Loss of cooling = data center shutdown in T-minus three minutes
A new study by Opengate Data Systems, a data center availability consulting company, found that a 5 kw/rack data center would shut down in about three minutes if a power outage caused there to be no cooling. For a 10 kw/rack data center, the time is even shorter: about one minute.
The study on data center power outages was commissioned by Active Power, which makes flywheel and other non-battery based UPS devices for the data center. Much of the study was meant to promote Active Power’s CoolAir UPS, which can provide backup power and cooling in case of a shut down. But the data from Opengate is still pretty interesting.
Posted: September 20th, 2007 under Uncategorized, Data Center Power, Backup data center power.
no comment
Comment by Scott Ryberg — September 25, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
UPS protected servers in the data centres continues to operate and generate heat when there is utility power outage.In cases where the cooling devices(HVACs)are not powered from UPS(beacuse of power quality considerations ie effect of high initial start up current of inductive loads)an exponential rise in temperature results in the data centre. This temperature increase violates the data centre cooling SLA requirements of (68-73.4)degrees. Consequently causing electronic components in the servers to malfunction with deteriorating performance and eventual shutdown leading to critical business disruption.
The exponential rise in data centre temperature has a direct relationship with the density of racks in terms watts/square feet. At densities of 150watts/square feet, it takes a data centre approximately 13minutes to go from 70degree F to 95degrees F. When rack densities increase to 300watts/square feet, the time is reduced to 8minutes. At about 450watts/sqaure feet, the data centre heats up 95degrees F in about 2minutes.
In conclusion, the data centre temeperature rise can be quantitatively determined from newtons law of cooling.
Thank you,
Joseph Nwabudike Okeh
Manager, Data Center Management & IS Facilities Support
Celtel Nigeria Limited
+2348022225345
Comment by Joseph Nwabudike Okeh — September 26, 2007 @ 5:32 am