Do not increase the budget four strokes to fix the data center "temperature"

In the following article, I'll share some of the http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/11343.html > Simple tools and best practices to keep your IT department cool in the data center (without increasing the budget) assistance.

The heat is sweeping all over the world, and IT departments have to be busy keeping data center temperatures cool. However, the budget is limited and it is a difficult challenge to maintain the efficient operation of the data center under the premise of ensuring expenditure is reasonable.

But here I would like to share with you some simple tools and best practices, through the following tips, I hope to help the vast number of IT departments without increasing the budget to maintain data center temperature.

The gap is a big deal.

First, professionals often say that the journey to improve the cooling efficiency of data centers begins with a physical integrity assessment of the entire facility. Although the facility generally does not seem to have any major problems, but generally there are some gaps in the corner corners, will let us consume a lot of energy to get the cold air easily out of the outside.

"I've been working in the data center, it can be said that in any case involving a shutter, a garage-type door position, there is basically an inch or so in the bottom of the gap," Joe capes, "he is Schneider Electric Company (the company to provide energy management products and services, the global reputation) of the cooling business development director.

In addition to the door and window gap, another common cooling effect of waste is the ventilation duct or ceiling tiles removed after the removal of the timely recovery. "One of the simplest principles of treatment is to keep the room airtight," Capes added, "to prevent all outdoor air from entering the room through doors, windows and other channels." "Brushes, baffles and even curtains are good solutions because they are intrinsically helpful in isolating indoor and outdoor air circulation." In addition, we must pay special attention to the cable trough and the room under the air conditioning unit space.

The key focus is different for data centers that are located in abnormal humidity locations. Blocking water vapor-including the use of plastic film or metal panels to cover walls, ceilings and floors to prevent water vapor flow-is the most important. Many data centers own design plans contain the elements of water vapor barrier, and with the passage of time and equipment handling, the increase in the surface of the facility, the original water vapor barrier effect will be constantly weakened, resulting in indoor humidity increase or decrease.

Although the water vapor barrier measures can also slightly reduce the unnecessary air circulation, but this is not the main reason why we keep the facilities in good condition. "It's because we need to keep our data center in a relatively stable level of humidity, rather than wasting a lot of energy on humidification or dehumidification, so that the water vapor barrier becomes so important," says Dave Kelly, the application engineer at Liebert Precision Cooling products. This enterprise belongs to Emerson Network Energy Co., Ltd.

Monitoring and measurement

It is difficult to improve the operation efficiency of the whole data center without knowing the specific performance and heating position of the equipment. "There is a lot of useless legacy equipment in most data centers," says Don Beaty, DLB's president. The engineering firm is based in Eatontown, New Jersey, and works on the design and construction of data centers. When new devices are installed, Beaty says, most customers will choose to keep stale hardware that may be useless.

The root cause of this problem is the lack of awareness between it and the facility: IT personnel are taking precedence over the failure of the equipment to work on critical tasks, while the deployment of the facility focuses more on energy issues. By installing load measurement and power monitoring devices on cabinets and power distribution units, the data center itself can identify which components are not running efficiently, even in practical terms.

"For example, there are five cabinet measurements that run less efficiently than 50%," Beaty said. "Then virtualization management of these cabinets will be included in the agenda, and monitoring and measurement can help us minimize total device power consumption." ”

Optimize the air supply temperature

For years, the idea of cooling the data center has been that the lower the temperature, the better the effect. Now things are not so absolute, even in midsummer. However, with the increasing sunshine time and intensity, data center directors are still inclined to set air conditioning units at a low level in the summer heat.

"Most people choose this option because they simply want the cooling wind to be as low as 70 degrees Fahrenheit, so when the indoor temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit, they increase the output power of the air-conditioner," Capes said. According to recent guidance from ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, refrigeration and air conditioning engineers, the normal cooling wind should reach 81 degrees Fahrenheit, but there are still a large number of data centers sticking to the habit and insisting that the equipment operate in a lower temperature environment.

"In most cases, engineers or infrastructure operators will judge whether the data center is functioning well based on the return air temperature of the air-conditioning unit in the room," Capes said. This standard of judgment seems to be reasonably reasonable, "all server manufacturers and ASHRAE agencies are concerned about the cooling air temperature at the inlet of the server." ”

But is it feasible to adjust the rated temperature of the air-conditioning unit in the room? Capes asked. and is the whole adjustment really that simple? In fact, for a data center with 300-kilowatt cooling power and 400-kilowatt UPS systems, the actual cooling power required is only 25% of the rated value. In other words, we have more than three times times the redundant power for the facility. "In some cases, we can set the unit to standby, which has no adverse impact on the entire operating environment," Capes said.

Overall maintenance

To maximize cooling efficiency, we also need to maintain the equipment on a regular basis, or to make minor adjustments inside.

If your data center uses movable floor, you should make sure that the space under the floor is as clear and clear as possible. In general, when IT staff need to disconnect cables, they will open the active board, which will have an absolute impact on the inherent air flow, so that the supply system to improve output to maintain the original cooling effect. In order to reduce this increase in the power consumption of air-conditioning, the best way is to deploy the cooling equipment to the location as close to the working device, which may mean that the surrounding units need to be moved to the end of the cabinet or to increase the local cooling system.

The air conditioner unit itself also has the low efficiency time--this is mainly by accumulates the dust to cause, therefore must ensure the indoor outdoor machine heat exchange and the filtration device clean. If the data center building has windows, the use of Venetian form or installed to block the sun injection of the coating can effectively reduce the indoor temperature. In addition, the lighting system generates heat that usually accounts for about 4% of the total heat in the data center, Capes said; deploying LED lighting can effectively mitigate the additional cooling requirements of this type of fever.

"The reality is shocking, I've visited countless data centers, and few people are willing to take some simple measures and best practices to actually improve cooling efficiency," Capes said. Hopefully, the data center will be able to improve cooling and keep it running at a lower cost in this hot summer, after understanding the several tips mentioned above. (Original link: http://www.infoworld.com/d/computer-hardware/4-tips-keeping-your-data-center-cool-summer-632)