Energy-Efficient Air Cooling of Data Centers at 2000 W/ft2

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus K. Herrlin ◽  
Michael K. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
High Heat ◽  
High Density ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Design Considerations

Increased Information and Communications Technology (ICT) capability and improved energy-efficiency of today’s server platforms have created opportunities for the data center operator. However, these platforms also test the ability of many data center cooling systems. New design considerations are necessary to effectively cool high-density data centers. Challenges exist in both capital costs and operational costs in the thermal management of ICT equipment. This paper details how air cooling can be used to address both challenges to provide a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a highly energy-efficient design at high heat densities. We consider trends in heat generation from servers and how the resulting densities can be effectively cooled. A number of key factors are reviewed and appropriate design considerations developed to air cool 2000 W/ft2 (21,500 W/m2). Although there are requirements for greater engineering, such data centers can be built with current technology, hardware, and best practices. The density limitations are shown primarily from an airflow management and cooling system controls perspective. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling is discussed as a key part of the analysis allowing high-density designs to be successfully implemented. Well-engineered airflow management systems and control systems designed to minimize airflow by preventing mixing of cold and hot airflows allow high heat densities. Energy efficiency is gained by treating the whole equipment room as part of the airflow management strategy, making use of the extended environmental ranges now recommended and implementing air-side air economizers.

Parametric Study of Hybrid Cooling Solution for Thermal Management of Data Centers

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veerendra Mulay ◽  
Saket Karajgikar ◽  
Dereje Agonafer ◽  
Roger Schmidt ◽  
Madhusudan Iyengar
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Management ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Parametric Study ◽  
Heat Load ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
High Heat ◽  
Inlet Temperature ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Air Conditioners ◽  
Hybrid Cooling

The power trend for Server systems continues to grow thereby making thermal management of Data centers a very challenging task. Although various configurations exist, the raised floor plenum with Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRACs) providing cold air is a popular operating strategy. The air cooling of data center however, may not address the situation where more energy is expended in cooling infrastructure than the thermal load of data center. Revised power trend projections by ASHRAE TC 9.9 predict heat load as high as 5000W per square feet of compute servers’ equipment footprint by year 2010. These trend charts also indicate that heat load per product footprint has doubled for storage servers during 2000–2004. For the same period, heat load per product footprint for compute servers has tripled. Amongst the systems that are currently available and being shipped, many racks exceed 20kW. Such high heat loads have raised concerns over limits of air cooling of data centers similar to air cooling of microprocessors. A hybrid cooling strategy that incorporates liquid cooling along with air cooling can be very efficient in these situations. A parametric study of such solution is presented in this paper. A representative data center with 40 racks is modeled using commercially available CFD code. The variation in rack inlet temperature due to tile openings, underfloor plenum depths is reported.

Energy Efficiency and Air Quality Considerations in Airside Economized Data Centers

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levente J. Klein ◽  
Sergio A. Bermudez ◽  
Fernando J. Marianno ◽  
Hendrik F. Hamann ◽  
Prabjit Singh
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
High Sensitivity ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Improve Energy Efficiency ◽  
Free Air ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Contamination Event

Many data center operators are considering the option to convert from mechanical to free air cooling to improve energy efficiency. The main advantage of free air cooling is the elimination of chiller and Air Conditioning Unit operation when outdoor temperature falls below the data center temperature setpoint. Accidental introduction of gaseous pollutants in the data center along the fresh air and potential latency in response of control infrastructure to extreme events are some of the main concerns for adopting outside air cooling in data centers. Recent developments of ultra-high sensitivity corrosion sensors enable the real time monitoring of air quality and thus allow a better understanding of how airflow, relative humidity, and temperature fluctuations affect corrosion rates. Both the sensitivity of sensors and wireless networks ability to detect and react rapidly to any contamination event make them reliable tools to prevent corrosion related failures. A feasibility study is presented for eight legacy data centers that are evaluated to implement free air cooling.

Liquid Cooling for Thermal Management of Data Centers

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veerendra Mulay ◽  
Dereje Agonafer ◽  
Roger Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Management ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Heat Load ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
High Heat ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Liquid Cooling ◽  
Air Conditioners ◽  
Server Systems ◽  
Heat Loads

The power trend for Server systems continues to grow thereby making thermal management of Data centers a very challenging task. Although various configurations exist, the raised floor plenum with Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRACs) providing cold air is a popular operating strategy. The air cooling of data center however, may not address the situation where more energy is expended in cooling infrastructure than the thermal load of data center. Revised power trend projections by ASHRAE TC 9.9 predict heat load as high as 5000W per square feet of compute servers’ equipment footprint by year 2010. These trend charts also indicate that heat load per product footprint has doubled for storage servers during 2000–2004. For the same period, heat load per product footprint for compute servers has tripled. Amongst the systems that are currently available and being shipped, many racks exceed 20kW. Such high heat loads have raised concerns over limits of air cooling of data centers similar to air cooling of microprocessors. Thermal management of such dense data center clusters using liquid cooling is presented.

