FEATURE
With air being the primary source used to cool data centres , ASHRAE ( American Society of Heating , Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers ) has worked towards making this technology as efficient and sustainable as possible . Since 2004 , it has published a common set of criteria for cooling IT servers with the participation of ITE and cooling system manufacturers entitled TC9.9 Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments .
ASHRAE has focused on the efficiency and reliability of cooling the ITE in the data centre . Several revisions have been published with the latest being released in 2021 ( revision 5 ). This latest generation TC9.9 highlights a new class of high-density air-cooled ITE ( H1 class ) which focuses more on cooling highdensity servers and racks with a tradeoff in terms of energy efficiency due to lower cooling supply air temperatures recommended to cool the ITE .
As to the question of whether or not air and liquid cooling can coexist in the data centre white space , it has done so for decades already , and moving forward many experts expect to see these two cooling technologies coexisting for years to come .
What do server power trends reveal ?
It ’ s easy to assume that when it comes to cooling , a one size will fit all in terms of power and cooling consumption , both now
Gordon Johnson , Senior CFD Manager , Subzero Engineering
and in the future – but that ’ s not accurate . It ’ s more important to focus on the actual workload for the data centre that we ’ re designing or operating . In the past , a common assumption with air cooling was that once you went above 25kW per rack it was time to transition to liquid cooling . But , the industry has made some changes in regard to this , enabling data centres to cool up to and even exceed 35kW per rack with traditional air cooling . www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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