Munich airport air conditioning energy usage reduced
By installing hot aisle/cold aisle containment, re-routing cable runs within the server cabinets and reconfiguring the floor tile layout, Schroff was able to save some 35% of the previous air conditioning energy usage.
At the same time, the temperature gradient within the server cabinets was reduced, extending the life of the servers and improving reliability. The payback time on the cost of the additional hardware installation was measured in months, not years.
The data centre holds 75 server cabinets arranged in three rows in a computer room with an overall volume of 600m3. The room was cooled by five 32kW air conditioners; during normal operation, four were running at full capacity with one as a redundant back-up. After the installation of the Schroff hardware, which was retrofitted to the existing cabinets supplied by a third party, three of the air conditioners running at 50% capacity were enough to cope with the thermal load.
Within the cabinets, the installation of 1U blanking panels at the front of the racks, the rerouting of cable runs, the sealing of the base apertures and the installation of ventilated front doors reduced the top to bottom temperature gradient from 10°C to less than 1°C; because the hot and cold air is segregated, the overall temperature within the cabinets also dropped by about 4°, despite the input temperature from the air conditioner units having increased from 17 to 22°C. Further efficiency savings have been achieved by raising the room temperature from 22 to 28°C.
The reduced energy usage, direct cost reduction and the associated reduction in CO2 emissions are a significant step towards carbon-neutral operation of the facility.
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