[c-nsp] Data Center cooling

[Seth Mattinen]

Michael K. Smith - Adhost wrote:
> 
> We are in Seattle and use an air-exchanger system that relies on outside
> air as much as possible, and then blends in chilled water as necessary
> up to 100% chilled.  It's fairly common here because of the nature of
> our climate, and the psychrometric scale
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychrometrics) is favorable for us.
> 
> We've also looked at increasing our data center temps from 68F/20C to
> closer to 78F/25.56C (hi Gert), but our marketing folks have been the
> most resistant because of the prevailing expectation that colder is
> better.  There is some good research and testing being done by
> Microsoft, Intel and Google in this arena, but I don't think enough has
> been published yet to give that calming feeling to the marketing folks.
> I would imagine, however, that we will see increasing data center
> temperatures more and more in the coming years.
> 

Cooler temperatures can give you some headroom in the event of a
malfunction or hiccup that results in cooling capacity reduction. That
may or may not be an issue depending on your location. I don't have the
article handy, but I recall Google mentioning that they can just "turn
off" and redistribute load to other datacenters if one gets too hot.

~Seth