Common data center hurdles: Cooling and power distribution problems

Common data center hurdles: Cooling and power distribution problems

Date: Oct 28, 2008

A data center manager discusses his primary problems: aging AC units and not-so-green hardware.

Read the full transcript from this video below:  
Common data center hurdles: Cooling and power distribution problems

Jan Stafford: Hi, Jan Stafford behind the camera here, and I'm taking with Clarence Rogers. He's a data center manager. What do you see is the most common problems in your data center?

Clarence Rogers: Most common problems that I see in my data center, and currently for everybody else right now, is cooling and power distribution. Particularly in my data center, I have a lot of aging AC units that I must start looking at replacing. And trying to figure out a way to either replace them, we do controls on them, then trying to get upper management to buy into newer hardware. Hopefully, that we'll advise them by saying they must do something now or they going to put up more money in the long run in the cooling of the data center. Hopefully trying to convince us, maybe we can start going green, even though this is a retrofit data center that we have.

Jan Stafford: Well, thanks a lot Clarence.

Clarence Rogers: Thank you.

More on Data center cooling

  • canderson

    Brown's new supercomputer

    VIDEO - Brown University's Center for Computation and Visualization is the new home of a multimillion-dollar IBM supercomputer that researchers will use for tasks such as predicting climate change and human genome mapping.

  • canderson

    Air-side and water-side economizers in the data center

    VIDEO - What are air- and water-side economizers, and why are they crucial to data center energy savings? IBM distinguished scientist and former ASHRAE chairman Roger Schmidt explains the pros and cons of air-side and water-side economizers.

  • canderson

    Why is saving data center energy important?

    VIDEO - Saving energy in a data center can translate into serious cost savings. Robert McFarlane discusses some real-life examples of how data centers have saved on their power bill and achieved other benefits from energy-efficient changes to their facilities.

  • New data center cooling strategies to improve efficiency, lower costs

    Tip - Stagnant strategies for data center cooling will keep energy bills climbing ever higher, but a more modern approach can bring them back down to earth.

  • passive cooling

    Definition - Passive cooling is an approach to cooling computer components through slowing the speed at which the component, such as the processor, is operating. That approach contrasts with active cooling, which involves using fans in preference to slowing the speed of the component.

  • active cooling

    Definition - Active cooling is the use of fans to reduce the heat of computer components. Active cooling contrasts with passive cooling, which involves reducing the speed at which a component is running to reduce its heat.

  • ambient air cooling

    Definition - Ambient air cooling is the use of naturally cool air surrounding a building, such as a data center, to reduce heat inside the facility. The use of ambient air and/or nearby water sources to maintain appropriate ambient temperatures in a data center is sometimes referred to as free cooling because they take advantage of naturally occurring phenomena rather than more heavily technological solutions.

  • PUE metric helps keep data center energy use in check

    Tip - The PUE metric helps smaller enterprises measure data center energy use to determine if various efficiency initiatives are worth pursuing.
Back to top