This Week’s Topic: CRAC Units
Are you on the hunt for colocation and have a long list of “must haves?” We’re here to make your search easier. For the next few segments, we are going to break down important aspects of our data center space here at 165 Halsey Street. Today we are talking about cooling; specifically, we’ll be covering Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units and why cooling is absolutely critical in a data center.
At the most basic level, the more servers a data center has, the higher the temperature. If that temperature begins to creep past a certain point, the servers can malfunction or even worse – fail. The ideal temperature of a data center is anywhere from 68-71 degrees Fahrenheit. If the temperature starts to creep up to 80 degrees, the facility runs the risk of a potential server failure, which equals monetary disaster and a lot of unhappy customers. By having a dedicated team that can calculate the cooling requirements for the data center space effectively and efficiently, this can be avoided. Let’s break it down further.
Imagine your laptop. You’re working on multiple projects at once, you have dozens of tabs open, there are videos playing in the background, and you’re in the middle of gaming. Your computer may start to feel a bit warm. It might even begin to lag or freeze. What happens next? You hear a humming sound and low and behold – your computer fan begins to blow. Why? To cool the internal temperature of your computer so it can resume working at peak efficiency, of course. Data centers are a larger, much more complicated scale than this, but you get the gist.
Back to CRAC. Not only does it monitor and maintain temperature, but it also accounts for humidity and overall air distribution. CRAC units work through a hot-cold cycle, which is similar to a home A/C unit.
Here’s how CRAC works:
- Server racks are placed on a raised floor. The air gets pumped through tiles and the server takes in the cool air.
- The hot air is then released into the opposite hot aisle. The CRAC pulls in that hot air and then releases it underneath the floor, which completes the full cycle.
There is a delicate balance to determining what size CRAC unit the data center needs. If you have an undersized CRAC unit, you run the risk of reboots, which will affect all parties involved. To avoid this, one might think overestimating the unit would be a good idea, but then you run the risk of excess humidity. It needs to be just right. Here at 165 Halsey Street, we offer N+1 CRAC Units, so we are fully prepared and have backups on site, so you won’t ever have to experience overheating of any kind. With over 24 years of experience, we pride ourselves in having our operations down to a science. Our notable history speaks for itself.
If you have any questions regarding our cooling or any other feature, we’re here to help. Please reach out to our team here– we’d love to hear from you and help make your colocation search a pleasant one!
Image Source: https://www.dpstele.com/network-monitoring/temperature/computer-room-air-conditioning.php