Ambient Air vs. Liquid Cooling in Data Centers, Server Rooms,
and Computer Rooms
by 42U
Heat is an important factor that significantly affects IT
performance. Traditionally, most datacenter managers have relied
upon the use of ambient air cooling solutions (alternating cool
and hot rows) to meet their cooling needs. However, ambient
air cooling solutions are often unable to handle high heat loads,
are not targeted, and can be cost and energy inefficient. As
power-intensive applications and server densities have increased,
datacenter managers are seeking new ways to dissipate heat bi-products.
Accordingly, the use of liquid cooling solutions has become
an increasingly popular part of many datacenter cooling strategies.
You can best mitigate heat issues if you have a thorough
heat dissipation plan and invest in scalable cooling solutions.
Below is a short overview of the two main approaches to
datacenter
cooling: ambient air cooling and liquid cooling.
Ambient Air Cooling
Datacenter ambient air cooling solutions typically involve the
use of alternating aisles of cool air between racks. Cool air
is supplied to the cold row through ducts under the raised datacenter
floor supplied by computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units.
The air is then exhausted from the back of the rack in the hot
row and is pulled toward the ceiling using the building's HVAC
system. Other methods of cooling using ambient air include the
use of fans mounted to the roof or rear door of a server rack
and the use of rack-mounted and wall air conditioners. Ambient
air cooling solutions are limited in their ability to handle
high heat loads, as they typically are only able to effectively
cool 5 to 10 kW per rack.
Liquid Cooling
Liquid Cooling Units are modular and temperature-neutral high-density
cooling solutions that utilize LCP air/water heat exchangers
and provide uniform, effective cooling for servers and IT equipment.
These units can be mounted at the rack base, or in a rack
"side car."
Liquid cooling
units have been used in industrial applications for years
and have been recently re-introduced in datacenter applications
to remove high levels of waste heat from server enclosures.
The LCP units use a special horizontal airflow with constant
temperature cold air provided at the front intake and hot air
removed from rear of the enclosure for optimized cooling.
Features include up to 30kW cooling output with three cooling
modules possible per equipment rack, and controlled variable
speed fan and water flow based on actual heat load generated
in a cabinet. You can place (or bay) liquid cooling units between
two server racks. Liquid cooling units have become an increasingly
popular choice for datacenter cooling, as they are better at
managing the head loads created by high-heat blade centers than
ambient air cooling solutions; are energy-efficient, as they
remove waste heat with no temperature impact in the room and
can be self-contained units; and can eliminate the need to construct
an expensive raised datacenter floor.
About 42U
42U focuses on providing Facilities and Data Center Managers
with objective and trusted independent information on
Data Center Power and
Data Center Cooling best practices along with
KVM over IP
and Remote Power
lights out management to help them reduce their organization's
power consumption. Our Data
Center Management website has helped millions of IT professionals
globally who search for best practices and technologies to help
them make their computer environment more efficient.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported
License.
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