and allow full access to room facilities above the cabinets.

Nubis further minimises disruption during ACS installation since it is non-invasive when attaching to sensitive equipment such as storage arrays, tape backup systems and PABX’s.

Air Containment Solutions (ACS) are recognised as a simple yet highly effective means of reducing the power requirements to cool the data centre resulting in fewer equipment outages so improving business continuity. ACS reduces the data centre PUE rating, thereby minimising the carbon footprint resulting in savings of up to 20% from cooling power costs.

This solution is neat because it is designed for existing data centers. The only constraint is that you have to have hot and cold aisles in place already