A Field Investigation Into the Limits of High-Density Air-Cooling

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Patterson ◽  
Randall Martin ◽  
J. Barr von Oehsen ◽  
Jim Pepin ◽  
Yogendra Joshi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Negative Pressure ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Field Investigation ◽  
High Density ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Density Data ◽  
Operational Conditions ◽  
Particle Imaging

In this paper we report on a field investigation into airflow management challenges in high density data centers. This field investigation has also served to validate laboratory investigations into high density air cooling issues. In data centers with significant power consumption, and consequently high cooling loads per rack, high volumes of room airflow are required to meet server cooling airflow requirements. These volumes of air can be difficult to deliver in raised floor hot aisle / cold aisle layouts. The velocity of the airflow is such that it creates a negative pressure near the bottom of the rack. This negative pressure entrains air from under and behind the rack, causing recirculation and warmer air being provided to the servers at the base of the rack. This can cause operational problems and server performance impacts. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in previous papers reporting on test data using particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) techniques. The current work validates those studies by looking at airflow, infrared thermography, and actual IT performance while the under rack recirculation flows are occurring. Additionally, we demonstrate significant improvement by employing rigorous airflow management practices. We also discuss the limitations of current CFD modeling, the majority of which does not have sufficient grid-wise resolution to capture the problem. Further we discuss typical operational conditions that have suppressed the problem (or perhaps the awareness of) to date. Finally, the paper recommends best practices to mitigate the problem in high density data centers.

scholarly journals Survey on Energy Efficiency in Cloud Computing

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Digra ◽  
Sharanjeet Singh
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Energy Requirements ◽  
International Level ◽  
German Data

Data centers are serious, energy-hungry infrastructures that can run large scale Internet based services. Energy ingesting representations are essential in designing and improving energy-efficient operations to reduce excessive energy consumption in data centers. This paper presents a survey on Energy efficiency in data centers, importance of energy efficiency. It also describes the increasing demands for data center in worldwide and the reasons for data centers energy inefficient? In this paper we define the challenges for implementing changes in data centers and explain why and how the energy requirements of data centers are growing. After that we compare the German data center market at international level and we see the energy consumption of data centers and servers in Germany from 2010 -2016.

scholarly journals Energy Efficiency in Virtualized Data Center

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4.15) ◽  
pp. 315
Author(s):  
Tehmina Karamat Khan ◽  
Mohsin Tanveer ◽  
Asadullah Shah
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
Cloud Data ◽  
Academic Communities ◽  
Cloud Application ◽  
Cloud Data Centers ◽  
And Performance

Industrial and academic communities have been trying to get more computational power out of their investments. Data centers have recently received huge attention due to its increased business value and achievable scalability on public/private clouds. Infra-structure and applications of modern data center is being virtualized to achieve energy efficient operation on servers. Despite of data center advantages on performance, there is a tradeoff between power and performance especially with cloud data centers. Today, these cloud application-based organizations are facing many energy related challenges. In this paper, through survey it has been analyzed how virtualization and networking related challenges affects energy efficiency of data center with suggested optimization strategies. 

Energy-Efficiency in Cloud Data Centers

2013 ◽  
pp. 241-263
Author(s):  
Burak Kantarci ◽  
Hussein T. Mouftah
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
High Energy ◽  
It Services ◽  
Data Center Network ◽  
Cloud Data

Cloud computing aims to migrate IT services to distant data centers in order to reduce the dependency of the services on the limited local resources. Cloud computing provides access to distant computing resources via Web services while the end user is not aware of how the IT infrastructure is managed. Besides the novelties and advantages of cloud computing, deployment of a large number of servers and data centers introduces the challenge of high energy consumption. Additionally, transportation of IT services over the Internet backbone accumulates the energy consumption problem of the backbone infrastructure. In this chapter, the authors cover energy-efficient cloud computing studies in the data center involving various aspects such as: reduction of processing, storage, and data center network-related power consumption. They first provide a brief overview of the existing approaches on cool data centers that can be mainly grouped as studies on virtualization techniques, energy-efficient data center network design schemes, and studies that monitor the data center thermal activity by Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The authors also present solutions that aim to reduce energy consumption in data centers by considering the communications aspects over the backbone of large-scale cloud systems.

