Today's technology rooms require precise, stable environments in order for sensitive electronics to operate optimally. Standard comfort air conditioning is ill suited for technology rooms, leading to system shutdowns and component failures. Because precision air conditioning maintains temperature and humidity within a very narrow range, it provides the environmental stability required by sensitive electronic equipment, allowing your business to avoid expensive downtime.
How and Why Mission-
Critical Cooling
Systems Differ From
Common Air
Cond itioners
White Paper #56
Revision 2
Executive Summary
Today's technology rooms require precise, stable environments in order for sensitive
electronics to operate optimally. Standard comfort air conditioning is ill suited for
technology rooms, leading to system shutdowns and component failures. Because
precision air conditioning maintains temperature and humidity within a very narrow range, it
provides the environmental stability required by sensitive electronic equipment, allowing
your business to avoid expensive downtime.
?2003 American Power Conversion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, photocopied, transmitted, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without the written permission of the copyright owner. www.apc.com Rev 2003-2 2Defining Today's Technology Rooms - Not Just
Computer Rooms Anymore
Precision environmental control requirements now reach far beyond the confines of the traditional data center or computer room to encompass a larger suite of applications, referred to as "Technology Rooms". Typical technology room applications include: 1. Medical equipment suites (MRI, CAT scan) 2. Clean rooms 3. Laboratories 4. Printer/copier/CAD centers 5. Server Rooms 6. Hospital facilities (operating, isolation rooms) 7. Telecommunications (switch gear rooms, cell sites)
Why Do I Need Precision Air Conditioning?
Information processing is the lifeblood of all critical operations. Therefore your company's health is dependent on the technology room reliability. IT hardware produces an unusual, concentrated heat load, and at the same time, is very sensitive to changes in temperature or humidity. A temperature and/or humidity swing can produce problems ranging from processed "gibberish" to a complete system shutdown. This can create huge costs for the company, depending on the length of the interruption and the value of time and data lost. Standard comfort air conditioning is not designed to handle the heat load concentration and heat load profile of technology rooms, nor is it designed to provide the precise temperature and humidity set point required for these applications. Precision air systems are designed for close temperature and humidity control. They provide high reliability for year-round operation, with the ease of service, system flexibility and redundancy necessary to keep the technology room up and running 24 hours a day.
Temperature and Humidity Design Conditions
Maintaining the temperature and humidity design conditions is critical to the smooth operation of a technology room. Design conditions should be 72-75°F (22-24°C) and 35-50% relative humidity (R.H.). As damaging as the wrong ambient conditions can be, rapid temperature swings can also have a negative effect on hardware operation. This is one of the reasons hardware is left powered up, even when not processing data. Precision air conditioning is designed to maintain temperature at ±1°F (0.56°C) and humidity at ±3-5% R.H. 24 hours a day, 8760 hours a year. In contrast, comfort systems are designed to maintain 80°F (27°C) and 50% R.H. only during summer conditions of 95°F (35°C) and 48% R.H. outside conditions. Usually
?2003 American Power Conversion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, photocopied, transmitted, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without the written permission of the copyright owner. www.apc.com Rev 2003-2 3there is no dedicated humidity control and the simple controllers cannot maintain the set point tolerance required for temperature, allowing potentially harmful temperature and humidity swings to occur.
Problems Caused by the Wrong Environment
A poorly maintained technology room environment will have a negative impact on data processing and storage operations. The results can range from data corruption to complete system shutdowns and failures. 1- High & Low Temperature A high or low ambient temperature or rapid temperature swings can corrupt data processing and shut down an entire system. Temperature variations can alter the electrica... [download for more]
