COMPARATIVE RACK LEVEL CFD ANALYSIS OF AIR TO HYBRID COOLING DATA CENTER

Abstract

The demand of data storage in the world is increasing, with this increase, demand for large data centers is growing. In response, we need to look for energy-efficient solutions to reduce the energy consumptions of the data centers. We want to reduce the energy used for cooling while keeping the data center equipment temperature in allowable range in high power density data center. The liquid or hybrid cooled servers are the alternatives that may be used instead of traditional air-cooled servers at Rack Level for the cooling power - different inlet temperatures and different percentage of hybrid cooling. This will help us in considering options for a different type of application with efficient energy solution to achieve global need for saving energy. In this work, the server used is CISCO 220 M3 server 1U small form factor server with 2 CPU chips, 5 hot-swappable fans and 16 DIMMS slots. The air-cooled server has 2 CPU heat sinks to dissipate the total heat of the server. The hybrid cooled server consists of 2 cold plates with integrated pumps to cool the CPUs. In this study, a data center with 6 Racks and a capacity of 42 1U servers is considered along with 2 CRAH or CRAC unit, hot and cold aisle containment. Using the characterizations of air-cooled server component temperatures and flow rate at different inlet temperature in the room model, a comparison of power used by the CRAH or CRAC unit is shown. An efficient solution to reduce the cooling power for different inlet temperatures is proposed.