I have been involved in the telecommunications industry as long as I can remember. One of my best memorys is sitting on a packing crate at age 8, helping my Dad install equipment in a small central office in Okalona, Arkansas. I was strapping blocks (wiring) for a STEP installation.I have worked for several ILECs including Bellsouth
In the mid 80s as the line between IT and Telecom began to blur, I became more involved with IT and networks. During that time I earned several Microsoft and Cisco certifications.
My latest venture is working for Hardy Services and getting something called Site Support Services started.
The Site Support Services Department was created to offer turnkey support for Mission Critical Infrastructure. We instal , reapir and service all types of data center cooling , UPS and power systems, fire suppression systems, acces flooring, data center security access control and video.
Although I am very familiar with Information Technology and the facilities that maintain that infrastructure, the mechanical side is new to me. I am learning as I go with the help of lots of folks here at Hardy and all the online training available to the industry.
I thought I would share my "learning experiences".
My trip to the Alcatel-Lucent facility in Plano was great. Alcatel showed us great hospitality (not to mention feeding us pretty good too) and the performance of their new modular cooling solution was just as advertised.
The most powerful comment I can make about it is this one, it was hot in Plano that day and after the walk over to the data center, I was warm. When we got inside and were standing in the "hot aisle" I found myself leaning into the back of the racks to cool off. I never in my entire life thought I would ever say that! The principal is simple if you don't blow all that hot air out into the room , it makes the problem much easier to deal with. There are a couple of caveats here that I should mention, The first is about the energy savings. Using chilled water especially existing chilled water can net significant energy savings.Especially if you convert from traditional cw cooling to the Modular System. Air cooled direct expansion cooling will eat into the potential savings pretty dramatically due to the electricity cost to run the compressors. The second caveat is size of installation. This system doesn't really lend itself to smaller deployments. All in all , I was very impressed with what I saw and it gives a lot of credence to the theory that CRAC cooling is really about heat rejection and not air or cooling capacity.
I have looked at lots of different ideas for server room cooling, I find Alcatel's to be the most practical and usable of them all. I mentioned to them that in some deployments, putting in a small package chiller might be a very good idea since the ROI for chilled water was so dramatic. I keep going back to something we say here a lot, sometimes you don't need more cooling you just need less heat.
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