Ian Seaton of CPI Talks Data Center Thermal Management

Due to audio recording issues on my end, Ian's full interview could not be posted in a quality suitable for our site. I have transcribed the first part of our interview to share with our readers.

Ian Seaton (LinkedIn profile here) of Chatsworth Products, Inc is THE expert to consult when it comes to data center thermal management or really anything related to your data center needs.

From chatsworth.com: "Ian Seaton has over thirty years of product development experience in electro-mechanical systems. He serves on the BICSI standards committee responsible for the new data center design manual as editor of the rack and cabinet section and as a thermal consultant to the mechanical working group. He teaches BICSI accredited data center thermal management courses. Ian has written and spoken extensively on data center thermal management over the past 7+ years. He has a masters degree from California Polytechnic State University and is currently the Technology Marketing Manager for Chatsworth Products."

Ian, who is the Technical Applications Development Manager at CPI, was kind enough to sit down with me to discuss a few key techniques for data center operators.  

BB: I’d like to start things off by asking the one question I hear most often: taking you typical datacenter operator, what’s the one the thing he can do to improve his datacenter cooling efficiency?

IS: Well, there’s one simple phrase, divide and conquer. Look at the hot aisle / cold aisle data design that was intended to separate the supply airstreams from the return air streams. Now we have solutions that allow you to essentially contain or isolate those two bodies of air from each other. This isolation is really the most important thing which can be done.

BB: With this sort of containment, what sort of benefits can be derived?

IS: The most important is you eliminate all the hot spots. When you remove all the hot air from the datacenter and completely separate that air from the supply airstream, it’s really impossible to create a hotspot for any server in the data center. Secondly, you have the opportunity to support much higher densities in the data center because when you remove that hot air. Finally, you eliminate the need to overproduce air in the datacenter and that gives you access to some of the energy savings on your air handler power. For example, if you have variable air volume fans running at 80 percent airflow, you’re only consuming 50% of the energy required for those air handlers.

In addition to those three opportunities, you also have the opportunity to change you thermal management thermostat, as it were, from the return air path to the supply air path, because you no longer care what the temperature of that return air is because it doesn’t affect anything in the datacenter.

IS: Also, I’d like to remind everybody that the Environmental Protection Agency has recently released an energy star rating for data centers (found here). The kinds of savings that can be achieved by the strategies I’ve mentioned —beyond the economic impact— also have an impact on helping to qualify for energy star ratings.

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Be sure to check out some of Ian's work here CPI White Papers and Case Studies and take a moment to browse CPI's product spec sheets.

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