Energy Manager Today: Saving Power in Data Centers

A new white paper from Schneider Electric explores the best ways of cooling a data center. One of the methods – use of cool air from the outdoor environment – can cut energy costs significantly.

Chillers and compressors are relied upon to keep IT equipment in data centers cool. The use of outdoor air, however, may reduce or even eliminate this equipment, with obvious upside energy ramifications.

Whether to use what the white paper terms direct or indirect air depends on conditions specific to each data center. The most obvious is the climate in which the data center is located. There are other issues, however. The white paper describes the approaches and the pros and cons of each.

Saving money by making data center cooling more efficient is a hot topic. Yesterday, Energy Manager Today described a story on calculating power usage effectiveness (PUE) that was posted at Data Center Knowledge. Also this week, Data Center Dynamics posted a detailed article on ways of assessing power in data centers and the impact of virtualization and other emerging approaches.