Understanding Data Centre Cooling Technology

The heat and energy that radiates from a data centre is quite substantial. The average data centre uses a lot of electricity to keep all of its systems up and running. They have to worry about networking power, backup systems, security, cooling, and more. All of these components need electricity to operate and this gives off a lot of heat. Having a hot data centre is not efficient as the network and infrastructure needs a cool environment for optimal output.

Demanding Power

Data centres house powerful computers, IT components, and infrastructure that must be kept at a certain temperature to ensure efficiency. An organisation that moves into a data centre must first assess their power demands. When searching for data center solutions, a business must consider their needs and choose accordingly.

A data centres electrical system demands a huge amount of power, it also needs an uninterrupted power supply and backup generators to ensure there are no issues when the main grid goes off. The UPS system protect the computers and keep them running until the main generator is back online.

Cooling Data Centres

Some data centres, the ones that are bigger than aircraft hangars and manage data for big companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google require a tremendous amount of energy to operate each year. Some of them actually consume more energy than a small country as information and communication filter through the centre every day.

To ensure they are running at an optimal level, all of this IT infrastructure must be kept cool. A warm environment affects the computers and productivity. Conventional data centres use a variety of cooling techniques to modify the environment, ranging from raised floors to computer room air conditioners (CRAC).

The raised floors are put in place, so computer room air conditioning infrastructure can push cold air through the servers and cool the components of the computer. This works well for smaller data centres but is inefficient for a larger building.

Modern facilities use innovative data centres that use state of the art cooling devices that are specifically made for the building.

Data centres use an enormous amount of electricity, generating huge energy requirements. This should not come as a surprise as some of the biggest data centres can dwarf football stadiums or airplane hangars. All in all, data centres consume close to 3% of the world’s electricity. All of this power needs to be kept cool using innovative systems.