Chillerless Data Center at 95F

This is 100% the right answer: Microsoft’s Chiller-less Data Center. The Microsoft Dublin data center has three design features I love: 1) they are running evaporative cooling, 2) they are using free-air cooling (air-side economization), and 3) they run up to 95F and avoid the use of chillers entirely. All three of these techniques were covered in the best practices talk I gave at the Google Data Center Efficiency Conference (presentation, video).

Other blog entries on high temperature data center operation:

· Next Point of Server Differentiation: Efficiency at Very High Temperature

· Costs of Higher Temperature Data Centers?

· 32C (90F) in the Data Center

Microsoft General Manager of Infrastructure Services Arne Josefsberg blog entry on the Dublin facility: http://blogs.technet.com/msdatacenters/archive/2009/09/24/dublin-data-center-celebrates-grand-opening.aspx.

In a secretive industry like ours, it’s good to see a public example of a high-scale data center running hot and without chillers. Good work Microsoft.

–jrh

James Hamilton

e: jrh@mvdriona.com

w: http://www.mvdirona.com

b: http://blog.mvdirona.com / http://perspectives.mvdirona.com

2 comments on “Chillerless Data Center at 95F
  1. It’ll absolutely work well in a small center. In fact most of the large center designs are made of rooms or pods each of which is considerably smaller than a datacenter. 60kw is fairly small but I see no reasons why you couldn’t do it at that scale. Intel did something along that scale with this containerized experiment: //perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/04/07/32C90FInTheDataCenter.aspx

    James Hamilton
    jrh@mvdirona.com

  2. Rex says:

    James,

    Any reasons you can think of that high-temp designs won’t work on smaller data centers or server rooms?

    I’m about to start designing a 60 KW server room, under intense pressure to cut operating costs. We’re on the central California cost where outdoor temps rarely rise above 95 F and water shortages are a constant problem. I’m thinking free air cooling plus enough DX cooling to bring the temp below 90 F on those rare hot afternoons.

    Good designs for smaller data centers and server rooms might save a significant amount of energy, money, and CO2.

    — Rex

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.