Both hot and cold air containment can significantly improve the predictability and efficiency of data center cooling systems. While both approaches eliminate the mixing of hot and cold air, there are practical differences in implementation that have significant consequences. This paper examines both methodologies and highlights the reasons why hot aisle containment emerges as the preferred best practice.
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Avoidable mistakes that are routinely made when installing cooling systems and racks in data centers or network rooms compromise availability and increase costs. These unintentional flaws create hot-spots, decrease fault tolerance, decrease efficiency, and reduce cooling capacity. Although facilities operators are often held accountable for cooling problems, many problems are actually caused by improper deployment of IT equipment outside of their control. This paper examines these typical mistakes, explains their principles, quantifies their impacts, and describes simple remedies.
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The control of humidity in Information Technology environments is essential to achieving high availability. This paper explains how humidity affects equipment and why humidity control is required. Quantitative design guidelines for existing and new computing installations are discussed. Alternative methods to achieve desired humidity are described and contrasted. The difficult issue of how and where humidity should be measured is explained. The hidden costs associated with over-humidification are described.
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Room cooling is an ineffective approach for next-generation data centers. Latest generation high density and variable density IT equipment create conditions that room cooling was never intended to address, resulting in cooling systems that are inefficient, unpredictable, and low in power density. Row-oriented and rack-oriented cooling architectures have been developed to address these problems. This paper contrasts room, row, and rack architectures and shows why row-oriented cooling will emerge as the preferred solution for most next generation data centers.
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New breakthroughs in power and cooling technology allow for a simple and rapid deployment of self-contained high density zones within an existing or new low density data center. The independence of these high density zones allows for predictable and reliable operation of high density equipment without a negative impact on the performance of existing low density power and cooling infrastructure. A side benefit is that these high density zones operate at much higher electrical efficiency than conventional designs. Guidance on planning design, implementation, and predictable operation of high density zones is provided.
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