Professionals who care
MICHAEL YOUNG
Michael Young iis a trainer, coach and contracts engineer in the HVAC industry. He graduated from the
University of the Witwatersrand in the field of Mechanical Engineering (B.Sc Mech Eng) in 2008 and
qualified as a Professional Engineer (Pr.Eng) in 2013. Michael is passionate about promoting knowledge
and helping other young engineers grow within the industry through his training workshops and
coaching sessions.
PERFORMANCE,
FLEXIBILITY, RELIABILITY
By Michael Young
Your success within the data centre industry is often determined by these
three factors.
A
ll our articles have spoken about performance and costs. So,
where does flexibility and reliability come into the picture?
Can it really influence the final design of our cooling system?
A few months ago, I was invited to attend a conference call
with a new client regarding one of my proposals for a new cooling
system for a data centre. When I initially attended the call, I
thought that performance and costs were the topics that were
going to be discussed.
To my surprise, both these topics were never mentioned.
Instead, I was asked, “How do we operate the cooling units
when 10% of the servers are populated?” The next question that
followed was, “How do the cooling units respond when there is a
loss of power within the data centre?”
At this point, I learnt that there is more to a cooling solution
than just performance and capital costs. Flexibility to adapt to
the needs of business, and reliability were additional needs of
the client.
Flexibility is the new scope of work
that everyone needs to consider. The
drive for such flexibility in the cooling
solution is to reduce the total cost of
ownership for the final client.
So, why is flexibility to the business so important when it comes
to cooling?
In one of my previous projects, we installed five cooling units
in a new data centre. Each cooling unit could provide 100kW
of sensible cooling. After five months, we discovered that the
cooling system consumed a large amount of energy and the units
www.hvacronline.co.za
failed on many different errors (cycling of compressors being one
of those errors).
After conducting a site audit, it was discovered that the servers
were not fully populated and the data centre only required 100kW
of cooling. So, operating five cooling units (even at a modulated
capacity) wasted energy and resulted in the failure of the cooling
units on certain alarms.
To overcome this problem, we integrated teamwork
operations, which now modulated units where part loads existed,
or ramped up units where full cooling was required.
Clients are now addressing the issue of partial rack population,
as they have realised that data centres are never fully populated
on the first day of operations. The new trend within the industry is
to split the cooling integration into phases.
Phase 1, termed ‘Day 1’, will often cater for a specific initial
start-up load, while Phase 2, termed ‘Day 2‘, will cater for the full
or maximum load of the data centre.
In some instances, the type of technology was changed as
the project progressed. The client requested us to use a DX
system for Day 1 and a chilled water system for Day 2. As you
can imagine, the management of the project was complex, as
the installation and cutover to the chilled water system had to
be done on a live data centre.
Flexibility is the new scope of work that everyone needs to
consider. The drive for such flexibility in the cooling solution is to
reduce the total cost of ownership for the final client.
If you would like to learn more on how flexibility influences the
design of a cooling system, log onto www.myhvaccoach.com and
watch our video series on data centre design.
Wishing you a successful month ahead. RACA
RACA Journal I January 2019
71