How to Apply ASHRAE Temperature Guidelines to Evaluate Air-Based Cooling Systems in Data Centers

Magnus Herrlin, ANCIS Incorporated
  
To provide an adequate equipment environment is a key function of every data center facility. In 2004, ASHRAE published "Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments." This document provides guidelines for environmental conditions in data centers such as temperature and humidity. This is presented as recommended and allowable ranges: The recommended range refers to the preferred facility operation whereas the allowable range deals with the robustness of the electronic equipment. This approach was a reincarnation of earlier guidelines intended specifically for the telecommunication industry published by Telcordia Technologies in 2001. It is likely that the ASHRAE guidelines will be updated in 2008 to adhere closer to the Telcordia guidelines to allow better energy efficiency in data centers.

How can the ASHRAE guidelines be applied when evaluating air-based cooling systems in data centers? What is needed is a measure or yardstick of conformance with the guidelines' temperature ranges. In short, most intake temperatures to the servers should be within the recommended range and no server intake temperatures should be outside the allowable range. This presentation reviews the significance of the ASHRAE temperature ranges and demonstrates the use of a metric for evaluating the performance of cooling systems based on the temperature guidelines. One hands-on example is used to show the step-by-step procedure to easily do this conformance check. The procedure can be applied to either temperature data generated by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling or data from measurements.

Dr. Magnus K. Herrlin is president of ANCIS Incorporated, a San Francisco based consultancy providing advanced energy and environmental solutions for data centers, telecom central offices, and other mission critical facilities. Prior to establishing ANCIS, Magnus served 10 years as principal scientist with Bell Communications Research where he led efforts in optimizing energy efficiency and cooling effectiveness of critical environments. He established industry leadership by authoring 30+ guidelines and standards, including NEBS GR-3028 "Thermal Management in Telecom Central Offices."

He serves on multiple committees and advisory boards related to thermal and energy management in data centers. Magnus is chair of "California High Density Data Center Committee" (HDDC) and founding officer of ASHRAE TC 9.9 "Mission Critical Facilities, Technology Spaces, and Electronic Equipment." He is currently co-authoring an energy assessment program for data centers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Magnus is widely published; he is co-recipient of the 2004 ASHRAE Technical Paper Award for "Evolution of Data Center Environmental Guidelines."

Magnus is a Member of ASME and ASHRAE. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and is a certified energy manager by the Association of Energy Engineers.

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