INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
By Steve Hone, CEO of the International Data Centre Trade
Association (DCA), and Daniel Pope, CEO and Co-Founder of
Submer Immersion Cooling.
he 11th September saw top industry
practitioners from Europe coming
together for what was the ninth
annual Data Centre Transformation
Conference hosted by the International
Data Centre Trade Association (DCA) in
Manchester, United Kingdom. One of the
many workshops taking place was titled
‘How Fluid is our Future?’ and this debate
focused on a range of new fluid based
cooling solutions which for certain high
density applications or geographic regions
may prove to be a far more effective,
appropriate and viable alternative to
traditional air based solutions.
When it comes to data centre cooling in
the Middle East region there are several
serious challenges which need to be
overcome. The first is one of temperature:
In the summer, the daytime outside
temperature can be as high as 50oC and
although night-time temperatures are
lower, even in the winter the temperature
in the cities rarely ever drops below 23oC.
This means that AC systems not only need
to work overtime to keep things cool,
but the extreme heat frequently causes
roof top plant to overheat and in extreme
cases has even resulted in some electronic
components melting, causing outages and
service downtime.
It is not only temperature which poses a
challenge. The Middle East is also a harsh
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environment in many ways. So, the next
biggest challenge to overcome is airborne.
If you have ever visited the Middle East,
you may have experienced a sand storm or
two in your time and even when the skies
are clear you will often notice a fine film
of sand/dust on most external surfaces.
This is a constant challenge for many food
preparation, pharmaceuticals, electronics
and manufacturing facilities located in the
UAE where any airborne contamination is
a real problem and a data centre facility is
no exception.
It’s easy to see what a problem this is for
a data centre when you consider most
data centres are cooled by circulating
large volumes of chilled air at high
velocity around a room full of sensitive IT
equipment, that air has to ultimately come
from somewhere and that somewhere is
from outside.
Even in some of the cleanest of
environments on the planet (such as the
ones found in Sweden or Norway) the
air still has to be carefully filtered and
monitored to remove any potentially
damaging particulates entering or passing
through a data centre facility, now
imagine what it must be like for a facilities
manager whose mission critical data
centre is surrounded by sand which scours
surfaces, eats metal and continually blocks
filters and server fans.
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