Server Cooling Systems Sustainability

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Data center cooling controls the temperature inside data centers to reduce heat while ensuring server uptime, increasing efficiency, and improving technology lifespan. While server cooling systems are critical to overall business success, they have a few drawbacks that negatively affect the environment.

According to government estimates, data centers consume 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a standard commercial building. As a result, energy conservation is severely reduced, and the risk of servers overheating increases rapidly. Failure to properly manage heat and air circulation within a data center can be detrimental to the company.

In this article, we will look at the downsides of server cooling systems and how businesses can use simple practices and modern technologies to make them more sustainable.

Environmental Impact of Data Server Cooling Systems

Cooling technologies can consume up to 50% of all power used in a data center. Therefore, these technologies must either be transformed or wholly eradicated for corporations to progressively move towards reducing their carbon footprint.

Based on the Global e-Sustainability Initiatives (GESI), the digital world currently has 34 billion pieces of equipment and more than 4 billion active users. With many data centers and network infrastructures affiliated with the mentioned statistical data, the digital world is responsible for 2.3% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 1% of global electricity consumption, and 0.5% of carbon dioxide outflows.

Sustainable Data Center Cooling Techniques and Practices

Scientific research recognizes that drastically reducing GHG emissions is required to slow and reverse the effects of climate change. With this, data center cooling requires a careful balance of multiple variables that all IT technicians must consider.

Some of the most common data center cooling methods are the following:

Liquid Cooling: This technique uses water to cool servers. A computer room air handler (CRAH) is a widely known method for combining liquid and air cooling. Mainly, emergent technologies such as Microsoft’s “boiling water cooling” are being used to cool data center servers and boost evaporative cooling equipment.

Air Cooling: This method employs several computer room air conditioner (CRAC) technologies to establish east paths for hot air to exit the IT space.

Raised Floor Platforms: These create cooled areas beneath the platforms into which CRAC or CRAH can transmit heat via water coolers and other systems that generate cold aisles.

Temperature and Humidity Controls: These provide air conditioning functionality, such as an HVAC that regulates the cooling infrastructure and other systems.

Hot and Cold Aisle Containment: This technique refers to hot aisles feeding onto cold aisles via the data center. It supports proper airflow, a raised floor, and other cooling technology, such as liquid or HVAC solutions.

Data Center Cooling Techniques for Carbon Footprint Reduction

In addition to the techniques and practices mentioned above, here are some ways to achieve carbon footprint reduction:

Create an IT Assets Inventory

Various IT assets require different amounts of power. So, determine which assets consume too much electricity or operate inefficiently to know whether any asset should be discarded, replaced, upgraded, or reconfigured.

Secure Green Certifications

Data centers should strive for green certification, which provides information on green integration technologies and sustainable building. The United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system is the most widely used green building rating framework. In this system, data centers can be certified as silver, gold, or platinum, with platinum going to those with the most environmentally responsible construction and resource utilization.

Install DCIM Tools

Remove obsolete servers from service because they contribute to unnecessary power consumption. Instead, install data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools to oversee, measure, and maintain data center equipment and infrastructure networks. These tools make collecting, storing, and analyzing power consumption and cooling data easier.

Data Center Cooling Through AIs and Neural Networks

Data centers can now be equipped with IoT sensors that provide real-time data on numerous components, server workloads, energy consumption, and environmental parameters. These sensors’ immediate, average, total, or meta-variable values are fed into the neural network to be processed. For example, Google uses neural networks, a cognition-based procedure, to identify trends and patterns between complex input and output parameters.

Another example is the significance of GPU-based processing in neural network applications. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are becoming more efficient at processing neural network algorithms, increasing demand for data centers with many high-end GPUs.

Choose Tark for Superior Server Cooling Systems

Since 1985, Tark has provided cutting-edge pumps and complete cooling packages to leading CT and X-ray tube manufacturers. Our technologies can optimize cooling efficiency while reducing footprint, noise, and weight, which is helpful in applications in various industries. We also take pride in our ability to design specifically for our customers’ needs.