The Design Horizon: Differentiating Your Data Center with Scalable Cooling Infrastructure

It boils down to this: to meet your density outlook and stay flexible, what kind of precision cooling system can support your need to maximize server space, minimize low pressure areas, reduce costs, and reduce requirements? You should be encouraged knowing that this ask is achievable in the same kinds of traditional ways, with no need to reinvent the wheel, or in this case, your environmental control system. There are a variety of solutions to be employed, whether DX or chilled water — lots of different form factors, one ton to many tons.

So, whether you’re thinking about chilled water for some facilities or DX solutions (refrigerant based solutions) for other types of facilities, both can achieve scale in the traditional perimeter cooling methodologies without the need for completely rethinking the way you manage your data center and the load coming from the servers. Chilled water solutions may be an option because those systems are getting much larger at the cooling unit level; satisfying the density increase simply by higher CFM per ton. Multi-fan arrays are very scalable. And you can scale down from 25 to 100 percent for the delivery, depending on whether you are trying to scale over the life of the buildout or you’re scaling back to the seasonality of the business for whomever is the IT consumer.

DX solutions are achievable from a good, better, best scenario. Good did the job back in the two to four kilowatt per rack days. However, nowadays, variable speed technologies are well established, and they can scale all the way from 25 to 100 percent just like chilled water.

At Data Aire, our engineers are seeing more dual cooling systems designed at the facility level. And so, dual cooling affords the redundancy of the infrastructure. Of course, that’s important in the data center world. And it also introduces the opportunity for economization.

Density, Efficiency and Economy of Scale. The entire concept of doing more with less — filling the buckets but still needing the environment and ecosystem to scale — is playing an important role in the transition operators are facing. With regards to greater airflow delivery per ton of cooling, it’s extremely achievable without the need to dramatically alter the way you operate your data center, which is essential because every operator is in transition mode. They are transitioning their IT architecture, their power side, and their cooling infrastructure. An efficient environment adapts to IT loads. The design horizon should keep scalable and efficient cooling infrastructure in mind to help future-proof for both known and unplanned density increases.

Eric Jensen is VP / GM at Data Aire. Contact them to learn more about how a scalable cooling infrastructure can meet your density needs and differentiate your data center.