A new graphical white paper from APC-Schneider Electricinvestigates how ducted air containment can simultaneously improve the energy efficiency and reliability of data centers.
The white paper's deployment advice centers on ensuring an adequate and fairly uniform vacuum pressure in the ceiling plenum. This, in turn, can be achieved by providing sufficient ducted cooling airflow, says the company, creating a relatively “tight” ceiling system, employing deeper ceiling plenums, and sealing unnecessary leakage paths in racks and containment structures. The paper examines available ducting options and explains how such systems should be deployed and operated.
"Ducting hot IT-equipment exhaust to a drop ceiling can be an effective air management strategy," states the paper's executive summary. "Typical approaches include ducting either individual racks or entire hot aisles and may be passive (ducting only) or active (includes fans)."
Practical cooling limits are established and best-practice recommendations are provided. Since all ducted equipment, ducted cooling units, and the ceiling plenum are shown functioning as a single entity, the use of CFD modeling is recommended for new deployments -- particularly when design constraints are close to the best-practice limits established by the company.
View/Download the white paper.