End User Focus
How to Cut your Data
Centre Power Bill
There are plenty of efficiencies to be made, by following a few
basic rules, writes DCS columnist, Steve O’Donnell, Green
IT guru and SVP IT Infrastructure and Operations at First
Data International.
Today we are going to look at practical aisle / cold aisle arrangement. It helps wrong place. Better still take out all
changes that we can all make to our to separate hot and cold airflow. unused vented tiles and replace them
data centres that will improve cooling with plain tiles. Even closed vented tiles
efficiency, to enable us to install more So where can we start to make our leak air.
equipment in the same space or existing data centre more efficient and
reduce our electricity bills. There are a green? The first is maintaining the floor, You should test the soundness of your
few basic rules that will help us too often a task that is ignored. Gaps floor by pressure testing and checking
become more efficient. and unnecessary holes in the floor are that all cableways that lead between
bad news and lead to the mixing of hot halls are properly blocked off. This is
circle6 The first is the less we mix hot air and cold air that drops cooling important for a number of reasons; it
from computer cabinets with the cold efficiency. Loose tiles can cause reduces cold air leakage, slows the
air coming from your Computer Room leakages (and may be a health and spread of fire and smoke within the
Air Conditioning (CRAC) units, the more safety issue) so should be replaced. facility and discourages rodent entry.
efficiently we will cool your data centre. Keep the floor maintained, replace tiles Cold air leakage from below the floor
circle6 Secondly CRAC units typically draw with holes, close open vents in the can make a significant difference to
hot air from the upper part of the data centre energy efficiency. Cable
computer hall, cool it and blow the air entry points into cabinets need to be
under the raised (plenum) floor. We closed off as well, as this can offer an
should be careful in placing open tiles alternative air flow route from cold to
near CRAC units to avoid short circuits hot avoiding the equipment we need to
in airflow. cool. Fit raised floor grommets or
circle6 Thirdly computer room cabinets are beanbags around the holes to close off
designed to airflow front to back so it is excess airflow.
important to ensure that we have open
tiles in front of cabinets to supply cold Blockages to airflow under the raised
air from under the raised floor. We floor reduce airflow efficiency and can
should avoid putting open tiles at the cause hotspots in the data centre halls.
back of cabinets as this encourages Keep extra rolls of cable and other junk
hot and cold air mixing. either in a store cupboard or at worst
circle6 Fourthly, try to organise your data above floor level. Under-floor
centre rack layout so that adjacent blockages can divert airflow away from
rows are organised front-to-front and key areas. Counter intuitively you
back-to-back. This is known as a hot should ignore areas of the data centre
24 | DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS |
www.datacentresols.com September 2008
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