Cooling
I picked up a really interesting website from KyotoCooling that has a very interesting new approach to low energy cooling systems. The firm takes it’s name from the Kyoto Conference where our governments met and agreed Carbon reduction targets that none of them had any intention of meeting. The Hot Aisle is firmly of the [...]
I took these photographs a bit over two years ago at the BT Reuters Data Center in Nutley New Jersey. They show a large CRAC Unit in the process of being installed. Note the copper piping, solder joints, open floor void and general mess that is involved in installation and commissioning. This is not something [...]
Our atmosphere (the air around us) is made up of gasses consisting of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), carbon dioxide (0.3%) and water in the form of vapor (humidity). The amount of water in the atmosphere is measured as a Relative Humidity (RH) Data Center air should contain the proper amount of water vapor [...]
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 [...]
Recently we have been writing a lot about how hot-aisle/cold aisle containment. It is important to be aware this strategy, fire detection and protection requires special attention. A recent article in Search Data Center gives some good advice: Hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment – a variation on the traditional data center best practice of hot-aisle/cold-aisle design – is a way [...]
This photograph shows a technique used to remove hot air from a high density area in a Data Center in Milan.
This photograph shows an Intercooler unit in the basement of the I.Net data center in Milan.
Today we are going to look at practical changes that we can all make to our data centres that will improve cooling efficiency, to enable us to install more equipment in the same space or reduce our electricity bills. There are a few basic rules that will help us become more efficient. The first is [...]
The Hot Aisle readership have reported that they have significant constraints on existing data centers with 56% reporting cooling constraints and a further 17% reporting more than one constraint. Significantly only one reader reports space as a constraint which agrees with my hypothesis that there is plenty of Data Center space, just no M&E left.
AVIVA (aka Norwich Union) is set to open its third data centre – Data Centre 3 (DC3) at the Broadlands Business Park near Norwich, UK this September. Although the site uses some modern design principles to minimize energy use, AVIVA have been far too conservative with the design and the opportunity to really go green has been missed. The [...]
I was reading an article about the recent Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) Data Center Energy Summit, in San Francisco, engineers and data center pros gathered to study 11 case studies on energy efficiency. The data center studies varied, but one green data center tactic stood out: hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment. The Hot Aisle readers know that data center [...]
A photograph from the BT Rochdale Data Center showing how the transparent curtains are attached to the roof. These curtains are used to separate the Hot Aisle from the Cold Aisle in order to drive up cooling capacity and efficiency. There are a number of articles about using Curtains to drive energy efficiency on The [...]
This is an interesting photograph of a commercially available APC Hot Aisle containment system. With adequate cold air to our raised floor, this rack module can house high density equipment.
ONStor Inc., recently announced the launch of their new Cougar 6000 series NAS gateway and claim: “Cougar’s advanced multi-core storage network processors are built into a highly available “cluster-in-a-box” design offering 18 cores per filer. This delivers high throughput, smallest footprint per rack unit, excellent power and cooling efficiency, and low cost per terabyte. This enables enterprises to process more [...]
HVAC Economizers (sometimes known as air-side Economizers) are useful for data centers which are located in regions of the world where the outdoor temperature is lower than the desired data center temperature (for at least some of the day or year) and the outdoor humidity is mild. Economizers save energy by cooling buildings with outside [...]
This picture is from a BT Data Center in Holland, just outside Amsterdam. There are quite significant airflow benefits to keeping power and data cables overhead and out of the plenum space under the floor. Underfloor pressures can be maximized and airflow design can be maintained. If we can avoid lifting floor tiles when installing [...]
Dry coolers are used in many air cooled refrigeration systems. In case of low outdoor temperatures, outdoor air can be applied for cooling applications. In dry coolers, large fans create a forced airflow along air-to-water heat exchangers. Subsequently, the water circuit can be used for cooling of data centers, office buildings and industrial processes. Dry coolers play an important [...]
This is a picture of the corridor around the I.Net Data Center in Milan showing much of the M&E equipment that is normally housed within the data center hall located outside. So what are the benefits? Equipment can be maintained, filters changed etc.. without entering the raised floor area. Any heat load from the equipment [...]
I had two great questions from Hot Aisle readers following the latest article on Cold Aisle containment. Dan asked about the impact on fire suppression and Mark asked about where we got the transparent curtains. Lets start with the impact on fire systems of having either hot or cold aisle containment. The safety of personel [...]
I love this photograph that I took last year (2007) at the British Telecommunications Rochdale Data Center. It shows such a simple and easy to implement Green initiative that costs chump change and can take 15% off your electricity bill overnight. My colleague and friend Ged McLean of BT is that man who pulled it [...]
The London Financial Times published an interesting article about data center cooling. Written by fellow blgger Dan Ilet of Greenbang.com it focuses on the strain being put on data centers by increased numbers and power demand of servers and the rapid increase in the cost of electricity. Its often amusing what journalists pick up in [...]
It’s not a new phenomenon, Sun did it over a decade ago with the 4500 range of servers that vent hot air left to right rather than front to back but it doesn’t make it any easier to run a complex site when major vendors like Cisco continue to insist on breaking the front to back [...]
Milan has a high (and rising) water table and the city authorities encourage the use of groundwater for cooling. They want to keep the water level in check to protect subway lines and utilities. Groundwater is pumped through a heat exchanger for condenser water and then dumped to the sewer. The authorities pump out the [...]
The Hot Aisle reader, Mark Hatton of Trapdoor dropped me a mail a few days ago about a company based in Las Vegas called Switch Communications and the CEO, Rob Roy was making a lot of claims about how good their proposed new data center was. You can read the original article in The Register. [...]
I just read a neat article in Infoworld about Data Center energy efficiency, conspicuously the article does not talk about carbon footprint or greenhouse gasses, not once, it talks about the cost of energy and how stupid it is to waste money. It talks about using human ingenuity to solve the problem and for once it [...]
