The backbone of a data center is the environment where all of the technology is located. In this video, you’ll learn about humidity, temperature, and fire suppression options for data centers.
In the United States and indeed around the world, we have many different data centers that are operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is estimated that approximately 2% of all US power consumption is used by these data centers. Much of the power we use in these data centers is to manage the environment where all of this equipment resides. This allows us to manage the humidity, the temperature, and other environmental controls.
Managing humidity in a data center can be a bit of a challenge. If you have a high humidity, then you’ve got condensation, and having any type of water in a data center is never a good idea. If your humidity is too low, you could have excessive static discharge, which is also potentially harmful to the equipment.
Many industry guidelines put the ideal humidity levels somewhere around 40% to 60%. This is high enough to prevent any type of static discharge but low enough to prevent any type of condensation. This can vary a bit depending on the geography, but these humidity levels tend to be the average that you’ll find in most data centers.
A lot of this power also goes to keeping the data center cool. As this equipment is running, it’s generating heat, and all of that heat needs to be cooled down. There is an optimal temperature range, and many data centers are trying to keep the temperature somewhere around 64 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The cooling equipment in our data centers is constantly working to keep the temperature at that range.
But of course, there are external influences that can affect the temperature inside the building. For example, the outdoor temperature may increase or decrease, and that may add additional load to the cooling systems. You might also find that as your system load increases, and you’re creating more heat from the systems inside of the data center, that we will need to add additional cooling.
Most data centers will have a well-engineered heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. This is an HVAC. This HVAC system is designed to maintain a particular humidity and temperature level. Most of these HVAC systems have sensors that are located throughout the data center, and they’re working to make sure that the same temperature and humidity is the same across the entire data center.
Another important concern for data centers is what you do if there is a fire. Data centers contain a large amount of electrical equipment that are in a very large area, so we need to be sure that we have some way to suppress any type of fire. Normally, we would use water to be able to control a fire. But in an environment such as a data center, when you have this much electrical equipment, you’ll want to use other means for fire suppression.
If you were to look into the back of the data center, there’s probably a tank that contains some type of inert gas or chemical agent that is designed to either suppress the fire or remove any type of oxygen from the air. If somebody pulls the fire alarm, all of those chemicals are dispersed throughout the entire data center. And although this may cause damage to the equipment, it will prevent a fire from spreading. You’ll often see these fire suppression systems integrated with the existing HVAC. This means that if a fire is detected, the HVAC system will shut down and prevent any type of oxygen from feeding that fire.