All Posts Tagged With: "Air Flow"
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 to maximize the availability [...]
Today we are going to look at how fire detection systems can be used in Data Centers to prevent catastrophic loss and damage; we will focus on Very Early Smoke Detection Systems, (VESDA – Very Early Smoke Detection Alarm).
Without an efficient and safe environment, there is no way to be assured of business continuity. To [...]
This photograph shows a technique used to remove hot air from a high density area in a Data Center in Milan.
Continue ReadingToday 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 less [...]
Continue ReadingThis 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.
Continue ReadingONStor 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 data [...]
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 [...]
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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 network and [...]
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 role in [...]
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 working [...]
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 a [...]
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 [...]
Continue ReadingThe 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. [...]
Continue ReadingI 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 [...]
Continue ReadingThe basis of intelligent cooling is that it allows us to deliver only the cooling that is required to meet our temperature requirements. By reducing the flow of air down to that which is actually needed (rather than just blowing as fast as we can) it is possible to reduce the energy demand of our [...]
Continue ReadingData Centre Basics
There are some basics that just need to be done to keep a data centre efficient and as green as possible. Maintaining the floor is often a task that is left too late. Gaps and unnecessary holes in the floor are bad news and lead to the mixing of hot and cold [...]
Continue ReadingSeparation of Hot and Cold Aisle
The photograph above was taken in BT’s Rochdale Data Centre. It shows the use of curtains to separate the hot and cold aisles, thereby reducing the amount of hot air that mixes with cold air from the plenum floor and dramatically increasing cooling efficiency. Inside the curtained off [...]
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 ReadingInterview with Haroon Malik
Malik - Do you think that, as yet, many businesses have a sufficient understanding of the importance of the human aspect of IT within the data centre? ie writing policies, managing infrastructure, making mistakes etc…
O’Donnell - It may be a bit unkind to some of my colleagues but my experience shows that [...]
How 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 [...]
I have been working in the Data Centre business for many years and every time I take on a new role I get a surprise. A surprise that the basics are not done, that the lessons I learned all those years ago still haven’t reached this far! I guess that I should have stopped being [...]
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