Aisle containment

Data centre containment has completely changed the way IT facilities are designed and operated. Hot and cold aisle arrangement is essential to the composition of any efficient data centre as it separates hot and cold air within a data centre/server room using a variety of different methods, ensuring the cold air is not mixed with the hot air, reducing hot spots.

The idea of hot aisle containment is to return the hot air from the IT equipment directly back to the CRAC units using a ceiling plenum or ducting system without contaminating the cold air coming into the data centre.

Cold aisle containment is the reverse, as the cold air is pressurised in a contained cold environment.

With many data centres struggling to accommodate an increasing amount of servers in a limited amount of space, the risk of IT equipment failure due to overheating poses a very real and expensive problem.

With 75% of server failures occurring in the top third of racks, thanks to the fluctuating temperatures (upwards of eight degrees in many cases), Hot and Cold Aisle separation is now widely regarded as one way of the most efficient ways to address the issue of increasing temperatures within data centres.

The decision between the type of containment solution employed: Hot or Cold, within the data centre is ultimately made dependent on the size of the room, the number of cabinets, orientation of cooling and heat load amongst other things. Both Hot and Cold Aisle Containment can also be easily retrofitted to existing installations.

Benefits to Aisle Containment can be experienced from day one, including significantly reducing cooling costs, increasing space utilisation/rack densities as well as greatly reducing data centre carbon footprint.