Date: Feb 16, 2011 Source: PR Web (
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You may have the latest, greatest blade servers and network switches in your corporate data center, but are they really happy? "We don't mean happy as in joyful but maybe more content and comfortable," said Tony Wilson, AFCO Systems Senior Director of Marketing. "As a data center or facilities manager, you have to ask yourself if you've provided the right environment for those high-end servers you're putting into your data centers." To help information technology (IT) professionals make better choices about the data center enclosures they deploy in their data centers, AFCO Systems (http://www.afcosystems.com), the leader in green data center resource management, has identified Five Ways the Right Data Center Enclosure Can Keep Your Data Center Servers Happy. More information about AFCO Systems is available at http://media.afcosystems.com.
Five Ways the Right Data Center Enclosure Can Keep Your Data Center Servers Happy
They Keep them Cool. One way to keep servers and switches happy is to ensure they receive the proper airflow for cooling. An enclosure that manages and segregates airflow, keeping server inlet air at the optimum temperature and removing exhaust air properly, will avoid pressure build-up or short cycling.
They Keep them Accessible. Tangled cables make for unhappy servers. Make sure your server cables are kept away from blocking server airflow as much as possible. And ensure that your technicians can quickly access, replace or reconfigure cabling on demand without disturbing your servers. Use external cable management or sidecars to ensure access and mitigate airflow disruption to servers.
They Give them Room to Breathe. Enclosures should enable data center air-flow design flexibility. In a hot aisle / cold aisle (HACA) configuration, you're managing enclosure airflow at the room level. You can increase efficiency by going to the next level and actually containing the air in rows of racks through aisle containment strategies. But bringing your containment strategies to the enclosure level allows you to gain the greatest control and server happiness. This means each enclosure becomes a mini data center environment.
They Keep them Monitored and Managed. Using intelligent enclosures with smart power strips and sensor networks, lets you to collect real-time power and environmental data. This can then be captured in a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system to observe and proactively manage trends in your data center.
They Get Room to Move. Data centers are dynamic environments and servers are happy when they can be easily moved around. But moves, adds, and changes, can alter the heat density inside your enclosures. Make sure your enclosures can handle widely varying levels of heat density. If they can, not only will your servers be happy, but so will your data center managers.
"Following these common sense ideas can give you much happier data center servers and lead to lowering your costs associated with data center power and cooling," said Wilson.
About AFCO Systems
AFCO Systems is a global leader in the design and manufacture of scalable enclosure technology for mission-critical data center environments. It has one of the largest globally installed bases of engineered enclosures for high-density server, storage, and network switch applications. AFCO Systems serves the blue-chip customers operating Tier III and Tier IV data centers across industries including financial services, media, manufacturing and education.
AFCO Systems' Sigma-T™ technologies allow data center managers and IT executives to measure, manage, monitor, and maintain their overall energy efficiency in accordance with ASHRAE standards. Its patented systems control supply-air delivery at the enclosure level, providing cost-effective data center cooling management. AFCO Systems' services include data center planning and consulting using CFD modeling.
The company is headquartered in Farmingdale, NY with global operating capabilities for its installations in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.afcosystems.com or call 631-249-9441.
