Green Grid and ASHRAE align on fresh air cooling

This fall, Green Grid published a comprehensive white paper titled “Data Center Efficiency and IT Equipment Reliability at Wider Temperature and Humidity Ranges”. This is significant because the findings of the Green Grid white paper align with the ASHRAE 2011 Thermal Guidelines white paper and with the Dell point of view on fresh air, which can be found in these two white papers.

Thus, two of the most important industry power and cooling groups agree that the impact of fresh air cooling on IT equipment reliability is minimal and the adoption of fresh air cooling is more feasible than previously believed.  Detailed analyses of world-wide climate data show that elevated temperature excursions are generally infrequent and short term in duration, and the time-averaged reliability of these excursions is small, i.e. only a slightly higher failure rate than a traditional HVAC data center maintained at 20â°C.  Green Grid and ASHRAE both agree that chiller-less fresh air cooling is feasible in most of the industrialized world and can achieve substantial Opex and Capex savings.

However, in order to enable fresh air cooling, the industry needs IT equipment with short term temperature excursion capability.  Dell is the only major vendor with a full line of server form factors rated for fresh air with built-in high temperature excursion tolerance capability as well as an ecosystem of other types of fresh air rated products such as storage, networking, and rack power.  Dell first offered fresh air capable products in 2011 and we remain committed to offering green technologies that help our customers save on their IT capital and operational expenditures.

For more on Dell fresh air solutions, watch this video:

About the Author: Jon Fitch