Air Flow Key to Coping With Cooling Challenges

Many of the speakers at last week’s Data Center World (AFCOM) conference discussed the data center of the future, a facility fully engineered for cooling high-density blade server installations. But most companies can’t build that state-of-the-art facility just yet, and only a modest number of data center operators are actually making the transition to cooling their “hot spots” with water or fluid refrigerants.

As a result, there was also plenty of discussion about how best to soup up the data center of the present. In the short term, many companies will focus on making the most of air cooling as they prepare for a future transition to a new facility or new cooling systems.

How many data centers are using water or refrigerants for cooling? The best clue came from IBM, which provided details on its next-generation of blade server technology. “Ninety five percent of IBM’s blade customers are using air cooling,” said Steve Simon, director of IBM’s eServer BladeCenter strategy. “Sometimes you have a spot problem that requires water cooling.” “Right now, what the market will bear is air cooling,” said Bret Lehman, senior engineer with IBM’s xSeries Thermal Engineering team. “We plan on working with air.”