The amount of data created and consumed globally is expanding exponentially. This implies that the data load on current data centers is increasing, necessitating the increase of data center capacity. As a result, data centers require a lot of electricity, making them one of the world’s most energy-intensive sectors.
Dealing with such high energy loads naturally leads to substantial heat emissions; dealing with these high heat levels is crucial for a data center’s health. Heat may degrade performance, cause downtime, and even destroy servers if not addressed properly.
The following are the most common data center cooling systems utilized in today’s world.
Air Conditioning In The Computer Room
CRAC units employ typical air conditioning procedures to keep temperatures low by drawing air over a refrigerant-filled cooling system. Despite consuming a lot of electricity, they are frequently preferred due to reduced costs.
Systems For Cold And Hot Aisles
This is a basic but efficient heat control method in which data centers place their server racks in alternating rows of cool and hot aisles. A cold aisle takes in air from the front and transforms it into the cold air to blow through the server racks. A hot aisle produces hot air from the server racks’ back. These are often installed in an alternating sequence so that the hot air emitted by the hot aisles may be taken in by the cold aisles and turned into the cold air, keeping the temperature in the data center stable.
Free Air Conditioning
As the name implies, this is a method of cooling that uses cool air from outside the data center rather than continually producing cold air. This efficient method of cooling your data center significantly reduces costs. This is a significant reason why many data centers are located in colder parts of the world.
Cooling Through Evaporation
The heated air in the data center is exposed to water in this cooling process, causing it to evaporate. This shift in the water condition removes the heat from the air, leaving the only problem of getting the moisture out of the data center. This is usually performed via cooling towers, which release moisture in the air outside the data center.
Now that we’ve covered some of the existing strategies let’s look at the future of cooling.
Cooling Through Immersion
This is a method of cooling in which the hardware is immersed in a liquid to which heat is transmitted. On the other hand, the liquid must be chosen with care and have qualities such as being non-conductive, non-flammable, and dielectric. The fluid and the hardware are kept in leak-proof containers; after absorbing heat, the fluid evaporates and condenses to create a cycle.
Cooling Directly To The Chip
This cooling system uses tubes to feed liquid coolant directly to a metal plate. The coolant then lies on a metal plate above the motherboard, directly absorbing heat. The heat is then transferred to a cooling facility before being discharged into the sky.
All of the strategies mentioned above indicate that these are exciting times for data centers, and we can expect a lot more innovation in the next years!