SANTA FE, N.M. — The American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is considering expanding its recommended specifications for server temperature and humidity ranges. Last week at the Uptime Institute Data Center Design Charrette, I spoke with Roger Schmidt, distinguished technologist at IBM and chairman of ASHRAE Technical Committee 9.9, about the plans in this podcast.

 

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There are two reasons to increase the operational temperature range for servers:

The barriers to widening the ranges are the potential for hardware failure and the cultural issues and career risk to pushing these boundaries. But Charrette attendees generally agreed that the servers can withstand higher temps and humidity levels. The current ASHRAE recommendations specify server temperatures between 20 degrees to 25 degrees Celsius and relative humidity between 40% to 55%. Attendees recommended that ASHRAE modify its range to 18 degrees to 27 degrees Celsius and a humidity range of 30% to 55%. It should be noted that the “recommended” ranges are narrower than the “allowable” ranges for IT equipment.