A passive solution to a difficult data center environmental problem

Meeting cooling requirements for hardware cabinets clustered in long and multiple rows and congested in a tight space has proven to be a non-trivial task due to the complexity of dynamics that dictates the cold air delivery in a raised floor data center. The difficulties are compounded when much more cooling air is required for a given footprint to sufficiently cool equipment dissipating dramatically more power at much higher packaging and power densities. As a result of under supply of chilled air to hardware cabinets sitting on raised floor, cooling air temperatures at the inlet of each individual chassis behind a conventional, substantially perforated cabinet door can vary over quite a wide range with high temperature rises and therefore low hardware reliability and availability. This paper describes a new cabinet door design approach that effectively and practically minimizes inlet air temperature rise encountered in most data centers worldwide. Deviating from conventional cabinet door design with inlet vents covering nearly the entire door front, the new door will have a relatively small inlet area located only in the front near the bottom. Test results indicated that the new door can reduce temperature rise from about 8°C using a conventional door to 1-2°C for a specific test configuration.