D6 Phase 3: Video Tour
February 20, 2009 by Kevin Hazard, Web Hosting Evangelist in Data Centers, Evangelist's Corner
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many could I get for a video?
In a recent walkthrough of D6 Phase 3, I toted along a video camera to give you a first-hand look at what the data center looks like in motion. Not surprisingly, it looks exactly like it does in the pictures … only this glimpse relies much more heavily on my ability to multitask: holding a camera while guiding the tour.
If you haven’t been back to the D6 Phase 3 picture tour, head over there and check out the comment section where we answered a few key questions and explained a little more about the DC design.
One of the points I neglected to mention in the previous post is the positioning of the CRAC units in Phase 3. In other data center designs, CRAC units are positioned along opposing walls, pushing air toward the middle of the room. That positioning effectively cools the room, but our tests have shown that it can be done more efficiently by installing the CRAC units on one wall and in the middle of the DC, with the air flow going the same direction from both units … so the CRAC units are never fighting against each other.
As a bit of a bonus, the video also features a little bit of information about our power rooms and our UPS systems.
If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
Which do you prefer: video tours or photo tours? What else do you want to see?
-Kevin
February 21st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Hi kevin, congratulation for your new dc
So i want to do an interview with you about The Planet, it’s possible? Thank you
Best Regards
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:55 am
Very nice. Good to get away from tower servers.
Video tours are a great idea but a few pictures are nice too.
Keep up the good work!
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:19 am
Did you guys actually model the air flow? I hate to rain on your parade but you used the wrong cabinets to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish (ducted intake/exhaust). All those dell servers i saw are front to back cooling right. The server’s intakes are OUTSIDE the cabinets so you cannot cool them from inside the cabinets therefore the vented floor tiles (that you said you didn’t need) are absolutely required because they are the ONLY way to supply cold air to those servers. now this creates another problem go to dell’s website and calculate the CFM of each server and multiply that by how many are in the cabinets. then calculate the CFM of your perforated floor tiles. you better make sure they match because I can tell you right now you’re way way over budget on CFM with alternating perforated tiles. a Dell R900 for example uses just under 2000 CFM each. Seriously, go to http://inres.com/products/tileflow/overview.html and actually model your data center before you guys end up with a total abortion. The mistakes i see in here are still correctable. What I found when i filled a cabinet with 42 1U’s is i required both downflow (Leibert XDO’s) and upflow cooling otherwise the servers at the top of the cabinets fry. You guys did make a single improvement. you’re handling hot air properly. now you just need to handle the cool air properly. tileflow will also allow you to double check your CRAC unit placement as well. what you will discover is that there is a velocity threshold for air passing below a perforated tile. If it is too high it will suck air through the tile instead of pushing it out. tileflow will model your under the floor cooling and help you account for cabling, chilled water pipes and other obstructions under there that affect airflow. if you guys need any help feel free to email me.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Hi Jesse,
Great feedback, and thanks for taking the time to comment!
I apologize for there being a bit of confusion … you are right about the servers being front-to-back cooling, but the reason we don’t need the vented air tiles in front of every rack of servers is because the hot and cold air are isolated. The vented tiles in our other data centers need to be positioned in front of each set of servers to ensure cool air can be pulled through the servers, but when we do not allow any warm air exhaust into the data center space, the entire data center area maintains a constant temperature. There are no hot and cold aisles, so the servers on any rack in the data center will be pulling in air that is the same temperature as a server with a perforated tile in front of it.
The cold air is not pushed through the cabinet itself… it is still pushed outside the cabinet, but because we aren’t fighting our own warm air, the density of the perforated tiles isn’t as significant to a given server in a rack.
This reasoning is certainly not to suggest that the perforated tiles are placed haphazardly or that we did not work closely with all of our vendors to optimize the phase’s coefficient of efficiency … it was more of an observation contrasting from previous data center designs.
Given the technical nature of the build and the fact that you’ve got a non-technical person explaining it non-technically, it’s great to have the opportunity to clarify this confusion when it comes up. On the photo tour, we addressed quite a few similar questions about the design: http://blog.theplanet.com/2008/12/18/d6-phase-3-data-center-innovation/
March 26th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Great video Kevin, really nice to see how the DCs go together, would love to see more technical videos of the various bits. Keep up the good work.