Chris Jaggers, Director of Design Engineering at CPI, and Travis North, CPI’s Thermal Design Manager, recently co-wrote an article on the topic of airflow containment for BICSI News, the bimonthly publication and resource for a variety of information transport systems news and notes.
The article, titled “Airflow Containment: The Road to Data Center Efficiency,” is an in-depth look into how the technological advancements of the IT industry are directly affecting the data center’s capacity for dealing with increased densities and data processing volumes. Thus, the necessity to properly and efficiently cool the data center have become increasingly important topics of discussion – not just for the savings such efficiency can provide, but to ensure optimal performance year-round.
A key factor in the pursuit of such efficiency rests squarely on the shoulders of containment. As Chris and Travis point out, “in a poorly designed legacy data center, it has been stated that 60 percent of the supply air is lost due to inefficient airflow management.” With more than half the supply air squandered, energy costs have nowhere to go but up – resulting in a major drain on any company’s bottom line and IT resources.
To deal with the issue of containment head on, the article outlines a variety of practiced solutions, including hot aisle vs. cold aisle, fully contained in-row and overhead, fully contained direct exhaust duct and in-rack, and fully contained vs. partial contained solutions. While many installations can and must differ with regards to floor space, capability, etc., the article does an excellent job of highlighting the pros and cons of each.
Of particular interest to our resident CPI experts, the direct exhaust duct solution, better known as CPI Passive Cooling® Solutions, stands out among the crowd as “the most contained of all the solutions.”
“Ducting the exhaust of the equipment is a much simpler way to capture the return air compared with enclosing the entire row… Because the ducting solution is not tied into the row cooling system, the implementation can be completed in a piece part approach, allowing for expansion on an as-needed basis.”
To read this highly informative and enlightening article in full, head over to CPI’s in the News webpage for the complete overview.
Learn how CPI Passive Cooling Solutions can work wonders for your data center efficiency. If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us. Please leave comments below. Jeff Cihocki, eContent Specialist