APC conquers datacenter heat stroke

Faster silicon is spreading through the datacenter like avian flu through a henhouse. Devices that didn’t have processors now do, and devices that had processors all along now have more, which are getting faster by the month.

The result? More computing power, but with a lot more heat. This presents a serious problem for companies unprepared to meet the cooling demands of a datacenter.

For those companies, APC plays the hero with a three-component datacenter environmental system. APC arrived at the University of Hawaii’s ANCL testing facility lugging three products designed to increase and effectively manage airflow in the datacenter. We found APC’s offerings to be very good at their job: keeping your datacenter comfy.

Playing It Cool

First to get its tires kicked was the NetworkAir PA, designed to provide portable cooling for companies with datacenters containing especially sensitive equipment, or baseline cooling to small rooms and data closets used as makeshift datacenters.

The NetworkAir is an entirely self-contained air conditioner that requires no outside help — no external condenser, no refrigerant piping, not even a water source for operation. The unit comes with ducting created to fit most offices’ drop-ceiling configurations, and it uses this space to reject its operational heat. This means you can drop a NetworkAir into most offices without having to call either a plumber or electrician.

Another popular use for the NetworkAir is as a backup cooling device in case of primary air conditioning failure. The device provides up to 4 kilowatts of air conditioning power, set either on a timer or an environmental sensor.

For example, if your building shuts down the AC every weekend, you can configure the NetworkAir to start up every Friday at midnight and then turn off at the same time on Monday, keeping your datacenter pleasantly chilled. Additionally, the device senses the temperature of its surroundings and can be configured to start automatically if conditions exceed your preset environmental thresholds.

Unlike traditional air conditioners, the NetworkAir is designed specifically for datacenters with features including automatic and unattended condensate management via a standard dual-float condensate pump. It’s also designed for quiet running, further maximizing it usefulness in an office setting.

The system was simple to setup via the APC EMU (Environmental Monitoring Unit). We set thresholds based on temperature spikes, anticipating the University’s shutting down central AC during weekends. The NetworkAir responded flawlessly. It’s also an excellent cooling source when newly added equipment warms up your lab.

The second piece of the puzzle, the beefy Rack Air Removal Unit, can cool up to a 7.5-kilowatt rack and provides fan redundancy up to 5.0 kilowatts. The product mounts to the back of any 72U APC rack enclosure, grabbing exhaust heat and routing that heat to the return air plenum. This eliminates hot spots within the rack and is especially useful for racks housing a variety of equipment types in clusters.

The unit manages air flow using intelligent fan speed adjustments based on local temperature and power consumption within the rack. Administrators can set thresholds to trigger specific fan speeds for certain situations, such as a rise in room temperature or a sudden increase in server activity.

With its APC roots, it’s only natural that the Rack Air Removal Unit also provides power redundancy through dual corded input. Even better, it effectively comes out with a zero-U space requirement because it mounts to the back of the rack enclosure.

And don’t worry about learning yet another product management interface, because the Rack Air Removal Unit talks to the separate EMU. This 1U, rack-based appliance interfaces with any APC environmental device, is browser-accessible, and lets network administrators actively monitor the rack environment based on temperature and humidity.

You can outfit the EMU with additional temperature and humidity sensors to cover larger or especially complex rack configurations. The device also acts as an early warning system, sending e-mail notifications to administrators when specific environmental thresholds are violated. We configured the EMU to alert us not only to environmental changes but to response activity from the NetworkAir, and all alerts and sensor activity performed as expected.

Environment Protection

The products we reviewed are a first step in an APC initiative to allow administrators to manage the environment of critical IT equipment at a very granular level, from several joined racks down to single racks or even individual U groups within a rack.

With equipment load and number increasing over time, administrators tasked with supporting mission-critical back-ends can easily underestimate the effect that datacenter environments can have on bottom-line performance. If you’re faced with a less-than-optimal datacenter configuration or need a backup to existing environmental control systems, these three APC products truly do the trick.