How one data center kept its cool: carmaker enhanced delivery of chilled air to decrease temperatures, and increase reliability and capacity

Communications News, Feb, 2008 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[degrees] F were found. (The recommended maximum as defined by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers is 77[degrees] 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[degrees] F. An average 6[degrees] F temperature drop was found at the top of the racks and a maximum 16[degrees] 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.