Spot Coolers -- 4 Reasons to Use Portable AC Units in Data Centers
Friday afternoon finally arrives and the week is drawing to a close. Your mind is already drifting to this weekend's big game. Suddenly the soft hum of the AC unit stops. This can't be good.
You take a walk over to the data center, and your chin hits the floor as you watch the over-temperature lights on your racks of blade servers bathe the entire area in a red glow.
This is NOT the time to decide you need spot cooling in your data center. Even if your data center has primary cooling, you'll benefit from spot cooling.
Four reasons to use portable AC units in your data center:
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Supplemental Cooling for hot spots where equipment is concentrated. Spot coolers are compact and air flow can be directed towards a piece of equipment or an area of heat concentration.
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Temporary Cooling for planned high heat loads. If you know you're going to shift a load from one server cluster to another while you perform maintenance, you can spot cool the cluster doing double-duty to insure it stays at an optimal temperature.
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Emergency Cooling when your primary air conditioning requires maintenance. Friday evening might be shot while you wait for the primary A/C to come back on line, but with adequate auxiliary cooling you probably won't miss the big game trying to find ways to keep your data center up and running.
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Disaster Recovery when air conditioning equipment has been destroyed. The time to recognize the value of spot cooling is not during the emergency. With spot cooling you will be able to keep your data center running while the primary cooling equipment is replaced.
Data centers are often added to facilities during a retrofit or as an after-thought to the facility, so the primary cooling for a data center can often be subject to periodic down-time, longer-term outages, and other events that cause them to fail. This, coupled with the mission-critical role that data centers so often play in businesses today, makes spot cooling not only a great way to augment a functional primary cooling system, but also a business-saving contingency mechanism for those unanticipated Friday afternoon heat waves.
It's game time. Keep your cool and don't let your data center overheat. Who's your favorite pick is this weekend?
