|
Dear Network News Subscribers,
60 days to go before AdaptiveXchange™! Hardly enough time for an event that's expected to draw thousands of IT, facility and data center managers from more than 14 countries!
For the hundreds who have registered, we are currently processing you registration and will give you feedback and updates accordingly. This major event coming to Shenzhen, China in early December will provide you a better understanding into how the most innovative and adaptive data centers, regardless of size, are advancing business continuity.
Speaking of size, we start off with common cooling problems of SMEs and how the 4 cooling design keys, presented from last year's AdaptiveXchange, can help solve the problem. To match this up, we're introducing our latest precision cooling solution, the Liebert DM, for areas where people and electronics occupy the same space.
Frankly, this is just a minute fraction of the actual stuff you’ll be learning at AdaptiveXchange2008. See you all this December!
Best regards,
Kristian Melquiades
Chief Editor
Kristian.Melquiades
@Emerson.com
|
Typical Small Business Challenges to Cooling IT Equipment
A data center, regardless of its size, should have its own independent system. The needs of a data center are unique and require unique solutions.
IT changes are often reactive than proactive. This runs true in small businesses that rely on a building’s general air-conditioning system to cool their data centers and then are caught off guard when a hot spot in the middle of the room generates a server failure.
When hot spots do develop, it’s a common mistake to think that throwing in more cooling will solve the problem. Instead, adding more cooling units that run at a lower capacity is completely inefficient way to deal the problem. These units can make it as cold as required but it will not reach right place – the hot spots. They need to route it properly.
“While comfort cooling from the building’s basic air-conditioning system may keep parts of a small data center cool, it often isn’t reaching the hot spots nearest the servers – the areas that really matter,” says Bob Blough, director of product marketing for Precision Cooling at Liebert North America. “Placing racks near air ducts is a temporary solution but is unrealistic as more servers and racks get added.”
Servers, especially those running on blade technology, were designed for precise environmental conditions and are much tighter than people require. Hence, Bob Spengler, Liebert North America’s product manager, indicated the 4 cooling design keys to protect IT investments:
1. Install servers in a dedicated room with tightly controlled temperature and humidity - Insulate walls & ceiling if located within an area that may exceed your desired room conditions. Seal up the room by eliminating windows to reduce solar heat gains and by eliminating building A/C ducts
2. Use cooling equipment that can provide adequate sensible heat cooling capacity –Precision cooling equipment are targeted at cooling critical electronic equipment and are designed to remove sensible heat energy and seals room from dust and moisture.
3. Arrange servers and room airflow to aid cooling – keep racks in a hot aisle/cold aisle arrangement and down flow AC units at the ends of the hot aisle.
4. Allow for future expansions in business computing requirements and associated heat output – size your cooling equipment with variable capacity and as risk of financial consequences increases, plan redundancy in your cooling equipment.
Presented at last year’s AdaptiveXchange, Spengler’s presentation sums up that cooling challenge in a small- or medium-sized data center must be handled ‘differently’. People give off sensible heat and moisture, while computers give off only sensible heat. Following the 4 cooling design keys can help protect small businesses’ IT investments.
Are you interested to learn more on best-in-class infrastructure and energy efficiency this coming AdaptiveXchange2008? Then visit
www.AdaptiveXchangeAsia.com or by contacting joy.huang@emerson.com
About AdaptiveXchange2008
Emerson Network Power brings to you Asia’s premier IT&C Infrastructure event for Asia in December 2008. The AdaptiveXchange will represent a major forum for data center experts from across the region and will take the concepts introduced by Energy Logic and transform them into practical, actionable solutions that can be immediately be implemented in computer rooms and data centers.
|
|
Wave of data center expansions to occur in the next 12 months
According to Digital Realty Trust Inc., a significant increase in the number of data center projects being planned by companies in the U.S. will occur in H2 2008 to H1 2009. The findings are from a recently completed survey commissioned by Digital Realty Trust of senior decision makers who are either directly responsible for data centers or influence significant decisions related to data center operations. Key findings from the research include:
· 45% of respondents plan to expand in 3 or more locations
· Planned square footage required for an average expansion site went up by 50% from 10,000sq ft in 2007 to 15,000sq ft in 2008
· Among companies that are planning data center expansions, 76 percent plant to expand cooling capabilities
Data center innovations to slow down energy consumption
According to Subodh Bapat, Sun Microsystems’ vice president of energy efficiency, data center innovations could slow down the forecast rise in energy consumption. Ideas include everything from improving the layout of data centers to using outside air or underground pipes to pump cooler air inside the buildings where the data centers are housed.
Similarly, in a report that synthesized the results of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s 17 case studies concluded that improvements achieved through the various technologies could eliminate 45 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air, the equivalent of taking 8 million cars off the road.
|