Air Flow Pattern and Path Flow Simulation of Airborne Particulate Contaminants in a High-Density Data Center Utilizing Airside Economization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gautham Thirunavakkarasu ◽  
Satyam Saini ◽  
Jimil Shah ◽  
Dereje Agonafer
Keyword(s):  
Data Center ◽  
Carbon Particle ◽  
High Density ◽  
Submicron Particles ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Density Data ◽  
Particulate Contamination ◽  
Free Air ◽  
First Choice ◽  
Particulate Contaminants

The percentage of the energy used by data centers for cooling their equipment has been on the rise. With that, there has been a necessity for exploring new and more efficient methods like airside economization, both from an engineering as well as business point of view, to contain this energy demand. Air cooling especially, free air cooling has always been the first choice for IT companies to cool their equipment. But, it has its downside as well. As per ASHRAE standard (2009b), the air which is entering the data center should be continuously filtered with MERV 11 or preferably MERV 13 filters and the air which is inside the data center should be clean as per ISO class 8. The objective of this study is to design a model data center and simulate the flow path with the help of 6sigma room analysis software. A high-density data center was modelled for both hot aisle and cold aisle containment configurations. The particles taken into consideration for modelling were spherical in shape and of diameters 0.05, 0.1 and 1 micron. The physical properties of the submicron particles have been assumed to be same as that of air. For heavier particles of 1 micron in size, the properties of dense carbon particle are chosen for simulating particulate contamination in a data center. The Computer Room Air Conditioning unit is modelled as the source for the particulate contaminants which represents contaminants entering along with free air through an air-side economizer. The data obtained from this analysis can be helpful in predicting which type of particles will be deposited at what location based on its distance from the source and weight of the particles. This can further help in reinforcing the regions with a potential to fail under particulate contamination.

Experimental Description of Information Technology Equipment Reliability Exposed to a Data Center Using Airside Economizer Operating in Recommended and Allowable ASHRAE Envelopes in an ANSI/ISA Classified G2 Environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oluwaseun Awe ◽  
Jimil M. Shah ◽  
Dereje Agonafer ◽  
Prabjit Singh ◽  
Naveen Kannan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Operating Cost ◽  
Weather Data ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Single Server ◽  
Severity Level ◽  
Equipment Reliability ◽  
Free Air

Abstract Airside economizers lower the operating cost of data centers by reducing or eliminating mechanical cooling. It, however, increases the risk of reliability degradation of information technology (IT) equipment due to contaminants. IT Equipment manufacturers have tested equipment performance and guarantee the reliability of their equipment in environments within ISA 71.04-2013 severity level G1 and the ASHRAE recommended temperature-relative humidity (RH) envelope. IT Equipment manufacturers require data center operators to meet all the specified conditions consistently before fulfilling warranty on equipment failure. To determine the reliability of electronic hardware in higher severity conditions, field data obtained from real data centers are required. In this study, a corrosion classification coupon experiment as per ISA 71.04-2013 was performed to determine the severity level of a research data center (RDC) located in an industrial area of hot and humid Dallas. The temperature-RH excursions were analyzed based on time series and weather data bin analysis using trend data for the duration of operation. After some period, a failure was recorded on two power distribution units (PDUs) located in the hot aisle. The damaged hardware and other hardware were evaluated, and cumulative corrosion damage study was carried out. The hypothetical estimation of the end of life of components is provided to determine free air-cooling hours for the site. There was no failure of even a single server operated with fresh air-cooling shows that using evaporative/free air cooling is not detrimental to IT equipment reliability. This study, however, must be repeated in other geographical locations to determine if the contamination effect is location dependent.

Introducing Energy Efficiency Metrics for Server and Data Centers

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdlmonem H. Beitelmal ◽  
Drazen Fabris
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Cooling Efficiency ◽  
Idle Power ◽  
Relevant Variables ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Evaluation Of Data

New servers and data center metrics are introduced to facilitate proper evaluation of data centers power and cooling efficiency. These metrics will be used to help reduce the cost of operation and to provision data centers cooling resources. The most relevant variables for these metrics are identified and they are: the total facility power, the servers’ idle power, the average servers’ utilization, the cooling resources power and the total IT equipment power. These metrics can be used to characterize and classify servers and data centers performance and energy efficiency regardless of their size and location.

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