The study proposes new temperature guidelines that may help develop and manage more efficient data centers and IT servers in the future. The study, publishing October 10 in the journal, proposes new temperature guidelines that may help develop and manage more efficient data centers and IT servers in the future.
Data centers typically operate at temperatures between 20-25°C today. The conventional cooling systems that maintain these centers work by pulling computer-generated hot air past water-chilled coils to cool down the air before it cycles back to the space. The heated water then enters either chillers or a process called free-cooling before circulating back to the coils.
"The question is, to what temperature?" says Wang. To find out, Wang and his team built a model based on the conventional cooling system and simulated the system's operation under different climate conditions. The results showed that data centers in almost all regions across climate zones could rely nearly 100% on free-cooling throughout the year when operated at 41°C, which they coined"global free-cooling temperature.
"But before we raise the temperature settings, we need to ensure three things," says Wang."First, we need to ensure the reliability of server operation. Second, the computational efficiency needs to remain the same. Third, we need to ensure the servers' energy consumption is not increased by activating their built-in cooling protection, such as the fans.