Cooling - Less has to be more - By Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (May 28 2010)

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   Hanging out at The Cable Show 2010, I came across Alcatel-Lucent's modular cooling solution for data centers; a cable head-end is a data center.  It's a great idea in certain situations, but I couldn't help but think that for most of the time, less has to be more.

   I don't mean to pick on Alcatel-Lucent; let's throw in IBM and all the other cooling rack retro-fit solutions that replace a cabinet door with fans and a cooling solution to move away from the racks into a centralized heat dump (i.e. the existing HVAC/CVAC).  Alcatel-Lucent's solution first went into the company's IPTV lab in Plano, Texas, where it reduced hot aisle temps from around 40 degrees C (104F)  to 22 degrees C (72F) and internal server temperatures from 32 degrees C (90F) to 24 degrees C (75F), so the solution works, both in terms of reducing overall building air conditioning load and cutting energy consumption.

   But it requires bending metal and putting in pipes to move around R134a coolant -- rather than water -- so there's a requirement for some old-school plumbing installation and the addition of more moving parts and pieces and that's complexity and the energy to build and ship all those moving parts so, this isn't as clean-and-green as simply opening up a window (metaphorically speaking) and letting the temperature rises.  On the other hand, Texas isn't exactly known for its cool summers, so one might need something like the Alcatel-Lucent solution to "fight the power."

   Taking a more global view,  it will be simplicity -- not complexity -- that will keep data center cooling needs down. Google has already gone this route with their super-optimized server hardware and many companies building new data centers are leaning on natural (i.e. open the windows) cooling if they can take advantage of the local climate. 

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