Research has shown that the average computer room has 3X to 4X more cooling capacity than required for the installed IT load. As organisations take steps to improve their airflow management many look to aisle containment as a solution.
Hot aisle containment or cold aisle containment has been used in data centres and computer rooms for many years now, and has proven to be one of the most effective ways to improve cooling efficiency, increase rack densities and improve overall utilisation of the data centre or computer room.
Up to now the only options open to data centre organisations has been the choice of hard wall containment or soft curtain containment, but now there is a new option from Upsite Technologies, the innovators of KoldLok® floor grommets and HotLok® blanking panels, in the form of its AisleLok® Modular Containment solution.
AisleLok® Modular Containment (AMC) is the industry’s first out-of-the-box modular aisle containment solution that is easy to deploy and can be installed in minutes, thanks to its non-intrusive, tool-less design. The design of AMC enables it to be easily reconfigured as the data centre or computer room evolves.
The AMC system comprises of three core components: Rack Top Baffles that are designed for either hot aisle or cold aisle containment, Bi-directional Doors on sliding doors for attaching to the racks at the end of each aisle and a pull-out Adjustable Rack Gap Panel designed to fill gaps in aisles caused through building support columns or missing IT racks.
The white paper ‘Effectiveness and Implementation of Modular Containment in Existing Data Centers’ by Lars Strong, P.E., and Bruce Long of Upsite Technologies looks closer at modular containment and how it performs in the data centre.
The white paper first looks at how the components of the modular containment system allows the data centre operator to better manage airflow by addressing the five most significant hot and cold air-mixing areas in the data centre:
- Containing cold air in cold aisles.
- Preventing airflow over the top of racks.
- Containing and directing hot air to the cooling units.
- Filling gaps between racks in equipment rows.
- Preventing conditioned air or exhaust air from flowing around the ends of equipment rows.
The white paper then goes on to look at Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis of AMC to see whether it could achieve the core benefits of traditional aisle containment solutions, such as reducing inlet temperatures, energy savings and increased rack densities. The results were impressive and proved that now there are three types of aisle containment hard wall, soft curtain and modular containment.
To read the full white paper, click here to send an e-mail request.
