Electronics Protection - September/October 2013 - (Page 10)

Feature Rack Containment 101 Ed Eacueo, Senior Manager of Product Marketing & Engineering, Eaton’s Wright Line Business Unit Today, virtualization and cloud computing are being adopted at an increasing rate. A key driver for the deployment of this technology is the reduction of operating costs associated with the consolidation of server, storage and network devices. By-products of these high-density computing environments include a net reduction in IT equipment and associated space. However, the resultant power and cooling loads are condensed into a smaller footprint and have a dynamic association with the IT processing load. While a legacy cooling architecture can be adapted to the new environment, it is most often inefficient and/or ineffective due to the following inherent design flaws: • Hot and cold air mixing • Misalignment of cooling units and IT racks • Localized inability to reject heat due to unbalanced heat loads on cooling units • Excessive distance between cooling units and heat loads • Air distribution is compromised by excessive cable loading • Inability of legacy cooling infrastructure to react to dynamic heat loads • Lack of airflow management to accommodate side to side heat rejection devices • Oversupply of cold air Rack-centric containment strategies are gaining acceptance with IT and facility managers who want to optimize their existing room layouts. As containment of hot and cold air streams increases in popularity, it becomes necessary to seal all air gaps in every critical component in the airflow stream to gain maximum effectiveness. This method is deployed today in well-managed raised-floor data centers, where sealing all potential air leakage gaps is critical to maintaining uniform sub-floor static pressure and airflow distribution. employ solutions that provide an impenetrable barrier around the front plane of the rack in a front-to-back dominated airflow environment. The tighter the seal provided around the front of the rack, exclusive of a thorough blanking panel strategy, the closer one can come to achieving increased energy efficiency and reduced cooling loads. Two primary drivers of rack hygiene best practices are hot spot prevention, which helps to maintain a constant inlet temperature and allows IT equipment to operate at optimal levels. Matching the cooling supply and demand can save energy and eliminate wasteful recirculation and bypass air streams. Ineffective rack airflow management at the rack and row level is a key contributor to aisle and room overheating. Rack hygiene can solve this problem by approaching the rack as part of the airflow management system and setting benchmarked standards for leakage. Five Airflow Fault Areas Though the industry has learned the benefits of blanking panels in the data center, there are as many as five additional rack-related areas requiring containment that are often overlooked. These fault areas can drive true performance gains in a front-to-back cooled environment. The five areas include: • Fault Area #1: Under the Rack The area under the rack to the floor deck can be difficult to manage because the height is a variable based on the size of rack levelers or casters and will vary from one rack manufacturer to another. This space can contain a substantial amount of uncontrolled air in an enterprise data center with multiple rows of server racks. Therefore, this is an area that can yield a large benefit if sealed appropriately. Viewing the Rack as a Plenum Today’s hot and cold air containment solutions are highly dependent on a tight interface with the rack. Therefore, there is a need to change our thinking about the rack and its function in today’s data center environments. The rack should be thought of as a “plenum” in the airflow stream. Unlike a typical empty air duct plenum, the rack plenum is the critical space in which high-performance servers, storage and switches reside. To ensure sufficient IT device cooling, predictable rack airflow management is necessary. In order to achieve this, all potential airflow openings should be controlled and managed. In addition to sealing unused space in the rack, there are at least five other rack-related areas that can directly affect airflow management and cooling performance, as well as improve energy efficiency. Understanding Rack Hygiene Hand-in-hand with viewing the rack as a plenum, the concept of “rack hygiene” encompasses the identification, analysis and repair of hot air leakage and cold air bypass routes within and around individual data center racks. Rack hygiene is used to describe the care in which a racked environment is designed, controlled and maintained. Regardless of rack dimensions, it is important that data center professionals 10 There is a potential leakage area under the rack because hot air can come across from below the rack, and cold air from perforated floortiles can bypass the rack in this space. • Fault Area #2 and #3: Left and Right Side of Front 19 Inch Vertical Rails Because of customer demand for adjustable front rails and cable pass-through capability, the areas to the left and right of the front rails on most 19 inch racks are potential leakage points. The space between the side of the vertical rail and the side of the rack frame or side panel is typically wide open. It is a potential leakage area into which hot air can penetrate or by which cold air can pass. This rack environment can severely compromise a robust blanking panel strategy. September/October 2013 www.ElectronicsProtectionMagazine.com http://www.ElectronicsProtectionMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Electronics Protection - September/October 2013

Geist Unveils Rapid Deployment Data Center Environmental Monitoring System
Enabling Effective Thermal Management with DCIM
Predicting Gasket Performance: SE Measurements with a TEM Cell to Study Gasket Reliability
Rack Containment 101
The Nine Core Elements of DCIM
Using Electronic Locking Solutions to Secure Enclosures and Meet Storage Compliance Needs
Hammond’s HJ Series Ticks All the Boxes
Rogers Introduces Poron SlimGrip Foam
Ferrite Suppressors Clear Interference
Fujipoly Thermal Sheets are a Cooling Influence on LED Lighting
GE Introduces TLE Series UPS Platform
Gore PolyVent XL Improves Reliability of Large Outdoor Enclosures
IMI Sensors Launches Linear Adjust Mechanical Vibration Switch
Industry News
Calendar of Events
Five Ways to Realize Server Room Profitability

Electronics Protection - September/October 2013