Behind the scenes of “Pimp my data center” Part 3

“Man is it hot in here” is one of those phrases you just never want to hear in a data center. So while this project is purposely being done in a smaller data center, we are running some mighty expensive Dell Clusters that don’t like getting hot an sweaty. Little did we know that we were in for a huge education in industrial air conditioning systems that even included EPA licenses.

This just isn’t your dad’s split system air conditioner, here are some of the gotchas we ran into:

• The outside units (aka Condensers) are about 400lbs each, but to reduce air conditioning costs we re-roofed recently with foam insulation and a asphalt composite membrane roof. So this means we have to build a platform on stilts to rise above the insulation and waterproofing membrane to support the weight of the condensers. (Click here for PDF of the mechanical engineering diagram showing how we’re doing the mounting)
  • Oh did I tell you that the condensers will be out in the hot Hawaiian sun and we’re only a couple miles from Waikiki Beach? The hot salty air will eat the galvanized steel in nothing flat, so they have to be sent to a contractor to be taken apart, and literally dipped in anti-corrosion formula, and that will still only get us a 3 year warranty on corrosion.
  • If you’re in a coastal area, make sure your project manager orders the anti-corrosion coating from the factory.
• Then the air conditioning grade copper pipe has to be run through a wall, down a utility corridor, and through the back wall of the data center. (Click here for PDF of the room layout drawings, showing the stub outs on the back wall)
• Once we get through the back wall, we need to bring the copper pipe to each APC InRow RP unit, change to a Rotax (sp?) air conditioning coupler and go directly into each compressor unit.
  • Oh yeah, each compressor unit is getting a dedicated 100amp 3phase power input hard wired from the breaker panel.

The big gain over traditional air conditioning systems is that we’re putting the cooling right where we actually need it. So by arranging our racks into “hot aisles” and “cold aisles” we dramatically increase the overall efficiency of the cooling system.