Brief introduction of hot and cold aisles in data center computer room

As IT equipment tends toward the era of high-density centralized management, the heat dissipation problem faced by data centers is becoming more and more serious. The emergence of the TIA942 standard provides an effective guidance for avoiding this problem.

During the use of the data center computer room, it is restricted by various factors, resulting in unreasonable and unsmooth airflow in the computer room. Because the IT equipment relies on the low-temperature air sent by the computer room air conditioner to fully exchange with its heat dissipation, it takes away heat and reduces the temperature inside the rack.

Temperature and airflow organization play the role of the heat exchange medium link. When the heat exchange link is not smooth and unreasonable, the status quo can only be that the capacity of the air conditioner in the computer room is far greater than the actual demand to meet the needs of the computer room. As a result, the investment in air-conditioning equipment increases, the operating cost increases, and the PUE value of the computer room increases.

Therefore, how to plan the airflow organization in the computer room of the data center is of great significance. It is to classify the existing unreasonable airflow organization in the computer room and carry out reasonable transformation according to different types. Effectively isolate the hot and cold air, so that the cold air can be smoothly sent into the communication equipment for heat exchange, and the hot air generated by the exchange is sent back to the air conditioning unit to avoid unnecessary cold and heat exchange and improve the efficiency of the air conditioning system. Reduce the operating cost of the computer room.

Based on years of experience in planning airflow organization, the data center airflow organization is divided into the following four forms: computer room airflow organization, static plenum airflow organization, rack airflow organization, and IT equipment airflow organization.

The ultimate goal of rationally planning the airflow organization of the data center is to quickly dissipate heat for IT equipment, improve the utilization rate of air conditioning resources, reduce unnecessary waste of cold sources, and increase the PUE value of the data center. So how should we correctly and reasonably plan the airflow organization of the data center? Let’s regard these four airflow organization forms as four different places where the airflow flows through, then any problem in any place will directly or indirectly affect To the problem of rapid heat dissipation of IT equipment. We need to analyze the possible problems in these four airflow organization forms one by one, in order to find a solution.

To properly plan the airflow organization of IT equipment, the most important thing is to understand the IT equipment we use, understand its power consumption and loss, heating power, fan inlet and outlet air and temperature difference, the air volume calculation required by a single device, and so on. With these data, it is possible to calculate the heat required by the entire data center for the overall power and heat generation of the rack and computer room, and use this data to select the capacity of the precision air conditioner.