Cool Data Center Idea Cuts Costs, Even in Heat

Data centers housing large amounts of IT equipment have enabled real advances in our technology-focused world. Dell customer Bing Maps, for example, uses its modular data center in Boulder, Colorado, to process the millions of images that make possible its detailed global maps.

But as any data center manager will tell you, all those servers also mean a lot of aggregate electricity consumption.  And, the power consumption of those servers generates heat, requiring air conditioning for cooling which can consume even more electric power.

Data centers require some kind of cooling to maintain their IT equipment within its rated operating environmental specifications and to prevent a service interruption that might occur from equipment over-heating. Traditionally, data center managers have thrown as much cooling as possible at their hardware, which further adds to the electricity load.

These data center challenges are all happening in the context of a growing global focus on energy efficiency from both an environmental standpoint and a financial one – with a typical division of roles, data center managers may not own the responsibility for their electricity bill, but operations managers and other executives are seeing the environmental and financial costs of their data centers as an area ripe for change.

The good news:  In recent years data center operators have been making great improvements in energy efficiency – whether by leveraging best practices like hot aisle/cold aisle configurations, innovations in energy management through software solutions, taking advantage of economizer modes in cooling units, and more.

By using Dell Fresh Air-capable hardware, data centers can run at higher temperatures, tolerate excursions, and take advantage of cooling with outside air, which could translate into operational cost savings of approximately $350,000 per megawatt of installed IT per year*.

Despite the nice view, the cool air of the mountains that the Bing Maps location enjoys is not required to use Dell Fresh Air-capable hardware. Dell shows us how with a live demonstration right on the campus of its corporate headquarters.

> Read the full article on Tech Page One and learn more about the Dell Fresh Air Hot House, an ongoing project at Dell with partner Intel to showcase the extreme temperature and humidity tolerances of Dell’s off-the-shelf Fresh Air-capable hardware while performing at high workload levels in a non-air-conditioned environment.