Commit to the Future
Data center technology evolves much more quickly than most conservative facility owners are comfortable with:
- Ten years ago, power equipment efficiencies were in the 70–80 percent range.
- Ten years ago, hot/cold aisle was emerging as a new practice, and the only available products for cooling IT equipment were room air-conditioner/computer and room air-handler (CRAC/CRAH) units.
- Ten years ago, 3U/4U servers were the most dense rack offering, with the first 2U servers in development.
- Ten years later, we have rack densities up to 30kW and power delivery efficiencies have climbed to the 90 percent range. There are many different cooling coil offering and many methods for managing airflow.
By implementing best practices, you can take full advantage of all these technical improvements:
- Balance phases — Don't strand power and lower the improved efficiency of today's power delivery equipment.
- Implement a successful containment solution — Hot/cold aisle has become commonplace, but it is an incomplete strategy without a containment between IT racks and cooling coils.
- Don't let isolation/separation stop at the rack — Segregation inside the rack, through the use of blanking panels in unused equipment slots, is critical to higher densities and containment strategies.
- Operate your data center at comfortable supply air temperatures — It should be comfortable in the cold and hot aisle. Between 75 and 80 degrees is the perfect temperature for a mechanically cooled data center.
- Understand the true power and airflow consumption of your IT equipment — Capacity planning tools should be used for gross sizing; actual product measurements are the preferred method.
- Develop a proactive IT refresh strategy — Improved platform efficiency and increased performance will drive efficiencies and facility longevity.
- Virtualize where possible — By reducing the number of IT systems, you can minimize IT power consumption and thus produce infrastructure cost savings.
