Optimize Airflow and HVAC

Optimizing the airflow and HVAC in your datacenter is one of the best ways to save energy. In an average datacenter, the HVAC consumes 40% of the energy consumption. As such, there is a great deal of potential for energy savings, with some relatively simple changes to how you set up your data center. Here are some ways that you can consider improving the HVAC performance in your data center.

Air Flow Management

Manage airflow for cooling efficiency
  • Inexpensive grommets, diffusers, and blanking panels can keep cold air from mixing with hot exhaust air.
  • One large data center example saved $360,000 annually thanks to inexpensive air flow management measures.

Air Flow Management

Move to a hot aisle/cold aisle layout
  • Rows of server racks should be oriented so that the fronts of servers face each other. In addition, the backs of server racks should also face each other as well, forming hot (exhaust) and cold aisles.
  • When used in combination with containment, DOE estimates reduction in fan energy use of 20% to 25%.

Air Flow Management

Utilize containment/enclosures
  • Curtains or Plexiglas panels can keep cold air from mixing with hot air exhausted from the backs of servers, reducing overall cooling costs.
  • In data centers with hot/cold aisle arrangements, containment systems can reduce energy expense by 5% to 10%.

HVAC

Consider a water-side economizer
  • Use a cooling tower instead of a mechanical chiller to supply chilled water for cooling the data center.
  • Reduce the cost of chilled water by up to 70%.
  • However, this solution may work best in certain installations, which are larger and in areas with ample fresh water supply.

HVAC

Install in-rack or in-row cooling
  • These systems bring cold air closer to (or directly to) servers.
  • Can use 3 times less energy in high-energy density server rack than conventional cooling systems.

HVAC

Make humidification adjustments
  • Generally speaking, IT equipment can tolerate wider ranges of humidity.
  • BNY Mellon expanded humidification set points, reducing humidification run-time from 80% to 20% of the time.
  • If you must add humidity, use energy-efficient technologies such as misters, foggers, and ultrasonic units.
  • eBay’s ultrasonic humidification units save $50,000 annually, a 2-year payback.

HVAC

Use an air-side economizer
  • Cool your data center for (almost) free by using air from outside, weather permitting.
  • NetApp’s data center reduced cooling system energy usage by nearly 90 percent.

HVAC

Use sensors and controls to match cooling capacity & airflow with IT loads
  • Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is the convergence of IT and building facilities functions so that energy, equipment and floor space are used as efficiently as possible.
  • DCIM provides information to allow you to “right-size” the infrastructure and reduce energy costs by as much as 30 percent.
  • ENERGY STAR computer servers, data center storage and large network equipment products all have sensors which can interface with open source third party software to pull input power and ambient air temperature data for each product to help feed real time data to DCIM solutions.

Data Center Equipment