Smart Cooling for Server Racks
January 14th, 2012
On average, server rooms accounts for 50 percent of the energy costs occurring in a data center. Of that, approximately 37% is consumed by the cooling systems. An optimized climate control system helps protect the environment and cuts energy costs. The functionality of the server rack hardware and the energy efficiency of their infrastructures is determined in large part by the temperature in the server rack and/or data center. If the temperature is too high, there is a higher chance that systems will fail, and energy costs for cooling will increase.
In practice, it is not always possible to promise that specific temperature thresholds are kept in server racks. As a result, servers in upper rack areas often get insufficient cold air, and temperatures rise above the specified limit. Outer enclosures in non-contained, cold aisles are often problematic too, as larger amounts of warm air flow into these areas and mix with the cold air.
Mapping temperature problems can be a great way to help eliminate these problems. The analysis involves measuring the temperature of the cool air at the air inlet of each server rack in a vertical pitch of 100 to 200 mm and finding the rack surface temperatures using infra-red thermography. Once these measurements have been processed, IT managers are given a detailed report with the measurement results shown in tables and graphs. This makes it easy to spot temperature problems on server racks and servers. These measurements can then be used as a starting basis for putting in place carefully targeted measures to optimize climate control system.
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