A white paper from leading manufacturer of raised floors and airflow management solutions,
Tate Tasman Access Floors identifies server leakage as a major potential source of bypass air in contained cold aisles.
Based on a study conducted by Tate of 10 servers from five leading manufacturers, the white paper establishes that the servers will leak cold air into the hot aisle at a rate of 23-135% of their designed flow rate when a positive static pressure is experienced at the server inlet. Server leakage at these rates will significantly impact annual energy costs at data centres.
Tate is therefore expanding its product offering for the data centre segment with the introduction of SmartAire P, a range of pressure sensing automatic dampers that minimise bypass airflow through servers, racks and other containment structures with a variable-load profile.
Constant airflow into a contained system with a variable-load profile wastes energy during times of non-peak load performance as airflow is forced through servers and other spaces in the containment structure. The Tate study indicates as much as 300-600 cfm of bypass airflow can be forced through a 2m rack of servers in idle mode.
In the idle state, servers draw less air from the contained system, causing static pressure in the aisle to increase, and forcing more air through the servers even when fan speeds are reduced.
SmartAire P automatic dampers, when installed under a portion of the airflow panels in the cold aisle will automatically vary the airflow to maintain a desired static pressure. The SmartAire P is daisy chained to SmartAire C units for a primary/secondary configuration that automatically modulates all dampers in the aisle to control the static pressure and maintain a user defined set point. The resulting balance eliminates leakage through idle servers and other gaps in the containment structure.
Tate is a leading manufacturer of raised access floors and in-floor cooling systems for data centres.
