Dell makes hotter servers for warmer ASHRAE buildings - by Peter Judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Aug 2 2011)

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   Hotter server rooms have officially become newsworthy. The allowed temperature for a Dell server recently went up - and it got press-released and reported.

   Dell now allows some servers to be used at 45 Celsius (113 F) for a few hours at a time, instead of the previous limit of 35 Celsius (95 F), without breaking the warranty conditions. It’s given this the name “Fresh Air” but it’s not new technology - just a new warranty.

   Dell has refined its warranty to allow servers to have “excursions” in temperature, so they can go at 45 Celsius for up to 90 hours per year, and at 40 Celsius for up to 900 hours. The company has published a paper explaining how this works.

   The new warranty covers the PowerEdge R610, R710 and T610 servers along with some PowerConnect switches, PowerVault storage arrays and EqualLogic products - and the new warranty is available on servers bought up to six months ago.

   Dell says this gives it the hottest server warranty on the planet, but it won’t be alone for long. The move is definitely in line with data center trends - as you can see in the activity around ASHRAE.

   ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers) publishes Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments, more usually known as TC 9.9 after the technical committee that produces it, and widely used in planning and designing data centers.

   A new (third) edition of TC 9.9 is coming in September, and it’s a big change. This organisation has with the words air-conditioning and refrigeration in its name - and it’s publishing regulations designed to allow data centers to operate without chilling, using free air cooling.

   ASHRAE reckons that data centers can be run hotter (basing this on discussions with vendors like Dell), and it’s been warming the industry up to the idea, issuing a release In February, and a paper in May which explains the coming changes.

   In order to accommodate free air cooling, ASHRAE has added detail, expanding the number of classes of data center to take into account different purposes, and different levels of control of the environment.

   Specifically, it adds two classes, with allowed temperature ranges up to 40 Celsius and 45 Celsius - so it is clearly no coincidence that Dell chose those temperatures for its own extended warranties.

   This does over-simplify the ASHRAE work, which also covers the important issue of humidity. However, it is very clear that manufacturers and industry groups are getting together on the idea of running data centers hotter. 

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