Cooling

Custodian selects Aqua as premier cooling partner for new Dartford site

Custodian Data Centres has enlisted Aqua to design, supply and install an innovative temperature control system at the new 10MW site located in Dartford, Kent. With Custodian’s award-winning Maidstone facility nearing capacity, Custodian commissioned its new ‘DA2’ facility in Dartford, Kent, to meet the continued growth demands of its customers. Less than 15 miles outside of Central London, Custodian’s goal was to provide an advanced facility for end-users to relocate and host their mission-critical applications. The new site is carrier-neutral, operating at a PUE rating of below 1.3 and powered by resilient, 100% dual diverse renewable energy feeds. Aqua delivers a highly energy-efficient, bespoke, closed-loop air cooling system with integrated free cooling. The design for Custodian’s DA2 includes 12 custom-designed cooling coils and a free cooling chilled water system, comprising of 3 x 500kW Aqua EcoPro+ optimised free cooling chiller units, to accommodate for the initial phase of the site opening. The EcoPro+ units operate on R454B green refrigerant. Utilising integrated free cooling chillers, drastically reduces the amount of time mechanical cooling is required, saving significantly on energy usage, carbon impact and wear and tear of components parts, in particular the compressor. The Aqua EcoPro+ units have an in-built, optimised, free cooling coil, resulting in a fully packaged solution. In addition, with an Aqua unit, free cooling is achievable at higher ambient temperatures than with any other brand on the market, making Aqua a suitable partner for Custodian and its ever-growing client base as it allows for upgrades and additional capacity quickly and easily as needed, depending on customer needs. The system installed at Custodian achieves all the benefits of a fresh air system but without the need for the costs and resources normally associated with air filtration and maintenance. Fixed humidity control enables precise temperature control, eliminates any guesswork, and achieves total peace of mind. EC fans installed on-site maximise system efficiency even further, as well as achieving stable pressure control. “With the new DA2 Dartford site boasting a 10MW capacity, we needed a reliable cooling system that could handle the increased demands from the bigger site. Aqua’s bespoke energy-efficient systems and esteemed trusted experts means our customer’s data remains protected and running at optimised efficiency”, says Callum Woodhouse, M&E Manager at Custodian Data Centres. “Their sustainability commitments align with our overall company goals in reducing our carbon footprint, whilst providing a cost-effective and reliable solution for our customers. As our customer base continues to grow and expand over time, this Aqua solution allows us to adapt to the additional demands, in a seamless and efficient way”. A fully concurrent maintained pipework system is integral to the design, ensuring no single point of failure, something which is essential in the data centre industry. In fact, a part of the pipework can be removed without affecting the normal facility operations. N+1 capability was built-in on the mechanical equipment, including fans, coils, and pumps - this gives the facility full redundancy, and in the unlikely event that a fault should ever occur, DA2 can continue to operate whilst maintenance is undertaken. Mike West, Contracts Director at Aqua, explains: “Custodian’s commitment to energy efficiency is evident throughout their data centre facilities and it was critical that the DA2 site needed to mirror the energy efficiencies achieved at Maidstone. Reducing carbon footprint for end-user clients – with lower operating costs – were key drivers in this project. Maidstone uses five times less energy per kW of IT load than an average data centre, a challenge we were more than happy to accept and believe we have exceeded!”.

Critical cooling specialists launch Cloud Diagnostics

Airedale has launched Cloud Diagnostics, an advanced HVAC performance management tool available on your phone, tablet or laptop, in response to the pressure operators and facility managers are under when working with cooling equipment that is increasingly critical to business operations. Airedale has worked with data science experts to develop a new family of cloud-enabled products which can be installed in new and existing equipment like air handling units, chillers and precision air conditioners, allowing them to be connected, monitored and analysed via a secured communication channel to the Airedale Cloud Diagnostics servers. Cloud Diagnostics has been developed to be retrofitted with no disruption to service and offers several key benefits that can really lift the pressure off people tasked with keeping HVAC systems running safely and efficiently. Leak detection An emerging feature of the predictive maintenance ability of Cloud Diagnostics is a leak detection algorithm. By being able to recognise the operational features and patterns that signal a leak, detection can occur at very low levels, saving a client significant costs and environmental damage. Most leaks are detected today at around 20%, which is when a drop in performance becomes more obvious to facilities personnel, but in tests Airedale Cloud Diagnostics was able to report a suspected leak at 5%. This early detection has huge implications not only on cost savings, but also safety and environmental targets Live dashboard The information gathered by Cloud Diagnostics is reported on a live dashboard, which is available on any internet-connected device, and alerts can be delivered immediately via SMS or email. This allows for any issues to be recognized early and responded to immediately, avoiding disruption and expensive call outs. Data aggregation can be configured to report the latest data received as well as extracting KPIs for a comprehensive visual analysis of the unit’s performance. (e.g. chiller average supply water temperature for last 7 rolling days). Predictive maintenance Predictive maintenance is the key to optimising asset management for any critical equipment. HVAC units connected to Cloud Diagnostics are analysed for performance, utilising many algorithms and machine learning techniques, whereby the unit's performance is measured on a variety of relevant factors which are all analysed for deviations against ‘normalised’ behaviour, both instantaneously and over time as well. If a drop in performance against operating conditions is detected, this will act as an early warning system for the customer/maintenance team to investigate further. Being able to identify threats and faults in advance of them happening has a huge cost saving benefit, both in terms of emergency repairs, call out fees and downtime costs to the business. Security Airedale’s products are part of the critical infrastructure of a building or a data centre and therefore it is imperative that they are secured both from physical and network access. Airedale Cloud Diagnostics has been designed with security in mind, utilising the latest technology and security practices. Access to the Airedale Cloud Diagnostics portal is via a web-based portal with valid SSL certificate, using the same technology as internet banking and other secure portals. Reece Thomas, Controls product manager for Airedale says, “Airedale Cloud Diagnostics is something I am incredibly excited about, given the huge cost and environmental benefits it can offer our clients. All that is required to connect a piece of equipment to the service is a gateway into the unit for the system to collect and transfer data, some form of internet connection and a 24Vdc power supply.” Reece continues, “The ability for connected units to be able to learn from and compare against each other utilising intelligent unit modelling means that the performance analysis techniques continually improve and get stronger over time, making things like leak detection a much simpler and more efficient process” Reece concludes, “Another benefit of sharing data anonymously is that Airedale can use the data collected to analyse and determine how to better improve our products based on actual customer usage profiles. The benefits to this are endless and our clients can be absolutely assured of security and anonymity.”

