Cooling

Cooling architecture for data and facility environments is having to evolve. Where power requirements at a rack level were once in the 2-3 kW range, the introduction of 1U multiprocessor units (two to four processors) and blade server systems have pushed power, and cooling requirements at the enclosure up to 20kW of power, or more. Traditional facility cooling practices, which may still be effective under many circumstances, are not able to address the issues that arise as computer rooms and datacenters adopt blade or similar server configurations. The higher heat loads that come with high density computing environments are demanding alternate cooling solutions to ambient air, which is quickly reaching its heat removal limit.

At Potencia Technologies, our goal is to identify the need, and match the need to the solution that best meets the need. Sounds simple, but it is all too easy to overlook the root causes of cooling issues within a facility or datacenter environment. The solution for some environments, based on their existing infrastructure may involve merely employing some best practices so that they can take advantage of unrealized efficiencies. Another site may have serious problems with their cooling infrastructure that involve a completely new cooling architecture to meet the cooling requirements of all, or part of their datacenter.