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By David Geer
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Executive Summary
Economics and growing demand for compute cycles, Contents
web-based applications and content are driving data
centers to find new ways to keep power consumption Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . 2
in check. While doing so, enterprise data centers con- What is Data Center
tinue to struggle to add highly dense computing capac- Containment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
ity in the same space. Data center airflow management Containment Approaches . . . . 5
cuts energy costs while enabling affordable, scalable,
The History of Data Center
modular growth of compute pods in the facility. Rack or
Containment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
row-based containment is the best long-term approach
to address a majority of these concerns. Why Containment? . . . . . . . . . 6
2
Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
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Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
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Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
Containment makes existing cooling and power Data centers typically have more cooling capacity
infrastructure more effective. Using containment, than the load requires. Still, this capacity does not
the data center makes increasingly efficient use cool equipment adequately. By raising the Delta T,
of the same or less cooling, reducing the cooling containment avoids the capital expense of adding
portion of the total energy bill. Data centers can more mechanical cooling. As you operate cooling
even power down some CRAC units, saving utility under higher return temperatures, cooling becomes
and maintenance costs. Containment allows for more efficient.
lower cooling unit fan speeds, higher chilled water
temperatures, decommissioning of redundant The smaller the percentage of total energy the
cooling units and increased use of free cooling. A data center uses to feed cooling, the greater the
robust containment solution can reduce fan energy percentage of total energy it uses to feed IT equip-
consumption by up to 25-percent and deliver ment. This results in a lower PUE, which should be
20-percent energy savings at the cold water chiller, closer to a 1:1 ratio.
according to the U.S. EPA.
Containment makes running racks at high densities Standardization is an operational benefit of contain-
more affordable so that data centers can add new ment. Vendors engineer containment into building
IT equipment such as blade servers. Data blocks so that as the data center grows, the enter-
center containment brings the power consumption prise simply adds more uniform pods. Containment
to cooling ratio down to a nearly 1 to 1 match in kW reliability and integrity derive from design redun-
consumed. It can save a data center approximately dancy that mitigates the downside risk of cooling
30-percent of its annual utility bill (lower OpEx) system failures.
without additional CapEx
Containment aligns with the enterprise by offering a
low TCO including low and progressive acquisition
costs, quick time to deploy, and lower operational
and maintenance costs. Maintenance costs grow
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only as the data center adds containment pods.
Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
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Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
Vertical Wall
(Figure Four)
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Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
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Data Center Knowledge Guide to Containment
Summary
Rack containment eases the containment road Containment should not be an afterthought. It is
map when the chimneys deployed are natively at the heart of data center planning, deployment
upgradeable in order to add fans. Chimneys ad- and scalability. The large data center operator
dress the human factor by removing hot air from cannot afford to ignore the sizeable savings
the room and the equation (see Figure Six), leav- it can realize by increasing compute densities
ing a cool, comfortable work environment even inside containment solutions.
working up close in front and behind the racks.
References
Prove Containment with
Leakage Testing The U.S. EPA
The containment package should include vendor Paul Bemis, President and CEO, Applied Math Modeling
testing to confirm that no more than 3-percent Matt Stansberry, Director of Content, Uptime Institute
air leakage remains. The testing method should David Joy, Marketing Manager & Dave Meadows,
pressurize the aisle with .001-inches of water Application Engineering Manager, Stulz
and gauge air leakage under those conditions.
Kris Domich, Principal Data Center Consultant,
A maximum 3-percent air leakage enables the Dimension Data
data center to match the cooling supply so Dave Martinez, Infrastructure Computing Services,
closely to the power consumption in the aisle Sandia National Labs
that 53 kW of cooling can effectively cool an
aisle drawing 50 kW of rack equipment power. Dr. Ian Bitterlin, Chief Technology Officer,
ARK Continuity, UK.
Ed Eacueo, Sr. Manager, Eaton Corp
“Rack Hygiene”, whitepaper, Eaton Corp
www.eaton.com/wrightline
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