Power Play
How one data center kept its cool
Carmaker enhanced delivery of chilled
air to decrease temperatures, and increase
reliability and capacity.
by David Rosenberg
The data center is the engine that keeps a
major enterprise running. If that engine
overheats and performs suboptimally, the
enterprise may experience disruptions of
service, or significant downtime and
associated expenses. This is precisely the
situation faced by a major carmaker in its
10,000-square-foot data center that supports
all of its North American operations. The
managers reported IT equipment reliability
problems, cooling equipment inefficiencies
and rising operating costs.
Management considered purchasing new
cooling equipment to solve the problem, but
first engaged in an evaluation of the
computer room to understand the issue in
depth. The evaluation showed that new
cooling equipment was not necessary.
Instead, solutions could be implemented that
would save the company considerable capital
investment and downtime, while lowering
operating expenses.
To perform the evaluation, the carmaker
enlisted the expertise of a company that
researches, develops and manufactures
solutions specifically designed to optimize
a data center's critical physical
infrastructure. The company's engineers
found that numerous cabinets contained IT
equipment with cooling air intake
temperatures above the recommended maximum.
In some cases, temperatures as high as 86° F
were found. (The recommended maximum as
defined by the American Society of Heating,
Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers
is 77° F.)
This condition was creating high failure
rates in rack-mounted and enterprise
servers. Failure rates were so high that IT
equipment manufacturers were threatening to
void warranties and charge for all service
calls.
Engineers found that the high-intake air
temperatures were caused by poor delivery of
conditioned air and not due to insufficient
installed cooling capacity. IT equipment is
cooled, in part, by delivering conditioned
air to the server intakes through perforated
tiles in the floor. In this carmaker's data
center, unsealed cable openings were wasting
conditioned air volume, resulting in low
under-floor static pressure and, therefore,
insufficient airflow from the perforated
tiles. Undirected conditioned air in the
room's environment was so poor that 43
percent of the airflow was bypassing the
computer equipment and short-cycling back to
the cooling units.
The engineers determined that by sealing
these openings they could considerably
reduce the bypass airflow, and thereby
increase the airflow through the perforated
tiles. They installed engineered sealing
products in cable openings, telecom and
panel patch openings, gaps between walls and
floors, and openings around the computer
room air-conditioning (CRAC) units.
As a result, all input air temperatures
are now at or below 74° F. An average 6° F
temperature drop was found at the top of the
racks and a maximum 16° F drop occurred at
critical enterprise servers. There were also
two side benefits: Ambient temperature in
the room dropped dramatically, and the noise
level lowered significantly.
"We noticed precision delivery of
conditioned air to needed areas, and we also
noticed a drop in ambient noise," says the
data center facilities manager. "Decreasing
the operating temperatures in hotspot areas
improves our equipment reliability,
decreases outages and helps us meet our
business-continuity goals."
The solution required no downtime, or
exposure to downtime from construction
activities, no redesign of the existing
computer room layout, and no purchase of
additional cooling units or perforated
tiles. Equally important, the solution
increased the cooling capacity of the
existing CRAC units. This allowed the car
manufacturer to cool additional IT equipment
in the same floor area without purchasing
more cooling units.
Data center managers are often concerned
about their ability to expand the capacity
of their data centers to meet rising
performance demands. In the case of this car
manufacturer, that ability was hampered by
the IT equipment reliability problems,
cooling equipment inefficiencies and rising
operating costs.
Through its approach, the car
manufacturer adeptly reversed all of these
problems. By critically 
evaluating
the computer room's health, the manufacturer
was able to employ cost-effective solutions
that solved the problem without capital
expenditure or downtime.
David Rosenberg, is a technical
writer in Santa Fe, N.M. Upsite Technologies
develops energy-efficient, high-availability
solutions, designed to optimize a data
center's critical physical infrastructure
and ensure uptime.
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