Buildings Magazine - August

heating the water into a vapor via immersion elements or infrared lamps, which adds cooling loads to the room, or with ultrasonic humidification, which saves money due to its fractional energy usage as compared to the water heating methods. This works via very fast vibrations that cause the water to mist.

This mist is actually cool and does not add a cooling load to the room.

6) Optimized Airflows

Blanking panels are key for making sure airflow goes where it’s needed. These panels block off other open spaces within the cabinets that air could otherwise pass through, making it so that the air can only go through the servers to cool them down, not bypass the servers to get back to the CRAC units.

Improved cable management can also enhance airflow by eliminating the need for articulating or folding cable support arms.

These devices seem like a great idea, but the
bundles of cables tied to them block air from
getting out of the cabinet. A deeper, wider
cabinet also gives you plenty of room for
cable management and allows more airflow
through the cabinet and servers. We've mea-
sured the temperature differences between
the back of the servers and these cable man-
agement arms and then between the arms
and the back door of the cabinet and found a

10 degree or more difference in air temperature. The heat was being trapped between the cable management arms and the servers.

7) Verifying the IT Load

Meet with your IT group and work together to develop a plan for better data center management. Facilities and IT should be on the same page as far as removing old servers, deploying new ones and improving layouts. Remove or replace antiquated servers during refresh projects and turn off legacy or orphaned servers.

How many data centers have a handful of
servers still running in the corner of the data
center because the person who managed
them left years ago and now everyone is
afraid to turn them off? We have clients who
have a policy that if a server hasn’t been
managed in five years according to a server
management log, they unplug it. If no one
complains, the server is removed.

Also, work with the IT department or anyone else involved in managing the data center to turn the lights off all day. Servers don’t care if it’s dark. Put in occupancy sensors so people who need to work in the data center can still have light, and make sure there’s emergency lighting at the end of the rows.

8) Nothing Saves More
Money than Off

Anything you can turn off will save you money, from redundant CRAC units to compressors. Implementing the low-hanging fruit of efficiency measures will conserve energy and lead to eliminating CRAC units.

It’s tempting to leave them on for redundancy in case there’s a failure, but the fans from the CRAC units add heat to the supply air and add extra load to the room on top of what they consume power wise. If you don’t need them for airflow, turn them off and let them come back on during a failure mode. B

Chuck Kensky is the Executive Vice President of Bala Consulting Engineers.

There’s no need to install a thermostatic mixing valve below the sink. The EQ Series combines touch-free style and durability with integrated scald protection. The result is a solid, easy-to-install faucet that meets ASSE 1070 requirements.