DCNN Exclusive: Making sustainability gains with liquid cooling

This piece was written by Stuart Crump, Director of Sales at Iceotope Technologies Limited on how liquid cooling could be vital in the race to net zero. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) objectives have started to drive data centre business goals as the world transitions to a low carbon economy. Sustainability is no longer being viewed as a cost on business, indeed many customers are now using sustainability as a criterion for vendor selection. Positive action to reduce emissions is not only good for the planet, it’s also good for business. It will also signpost efficient data centres to an enlightened market. New developments in liquid cooling can assist data centre sustainability targets by significantly reducing facility energy consumption for mechanical services, decreasing water use, and providing a platform for high-grade reusable heat. Together, the characteristics of liquid cooling adds up to bottom-line benefits as well as ecological advantages to data centre operators, helping deliver competitive advantage in this highly commercialised sector. According to the IEA, data centres account for around 1% of global electricity demand. While data centre workloads and internet traffic have multiplied dramatically since 2015, energy use has remained relatively flat. However, demand for more digital services is growing at an astounding rate. For every bit of data that travels the network, a further five bits are transmitted within and among data centres. Immersion liquid cooling can greatly benefit data centre sustainability by significantly reducing overall cooling energy requirements by up to 80%. Data centre operators and customers now understand that air-cooled ITE environments are reaching the limits of their effectiveness.  As compute densities increase, the energy demands of individual servers and racks spiral upwards. Legacy air-cooled data halls cannot move the volume of cool air through the racks required by the latest CPU and GPU systems to maintain operating temperature. This means they must have a plan that includes liquid cooling if these sites are to remain viable. Liquid cooling techniques, such as precision immersion cooling circulates small volumes of a harmless dielectric compound across the surface of the server removing almost 100% of the heat generated by the electronic components. The latest solutions use a sealed chassis that enables IT equipment including servers and storage devices to be easily added or removed from racks with minimal disruption and no mess. Precision liquid cooling removes the requirement for server fans by eliminating the need to blow cool air over the IT components. Removing air cooling infrastructure from data centres also removes the capital expense of some cooling plant, as well as the operational costs of installation, power, servicing and maintenance. Removal of fans and plant not only produces an immediate benefit in terms of reducing noise in the technical area, it also frees up useful space in racks and cabinets as well as in plant rooms. Space efficiency equates to either facilities which are smaller in physical footprint, or the ability to host larger numbers of high density racks. Importantly, precision liquid cooling provides futureproof, scalable infrastructure to meet the provisioning requirements of tomorrow’s workloads and storage needs, Precision cooling and data centre water use The media reports widely on the lack of clean water for irrigation and consumption in drought hit areas from around the world. However, what has sometimes been called the data centre’s ‘dirty little secret’ is the volume of potable water required to operate certain data centres. Many air cooled data centres need water and lots of it. A small 1MW data centre using a conventional air-cooling process can use around 25.5 million litres of water every year. With mainly air-cooled processes, the data centre industry is currently consuming billions of litres of water each year. On the other hand, precision immersion liquid cooling consumes zero water in most cases and can be installed anywhere – including many existing data centres. The water in the cooling system, allowing for maintenance and water loop refreshes, can easily reduce data centre water use by more than 95%. The benefit of all this hot air… Creating a revenue generator from a cost item on the balance sheet is an ultimate dream come true. Currently, air cooled data centres eject heat into the atmosphere in the vast majority of cases. Liquid cooling techniques which capture and remove high-grade heat from the servers offers the capability to redirect this heat to district heating networks, industrial applications and other schemes. Using well established techniques this revenue stream, or sustainability project, could help to heat industrial sites and local facilities, such as schools and hospitals.  Climate change, government intervention with emission standards and public and investor pressure has helped drive change in the wider data centre business outlook. Savings and new revenue streams that benefit the organisations sustainability credentials warrant a critical review of their cost/benefit. There is the opportunity for data centres to move away from previous notions of how data centres operate towards much greater efficiency and sustainable operations.