A hot spot within a data centre is defined as an area where the entering air temperature to a server, storage system, router or other electronic equipment is higher than 27°C.
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Michael Young is a trainer, coach and a pre-sales engineer in the HVAC industry. He graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in the field of Mechanical Engineering (B.Sc Mech Eng) in 2008 and qualified as a Professional Engineer (Pr.Eng) in 2013. Michael is passionate about promoting knowledge and helping other young engineers grow within the industry through his training workshops and coaching sessions. |
Since the formation of hot spots can reduce reliability and cause damage to electronic equipment, data centres often adopt practices such as hot and cold aisle containment and the use of blanking plates to further prevent the development of hot spots.
However, sometimes other factors such cable management or inconsistent deployment of servers can still result in the development of the hot spots within the data centre space.
So, let’s begin by discussing cable management. When dealing with cold aisle containment, it is common to install all electrical cables within the raised floor. Unfortunately, some data centres try to reduce the installation costs by installing a shallow raised floor with heights that are less than 300mm.
They also then decide to install all electrical cables within this shallow floor which can potentially block the airflow path from the cooling unit to the supply air grille. This traps all the supply air under the raised floor and can lead to the development of hot spots.
Therefore, in newer data centre constructions, the raised floor height is often a minimum of 600mm and all cables are neatly tied together and installed in cable trays so that airflow between the cooling unit and the racks is not restricted.
The next reason can be extreme non-uniform deployment of server racks. A data centre is often designed under the assumption that all racks are equal in IT capacity and all racks generate an equal amount of heat. Unfortunately, servers are not always deployed with uniformity in mind.
In some instances, some racks are completely populated while others are not. The areas which are populated will require more airflow than areas which are maybe only half populated.
To resolve this non uniform airflow distribution, the damper openings need to be adjusted accordingly so that the correct quantity of air can be redirected to satisfy the required airflow needs of the servers.
Modern data centres have taken airflow distribution to the next level with the implementation of temperature monitoring within the space as well as some complex systems being able to provide a real time CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis.
The results from such complex monitoring systems allow engineers to be able to visualise the airflow within their data centre, be able to identify areas of hot spot development and then make changes to cooling unit control logic or adjust other components within the system to improve airflow to a specific region.
Wishing you a successful month ahead.
