Abstract
Efficient cooling of data center infrastructure is an important way to reduce total energy consumption. Containment, with separation of hot and cold airflows has allowed significant increase in efficiencies. However, balancing the airflow, so that IT equipment in an aisle only receives the cooling airflow that that aisle needs is still often not done. We propose a new architecture where IT racks are clustered together with shared hot aisles ducted to a common ceiling plenum. Each aisle has an actively controlled damper used to balance the airflow to the cooling infrastructure. Using a differential air pressure sensor in each aisle and an algorithm designed to balance the flow network, we minimize the cooling airflow and maximize cooling efficiency.
