Dynamic thermal response of the data center to cooling loss during facility power failure
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Shields, Shawn
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Abstract
Provisioning for power failure is an important element of data center design. It is
important to assess both tangible and intangible costs of unplanned data center downtime.
These costs must be compared with the capital cost of providing various levels of backup
power infrastructure to compute and cooling equipment. Various levels of backup power
infrastructure each lead to a most probable transient scenario after utility power failure.
Because of differences between facilities, the level of risk that unacceptable compute
equipment inlet temperature associated with each level of backup power infrastructure is
not standardized; in particular, facilities with differing compute equipment power
densities may require different levels of backup power infrastructure to maintain safe
operation. Choosing one level of backup power infrastructure above another is not
necessarily obvious for every facility, as there may be large gaps in costs and unknown
levels of risk for lower levels of provisioning.
A first order model is also used to compare inclusion of various thermal
capacitance values with experimental results. Room level experiments also illustrate the
relative level of risk associated with various levels of provisioning for the same control
volume and compute equipment. Although provisioning to back up as much equipment as
possible remains the "safest" solution, cost will continue to play a factor in facility design
decisions. This work offers a step toward appropriate modeling of data center power
failure events and suggests further steps to continue the process.
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Date
2009-07-01
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