Improve Uptime    Avoid Building New Space

Poor thermal and environmental management of data centres is fast becoming one of the most serious risks to availability.

Traditional room-based cooling was initially aimed at servicing racks drawing less than 4kW each. Today, modern IT equipment is pushing peak power density to 28kW per rack or more and creating very high localised heat dissipation (hotspots).

These cooling issues have been further exacerbated by the fact that the facilities in place were built and designed to protect and house the last generation of server and communication hardware, which in many centres have been superseded; the old layout is now compromising the effectiveness of the environmental management, for example, older racks can impede the flow of cool air to and from the computer room air conditioning (CRAC), creating more hotspots. CFD will help in finding and solving these issues.

The upshot is that the ability to predict and guarantee the performance of the facility is compromised, ultimately resulting in sporadic and, sometimes, prolonged incidents of downtime and/or operational risk, these can be avoided by using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis.

There is also the ever-growing need to build new data centre space with bespoke cooling methods (e.g. water) to accomodate more severs. An audit and CFD model of your data centre can demonstrate suitable adjustments to present space without resorting to a multi-million pound capital project for a new data centre.

Using the latest in CFD software - 6SigmaDC 'The Virtual Facility' - EigenForge can help mitigate facility failure and provide greater utilisation of present estate by creating a virtual, 3D model of your data centre. This will provide scientific validation and optimisation of your existing or future data centre design and environmental management.

Whether you want to troubleshoot problems in an existing data centre or to secure the optimum configuration of a new data centre/computer room, with the CFD "Virtual Facility" you can:

• walk-through a full 3-dimensional model and have an inventory of all recognised equipment housed within your facilit
• visualise the temperature distribution and airflow at both room and cabinet level
• track historic changes in equipment layout
• preview planned, future equipment deployment
• valuate the thermal/environmental impact of these options prior to deployment

In design, CFD enables effective decision-making in respect of:

• Floor Void Depth
• Rack layout
• Locating air handling units
• Redundancy in cooling
• Choice of grill damping

In operation, CFD enables you to optimise:

• Pressure distribution within the void and note the effect of cabling and other obstructions
• Flow rates through grilles
• Power/load throughout facility
• ACU failure analysis and redundancy