Cooling in data centers

Around 40% of the energy consumption in a data centers is used for cooling. Therefore it is vital to have a reliable and efficient high quality cooling system to avoid hardware malfunctions and interruptions, and to ensure system uptime and availability of service.

Siemens understands the importance of cooling in data centers and therefore we offer integrated, tailored data center cooling solutions and services including

• Server room design

• Metering

• Monitoring

• Reporting

• KyotoCooling

• Air conditioning

• Ventilation energy management

Data center design

Siemens meets the challenges data center operators face when planning either an extension or building a new facility. Therefore our designs ensure the highest performance by:

• Being flexible

• Being reliable

• Being scalable

• Including redundant cooling features

• Allowing system expansion

• Withstanding system failures

• Handling load increases

High density design strategy

We offer a high density design strategy to optimize rack power, analyze cooling requirements and floor load bearing capacity, which will then be used to develop an efficient design strategy that reduces costs and is compliant with toughest environmental regulations.

Metering, monitoring and controlling

As cooling is accounting for a considerable proportion of a data center’s energy requirements, it is important to keep track of how and where energy is used within a data center. The challenge is to have a secure, efficient and easy to use monitoring and control system, therefore Siemens provides integrated metering and monitoring solutions and services to efficiently detect and respond to a variety of events that can threaten a data center's business continuity and profitability.
As a result, data center operators profit from enormous energy savings as our control systems monitor and act in order to save time and money.

Improving power and cooling efficiency

Monitoring and metering energy consumption is a good start but it also takes actions and plans to reduce energy consumption and make cooling more efficient. Siemens offers “Active Energy Management” that is considering energy efficiency in all aspects of data center operations including:

• the use of data center best practices for energy efficiency

• processor utilization

• system workload management and utilization

• power consumption

• efficient cooling / power management

• airflow management

• targeted / localized redundancy (UPS)

• Dense IT Equipment power and cooling strategies

• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling

CFD examples of optimization phases:

CFD visualization

Siemens developed its own CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software for data centers to visualize the air flows in server rooms. The software helps planning the air flows, minimizing the risk of cooling problems and increases the overall performance of the data centers.

KyotoCooling

Siemens also offers KyotoCooling, a technology that is quite different from traditional data center cooling methods.The traditional method involved a constant and therefore very energy intensive need for air-conditioning that resulted in higher operational costs.
KyotoCooling however, uses a modified heat-exchange wheel technology. Warm air is fed through this heat exchange wheel, is cooled, and then led back to the cool area of the room. It is an environmentally friendly system that dramatically reduces carbon dioxide emissions and also delivers significant power and cost savings.
One of our reference projects – KPN in the Netherlands – could reduce overall power consumption by 20 to 30 percent and the power consumption for cooling could be reduced by more than 70 percent. So it is not only green, but it also saves money.