Paper: How to fix data center hot spots

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A new white paper from APC by Schneider Electric describes the root cause of hot spots in the data center, recommends methods to identify them, reviews typical actions taken to avoid them, and provides a list of best practices for fixing them.

According to a recent Uptime Institute study cited in the paper, 10% of data center racks run hotter than recommended reliability guidelines, and as data center rack power densities increase to an average of 5 kW/rack or greater, the percentage of racks with hot spots will increase beyond this value.

"Data center operators take a variety of actions to eliminate hot spots," notes Paul Lin, the paper's author. "Some of these actions result in short term fixes, but may come with an energy penalty -- and some actions may even create more hot spots."

The analysis concludes that careful airflow management is an easy and cost-effective way to permanently eliminate hot spots while saving energy, and provides an alternative to the capital expense of adding more cooling units.

View/Download the white paper.