Comments on: Intel: Servers Do Fine With Outside Air

By: Green Data Center « Kevin's Blog

Green Data Center « Kevin's Blog — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:21:15 +0000

[...] that is most common, but it does a great job with much lower energy consumption. There have been studies that indicate there may not be as great a need to cool servers as once thought, and it may make [...]

By: Turbulentes Sommerwetter führt zu Datenverlust | wm it&consulting

Turbulentes Sommerwetter führt zu Datenverlust | wm it&consulting — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:59:44 +0000

[...] Einfluss des Wetters auf die Datensicherheit und Systemstabilität sind also wesentlich höher als erwartet. Dieser Beitrag wurde unter Datenrettung, Hardware veröffentlicht. Setze ein Lesezeichen auf den [...]

By: Don Atwood - Intel

Don Atwood - Intel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:32:48 +0000

Great comments everyone – the truth is our (Intel’s) experiment here at the time was almost revolutionary but today it’s widely adopted. Due to NDA I can’t say who, where, or how but I walked a new DC today that was 100% free cooling 365 day per year and it was at a very large scale that makes my test of 900 servers look small. If you do it in the right location, it works; it’s not debatable anymore, there are very large scale installations globally and many large companies are not even installing chillers or DX at all but they are using 100% outside air….not in phoenix or hot climates of coarse 

By: Tom Nats

Tom Nats — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:20:02 +0000

For your on the fence, we have two rooms using economizers and are looking forward to another Fall and Winter saving $1000s on cooling savings.

We’re coming up on a year and although we’re a small data center, I’ve had whopping 2 customers lose hard drives in their colo machines…

Feel free to contact me if you are still skeptical. We’re in Morrison, Colorado which works great for us, not other parts of the country though.

By: Keeping Workplace Server Room Green « Inconvenient Youth

Keeping Workplace Server Room Green « Inconvenient Youth — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:59:16 +0000

[...] this very issue. As a matter of fact, Intel has recently done testing using a method called “air-side economization” which uses outside air to cool server rooms. It turns out that “Using air-side economizers [...]

By: Ray Martin

Ray Martin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:24:42 +0000

I applaud the research on using outside make up air or air economizers. However, I heard of an anecdote about a series of small data centers that were located near the coast. Economizers were installed in these data centers, but the salt content of the air reportedly caused corrosion problems with the HVAC equipment and the servers. Does anyone have experience with corrosion due to salt in the makeup air?

By: Joe Casanova

Joe Casanova — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:19:36 +0000

This is always an interesting idea and thinking outside the box is definitely the way to go, especially when cost cutting is such a huge draw.

My company has been using this technique since August 2008. We started with our internal datacenter and have been pushing it whenever we do a proposal for a datacenter construction proposal (along with one that features actual air conditioning). We haven’t had many bites because of people afraid of the “dirty” outside air, but we have had a lot of raised eye brows with clients and peers.

By: Edward L Gutowski

Edward L Gutowski — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:18:23 +0000

Data center operators are being asked to take several leaps of faith when adopting the outside air concept with regard to particulate filtration, corrosive gases, operating temperature, humidity control, and space pressurization. Taking all these risks at one time makes it difficult to identify which one may have caused you to experience a failure.
1) gaseous contaminates with corrosive properties cannot be easily filtered. You may or may not be in a high risk area. Also, if you have on site generators that come on line, you will likely want to control economizers to the off position to avoid diesel exhaust being pulled in your space through the outside air louvers ait the data center air handler.
2.) Humidifying the stream of cold winter air requires humidification equipment with much higher capacity to avoid static discharge. Humidification at this scale is not cheap.
3.) Space pressurization control is difficult when moving large volumes of air in and out of the building. Pulling the data center under a negative pressure could result in untreated and unfiltered air pulled in from adjoining spaces or cracks in the building.
4.) Starting off at a high operating temperature leaves little room for a cooling flywheel effect when mechanical systems temporarily go down. You go from 92 to 130 F much quicker than 65 to 130 F when your high density servers are waiting for the generators to come on line to restore the power to the cooling equipment . At the very least, consider the fans and pumps into your UPS load calculation if taking this approach for higher room temperature operation

If we are going to ask our clients to try out the outside air economizer concept they should be made fully aware of the risks they might be taking to gain the benefits of lower energy costs.

By: Dan WIllemin

Dan WIllemin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:38:59 +0000

I am just starting research on outside air and the possible effects on data center equipment. This article while interesting does not address my major concern. That would be hygroscopic dusts. It is likely the dusts in NM are not of the variety found in costal areas (where most of the world population lives). My research has found data to support a level of 50% of dust particles are sea salt in costal areas. Depending on the season, the numbers can reach near 100% depending on location wind speed and direction. Because the salt particles are the result of dried sea spray, the sizes can be very small ( 0.1 to 5 microns) and therefore difficult to filter. If this layer of fine dust in NM was 50% salt I wonder how well these servers would work at 90% RH? The same cuold be true for corrosion and related failures, if this data center was run for years in a much more humid climate. I am working on a test to use powered salt as part of a dust mixture to test servers. It may be possible to use mostly outside air for cooling but I would want to make sure my servers could handle it first!

By: Simon Rohrich

Simon Rohrich — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:44:51 +0000

Why even bother? Interconnect water cooled, closed loop and sealed micro containers in an “warehouse like” building shell and stop mucking about with a flawed system. Chuck it. Hot isle/cold isle will not survive Moore’s law. Set your air cooled waterchiller outside the building,