Improve Airflow with In-Row Cooling & Aisle Containment in Data Centers

Many organizations are expanding their data centers to take advantage of new applications and services that can provide competitive advantages. That often creates a quandary — how do we cool this new equipment? Traditional perimeter cooling units are highly inefficient, and have trouble delivering chilled air throughout the room. This can cause hotspots and the potential for overheating.

It would be difficult to upgrade or replace perimeter cooling units without decommissioning the data center. That means downtime, and downtime means money. A faster and more cost-efficient approach is to implement aisle containment and in-row cooling. The right solution will not only address immediate requirements but eliminate hotspots, reduce energy consumption and support further expansion.

Aisle containment encloses either the cold aisle (where chilled air enters the front of the equipment) or the hot aisle (where exhaust air exits the back of the equipment), reducing the amount of space to be cooled and preventing the mixing of hot and cold air. Aisle containment coupled with in-row cooling can be particularly valuable because it focuses the chilled air where it’s needed most.

As the name implies, in-row cooling sits within the row of equipment like another rack or cabinet. It’s a modular approach that allows for additional cooling capacity to be added as the data center continues to grow.

Enconnex offers chilled water and direct expansion (DX) in-row cooling units. Chilled water is more efficient — even room-temperature water up to 75 degrees will provide adequate cooling for most environments. However, the DX unit is a great option for data centers that don’t have access to water. Each unit has nine sets of hot-swappable fans for improved airflow and easier maintenance.

Our in-row cooling units have intelligent features that enable them to ramp up or down according to the temperature and humidity readings within the aisle. Network connectivity allows them to communicate with one another and work in tandem to eliminate hotspots.

A low-density data center might require two or three cooling units per row, while a super-high-density environment might require 20. The Enconnex team calculates the heat dissipated based upon the manufacturer’s specifications for each device. We also look at server log files to determine utilization, which affects the amount of heat generated.

When designing a solution, we discuss the customer’s short- and long-term plans. If the customer intends to add more equipment within the next six months to a year, we might recommend implementing enough cooling units to accommodate that growth. If they plan to implement more equipment in, say, three years, we can always add more cooling units at that time.

Organizations that implement in-row cooling units may be able to fully decommission their perimeter cooling systems. This not only saves energy and maintenance costs but frees up space in the data center, as those units typically have a service corridor that can be repurposed.

Data center expansion is often constrained by a number of factors, including the ability to cool the IT equipment. Aisle containment and in-row cooling offer a means of rapidly adding cooling capacity while increasing the overall efficiency of the environment.