High Delta T Cooling Server Rack Increases Energy Efficiency, Reliability for Data Centers

摘要

The 2001 energy debacle in California threw a very public spotlight on an issue industry insiders have been brooding over for years―the vast amount of energy consumed by data centers and other mission-critical facilities. Fault lies as much with the systems that cool server equipment as it does with the equipment itself. Not only do conventional data center cooling systems use a tremendous amount of energy, anecdotal evidence has shown that they become ineffective when power densities exceed 150 watts per square foot. (It is not uncommon for information routing facilities to bear loads of up to 300W/SF.) But new engineering solutions are making strides to increase the energy efficiency of these facilities. One solution, a specially engineered server rack in conjunction with operational refinements of the other cooling systems, reduces the energy required to cool server equipment by 16 percent, bolstering reliability in the process. The key concept to this approach is to effectively cool the equipment producing the heat (the electronic equipment in the rack) in lieu of cooling the room to_cool the equipment. This can double the heat transfer from the electronic equipment to the cooling air.