The growing energy requirements of data centres are making them costly to run, and putting the IT industry under pressure to lower its energy consumption. At the same time, data centre managers are under pressure to optimise facility infrastructure to ensure efficiency, performance and reliability.
Many data centre managers are under the false impression that to maintain optimum temperatures in the data centre, they need to overcool the supply air. But this isn't the case. In reality, they need to create more favourable conditions.
"Increasing the data centre temperature now allows one to implement energy-saving technology within their data centre," says Michael Young, applications engineer, thermal management, at Vertiv.
Young will be presenting on 'The impact of increasing the operating temperatures of your data centre', at the ITWeb Data Centre Summit, to be held on 10 July, at The Forum in Bryanston.
Young believes the best way to get around the data centre's high power usage challenge is through management of the IT team.
"Energy is wasted when cooling units do not operate at their peak design load, when servers are installed in the incorrect orientation and when the installation of equipment is not performed correctly."
Delegates attending Young's talk will learn about the impact a higher operating temperature will have on the existing cooling unit, and will see how raising the operating temperatures increases energy efficiency of the cooling unit. In addition, he will discuss how to improve energy efficiency without compromising server operations.
"The major takeaway is to be cautious when randomly deciding to increase the operating temperatures of your data centre," concludes Young.
"Always understand what is occurring within the system, as altering one parameter can cause a negative knock-on effect on another piece of equipment within the system."
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