Contamination
I read a very interesting article from fellow blogger Christian Belady, who is Principal Power and Cooling Architect at Microsoft.
Christian decided to take the PUE challenge and see if he could build a data center with a PUE of one! That is to have all of the power delivered to computing equipment and none at [...]
Zinc whiskers, although a catastrophic problem, are not new (they were discovered in 1948 by Bell Labs). They grow on many zinc coated components and structures commonly used in Data Centers. Zinc coating is used to slow the rusting of steel components. There are two types of zinc coating, Hot Dipped Galvanized (HDG) or electroplated. Only one [...]
Continue ReadingYou might think that your data center is under the spotlight, constantly monitored, secure and well designed but what if I told you that typically the second most common cause of catastrophic failures (after electrical) in your Data Center are water leaks?
Water can come from three main sources:
Leaks inside the Data Center from refrigeration equipment [...]
Continue ReadingCooling for Free (Almost)
Fresh air cooled data centres simply draw fresh air from outside (via filters) and pump it under the plenum floor rather than the refrigerated and recycled air that is used in 20th Century Data Centres (see picture above). This approach can reduce the energy required to cool a site by 80% [...]
Continue ReadingHow did we get to the modern data centre design? Why do most data centres look the same? Why are they so inefficient in how they consume electrical power? Why do they typically have a raised plenum floor and air handling units that keep air at fixed temperature ranges and humidity levels?
I guess the first [...]


