News
02-20-2009, 02:38 AM
This week the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) adjusted their recommended upper limit for ambient data center temperatures from 77 degrees to 80.6 degrees (http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid80_gci1346115,00.html). Combining this with reports from Google (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/google-raise-your-data-center-temperature/), Intel (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/09/18/intel-servers-do-fine-with-outside-air/), Sun (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/09/24/data-center-cooling-set-points-debated/), and HP (http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/03/22/hp-to-save-8-million-with-smart-cooling/), you can easily see that servers do not mind "higher" temperatures as much as you would think.
I have to address this many times on tours, as we keep our facility at ~72 degrees Fahrenheit for the inlet temperatures on servers. It seems many people expect the facility to be significantly cooler, say in the 64-66 degree range. As these reports show, keeping a data center at those levels is simply not necessary as it does not prove to have any benefit for reliability, performance, etc. The only real difference is that keeping a facility at those temperatures simply costs a lot more and wastes more energy. It is true, that at warmer temperatures you need to be more wary of hot spots, but with regular monitoring and a properly engineered facility, that should not become an issue.
As a note, our facility even easily met the old ASHRAE standards. You can see in this graph/report (http://tc99.ashraetcs.org/documents/ASHRAE_Extended_Environmental_Envelope_Final_Aug_1 _2008.pdf) that our spec of 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 45% relative humidity are solidly in the area recommended for a Class 1 Operating Environment.
Original post (http://steadfast.net/blog/index.php/2009/01/31/data-center-temperatures) blogged on b2evolution (http://b2evolution.net/).
I have to address this many times on tours, as we keep our facility at ~72 degrees Fahrenheit for the inlet temperatures on servers. It seems many people expect the facility to be significantly cooler, say in the 64-66 degree range. As these reports show, keeping a data center at those levels is simply not necessary as it does not prove to have any benefit for reliability, performance, etc. The only real difference is that keeping a facility at those temperatures simply costs a lot more and wastes more energy. It is true, that at warmer temperatures you need to be more wary of hot spots, but with regular monitoring and a properly engineered facility, that should not become an issue.
As a note, our facility even easily met the old ASHRAE standards. You can see in this graph/report (http://tc99.ashraetcs.org/documents/ASHRAE_Extended_Environmental_Envelope_Final_Aug_1 _2008.pdf) that our spec of 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 45% relative humidity are solidly in the area recommended for a Class 1 Operating Environment.
Original post (http://steadfast.net/blog/index.php/2009/01/31/data-center-temperatures) blogged on b2evolution (http://b2evolution.net/).