Published on 21 April 2009

Free Cooling Tips

The very mention of the term "free cooling" generates a lot of interest in the IT industry, especially the energy hungry data center sector. After all who would not like to know or utilize a technology in a scenario where literally half of the energy costs are used for cooling the computing equipment, while only one half is used in actually running those equipments. This problem is compounding by the day due to various factors such as increasing power density of servers, increasing energy demands, deteriorating environment and green house effects. The words "free cooling" certainly free the data center manager from a lot of burden.

Yet, do not get carried away by this terminology for free-cooling is not actually totally-free. Actually a more appropriate name for free cooling should have been –reduced power cooling. This might come as a bit of disappointment but then to see the silver lining in the cloud, just think about the savings in costs which can be achieved and as they say – every bit helps.

Basically free cooling refers to a process wherein the chiller is either bypassed completely or partially and naturally available air or water is used to cool the data center through the use of economizers. This leads to a substantial decrease in energy consumption based on various parameters such as external weather conditions. Here are some tips which would help you to take the best possible advantage of the available free cooling resources.

To read further, please visit the Data Center Journal website:
http://datacenterjournal.com/content/view/2741/41/