DVL Group Blog with Helpful Information on Running Your Data Center

Raised Floor or Slab in your Data Center?

by Mike Rinaldi on 11/15/12 9:06 AM

For many years, the standard data center design employed a raised floor, with cool air flowing under the floor and up into the server area through perforated tiles. In recent years, many new facilities have opted for a hard floor or slab design in which cold air enters the server area from above. In this video, Uptime Institute Executive Director Pitt Turner addresses the raised floor versus slab floor debate in the data center, explaining the consequences, costs and outcomes of different decisions. There is no one right answer, Pitt says. This video runs about 8 minutes.

-Data Center Knowledge

Which solution do you prefer?

Topics: data center infrastructure, Data Center, kW per rack, data center energy

Can You Build a Data Center Over A Weekend?

by Mike Rinaldi on 10/25/12 2:54 PM

An organization that provides professional development and technical support to special education K-12 students found its data center infrastructure to be prone to frequent outages and poor performance, which had a negative impact on the availability of student-targeted services. In addition, their environment was not designed to house a data center and did not have dedicated fire suppression.

What challenged the organization's IT manager and the rest of his team was that they would need to install any infrastructure upgrade solution quickly between Friday evening and Monday morning and that the IT space they had was small; only around 130 square feet.

While researching a solution to fit their needs, the organization attended an education technology conference - in search of the right offering. At the conference, the IT manager visited the Emerson Network Power booth, saw a demo of the SmartRow infrastructure, and sat in on a presentation.

The rest is history - a New Data Center in 48 hours!

See the SmartRow in Person

A simple, cost-effective solution designed to quickly expand IT capacity when you don't have the luxury of more data center white space.

October 29 - Harrisburg

October 30 - Philadelphia

November 1 - Penn State

November 2 - Princeton

Emerson SmartRow

Topics: Emerson Network Power, reduce cost, Data Center, kW per rack, data center energy, data center infrastructure management, robust data center, Containment, reduce downtime, pod

Emerson’s Modular, Scalable Row-Based UPS Receives ENERGY STAR Certification

by Mike Rinaldi on 10/19/12 3:21 PM

Columbus, Ohio [October 18, 2012] Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE:EMR) and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity and efficiency of critical infrastructure, today announced that the North American version of the modular, row-based Liebert APM^T uninterruptible power supply (UPS) has received ENERGY STAR certification. The Liebert APM UPS is available globally.

A transformer-free, on-line UPS with best-in-class efficiency, the Liebert APM enables capacity on demand with the addition of internal FlexPower core assemblies. The assemblies allow the system to expand for capacity or redundancy in 15 kW increments up to 45 or 90kW within a single cabinet.

> Read more here

Emerson

Topics: Emerson Network Power, Data Center, Green IT, data center design, kW per rack, data center infrastructure management, robust data center, Green Technology, energy, Energy Star

ASHRAE: Warmer Data Centers Good for Some, Not All

by Mike Rinaldi on 10/5/12 3:23 PM

Don Beaty has built some of the worlds most efficient data centers. Between 2004 and 2011, Beaty has been resonsible for crafting recommendations on data center cooling for the leading industry group for heating and cooling professionals. Those dual roles have provided Beaty with a unique vantage point on the evolution of new strategies to cool servers implementing cutting-edge techniques for the industrys leading innovator as his day job, while working to develop standards and recommendations that can work for a broad spectrum of data center operators.

Beaty has grown accustomed to managing the heat. This week marks the release of the latest guidelines on data center cooling from ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), which reflect the growing momentum for operating servers at higher levels of temperature and humidity. Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments is published by ASHRAEs Technical Committee (TC) 9.9, which was co-founded by Beaty and IBMs Roger Schmidt to provide specialized guidance on data center cooling.

> Click here to read article

Published on October 5, 2012 by Rich Miller-Data Center Knowledge

Allowable vs. Recommended ASHRAE Guidelines - Design Your Data Center

The majority of data centers have multiple generations of technology, some type of spinning disc, some type of tape storage and maybe even some mainframe systems. These data centers can still be extremely energy efficient, but are not going to see the extremes of the ASHRAE design guidelines. They are the data centers that should probably stay with the ASHRAE recommended guidelines. Below is an example of the recommended versus allowable ASHRAE Guidelines. Please note that the recommended temperature guidelines didnt change in 2011, only the allowable.

Temperature

2004 20C to 25C - Recommended

2008 18C to 27C - Recommended

2011 5C to 40C - Allowable

Humidity

2004 40 to 55% - Recommended

2008 35 to 60% - Recommended

2011 20 to 80% - Recommended

One thing we are seeing more and more of today is confusion over what temperature and humidity parameters data centers should be designed for. Most of the discussion seems to assume that there is a monolithic block of data centers that can all be designed the same way. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Most of the data centers in existence today have a mixture of technologies and systems that all have varying environmental requirements. We typically refer to these as mixed use data centers. Unlike an E-Bay, Google, Microsoft or Apple data center, there is not rack after rack of the same equipment, all with similar operating requirements.

Topics: Data Center, kW per rack, data center energy, PUE, electrical distribution, reduce downtime, data center outages, 7x24 exchange

Do You Control Your Data Center or Is It Controlling You?

by Mike Rinaldi on 8/15/12 11:55 AM

Ever have one of those days which turn into weeks, where nothing seems to be going your way? Your boss is constantly nagging you to reduce the power usage in your data center in an effort to curb costs; a cable becomes loose somewhere (and it takes you hours to figure out where it is); a server goes down yet again, causing the network to crash. And just when you thought things were starting to go right a power failure in the whole region has your data center shutting down for days. In this post, I am going to probe the concept of whether your data center is controlling you, rather than the other way around.

HOW DO YOU CONTROL YOUR DATA CENTER?

-Pursuit of Efficiency

-Gaps in the Market

-Combining the Software with the Hardware

-Total Control of the Data Center

>> Read more here

Data Center Knowledge

The Question Remains: Do you prefer hot aisle or cold aisle containment?

data center