The importance of proper elemental control is often an overlooked component of server room planning. Ensuring adequate airflow and cooling strategies is essential to your equipment’s upkeep and in keeping energy costs low.
Organize Cables
Tangled cables can block airflow by preventing efficient cold air distribution throughout your enclosures. You can make cable management easier by utilizing tools to enhance the efficiency of your operation.
We recommend using an organized system. For example, you can color-code your cables to quickly identify the cables’ type, purpose, and destination. Consider using cable management solutions like horizontal, vertical, hangers, and trays for a clean look and easy cleanup.
For raised-floor environments, move cables to overhead cable managers with tools like the Liebert® MBX Busway.
For inside enclosures, select a high-impact solution like Vertiv’s VR Rack Accessories. It features robust configurations and components, like tool-less features, to alleviate entanglement and improper placement.
Don’t forget to document your infrastructure. Planning with scalability in mind is critical. Without proper documentation, it may be challenging to maintain or provision new equipment and address any connectivity issues.
Implement Hot-Aisle/Cold-Aisle
Increase your computer room precision air conditioner (CRAC) capacity and decrease the energy burden on each unit with a hot-aisle/cold-aisle system. With this system, you will move heat away from the equipment using a minimal amount of energy.
Most equipment manufactured today is designed to draw in air through the front and exhaust it out the rear. This allows equipment racks to be arranged to create hot aisles and cold aisles. This approach positions racks so that rows of racks face each other, with the front of each opposing row of racks drawing cold air from the same aisle. Hot air from two rows is exhausted into a hot aisle, raising the temperature of the air returning to the CRAC unit and allowing it to operate more efficiently.
CRACs should be located at the end of the hot aisles to reduce air travel and prevent hot air from being pulled down into the cold aisles as it returns to the air conditioner.
Replace Inefficient UPS Systems
Removing unnecessary heat sources will help cool the room. Replace UPS systems with energy-saving models to increase efficiency and reduce heat output, especially where redundant UPS systems operate below full capacity.
With the Liebert® PSI5, you’ll receive ultimate power protection with automatic voltage regulation (AVR) technology that will safeguard equipment against a range of utility power fluctuations without battery operation. The PSI5 also offers a compact 2U rackmount/tower configuration with LCD for easy monitoring.
Trust the Experts
When it comes to maintenance and your equipment requirements, trust us to help you navigate your power and cooling infrastructure while reducing costs, improving your IT system availability, and planning for scalability. With our extensive industry experience and data, we can help you adopt a proactive upgrade, replacement, and maintenance plan. Contact us today to get started!