What Is Data Center Cooling and How Does It Encourage Sustainability?

By
November 7, 2022

Controlling the temperature within data centers to reduce heat is exactly what it sounds like: data center cooling. A firm could suffer irreparable damage if the heat and airflow in a data center are not properly controlled. With so many resources being used to keep the temperature down, energy efficiency is drastically reduced, and the risk of servers overheating also increases quickly. A contemporary data center’s cooling system controls several variables to direct the flow of heat and cooling for maximum effectiveness. These variables could be, but are not restricted to:

  • Cooling performance
  • Temperature
  • Cooling fluid
  • The energy it consumes

The interconnectedness of each component in the cooling system for data centers affects the cooling system’s overall effectiveness. Therefore, no matter how you configure your server room or data center, cooling is essential to having a functional data center that can be used to run your business.

The Importance Of Data Center Cooling

Extreme temperature and humidity is fatal for electrical and IT equipment. Most IT equipment and gadgets generate heat, which they must promptly expel to maintain operation. Devices and equipment can be damaged by excessive heat and humidity, resulting in a malfunction or complete failure—damaged equipment increases the risk of damage. As a result of these hazards, equipment have to be frequently pushed for servicing or have to be replaced more frequently, raising operational expenses.

Working Of Data Center Cooling

Cooling a data center involves taking out the air’s extra heat and replacing it with cooler air. Usually, this is carried out in one of several ways:

  • They are bringing in outside air, cooling it, and circulating it inside the building after exhausting hot air outdoors.
  • It is cooling the facility by exhausting hot air outdoors and bringing in pre-cooled outside air. Free cooling is this strategy; it only works for buildings in colder climes.
  • Bringing the facility’s temperature up to the highest recommended level and replacing failing equipment. Utilizing this so-called heat or close-coupled cooling can be less expensive than alternative cooling techniques, which may cost much more than replacing the equipment.
  • Internal air is cooled via recycling, typically using a hot and cold aisle configuration to maximize cooling effectiveness.

Benefits of Data Center Cooling

Despite being very useful in general, here are some of the various benefits of data center cooling:

Enhanced efficiency

Although data doesn’t move more quickly in colder server rooms, it does move a lot quicker than if it were trying to cross a downed server! Create new cooling solutions quickly and easily since data centers can readily produce hot spots. This requires only air-cooling systems that can readily adjust how cold air is utilized or easily adaptable liquid cooling technologies. Overall, this makes scaling up a data center more effective.

Keeps the servers intact

Servers can remain online for longer thanks to effective data center cooling technologies. However, any server failure will impact your company and your clients because overheating can be disastrous in a professional setting.

Better technological lifespan

Constantly overheating computers are doomed to fail before they reach their predicted end of life. Because of this, the cost of cooling equipment in a data center starts to pay for itself quickly. With the introduction of data center cooling methods, a piece of hardware can last longer, and a company can spend less on infrastructure replacement. Instead of intentionally producing industrial waste, businesses should be shifting toward greener IT solutions.

Conclusion

The need for data centers will only grow. Thus, facility operators and their clients need to look at more efficient and economical cooling options. There are solutions for everyone, whether they want to consider less hazardous alternatives like geothermal and free cooling or invest in more modern technology like liquid immersion cooling for powerful servers.