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Cask Driving Datacenter Performance Improvement

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June 30, 2011 – Kansas City, MO – Green datacenter initiatives are making headway in both commercial and government markets.  Many commercial organizations have been driven by the downturn in the economy to implement green, while two major Federal initiatives are driving interest within the Federal sector for legacy datacenter evaluation and renovations
.  The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 25-point plan to reform Federal Information Technology (IT) management seeks to reduce the government’s 2,100 datacenters to 800 by 2015.  President Obama’s ‘Green’ Executive Order encourages Federal agencies to procure environmentally preferable technology.

Many Federal agencies have datacenters built 20 or more years ago for mainframe technology and has outdated mechanical, electrical and fire protection systems.  Now, they have an impetus to pursue the most current IT technology and server virtualization to increase their utilization rates and efficiency, but find their facility plant is ill suited to support the increased mechanical and electrical density.

To support these initiatives, Cask assists clients in determining current datacenter performance and identifying opportunities for improvement.  Our team consists of mechanical, electrical and fire protection engineers and Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI) Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD).  We conduct site investigation and develop a baseline of the datacenter mechanical, electrical and fire protection systems and telecommunications and network capability.  We identify and recommend opportunities for improvement and demonstrate the effect of the most current IT techniques through the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling and simulation (M&S).

model

After building a model of the datacenter, we conduct thermal and air flow analysis of the current datacenter configurations.  We evaluate the temperature profile across the rack, row, and throughout the datacenter for compliance with ASHRAE TC9.9 Best Practices for Datacom Facility Energy Efficiency.

modeling

 

 

 

 

With the baseline configuration established, we model prospective cooling plant and free cooling techniques and thermal and air flow of alternative configurations.  Also, models can also be readily created and analyzed to demonstrate how the datacenter floors may be provisioned with updated IT infrastructure and other cooling techniques.  CFD M&S reaps tremendous insight for our clients, providing the following operational benefits:

  • Lowering operational costs by identifying excess cooling capacity
  • Increasing the computing capacity without increasing the cooling capacity
  • Predicting the maximum IT capacity
  • Predicting the impact of adding computing capacity or cooling capacity
  • Optimizing equipment placement by performing “what-if” virtual designs

Both Federal and commercial clients can benefit from this approach.  For more information, contact Cask.

Cask

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