Business-critical technological rooms have a unique environmental requirement which necessitate cooling system that can match these requirements. For any small server room, electrical room, precise environment-based facility, or control room the basic needs of sensible cooling, air filtration and continuous duty operation must be satisfied.
Many critical infrastructure managers end up using comfort cooling solutions in small technological rooms to meet their environmental control needs. At first glance, these systems may seem simple and economically beneficial. However, because they are not designed to meet the unique needs of critical IT equipment, reliance on comfort cooling systems can result in an increased risk for untimely system failures as well as grossly inflated operating costs.
Due to high sensitivity of electronic components in the data center, telecom switch room, small control rooms, and networking environments the temperature, humidity, air movement, and air cleanliness must be consistent and within specific limits to prevent premature equipment failures and costly downtime. These rooms require round the clock operation-based sensible cooling unit that maintains precise temperature, relative humidity, more than 85% efficient air filtration, and remote monitoring-based control system.
Apart from the above prerequisites, ‘shrinking white space’ in small equipment rooms is another bigger challenge for putting floor-standing precision units. It is not only a scarcity of space in the small equipment room, but also airflow management are sometimes obstructed by racks, battery stands, and switch modules that lead to malfunctions of equipment in long run due to absence of uniform cooling & airflow.
Below are the challenges faced by the small critical equipment room in terms of thermal management:
- Accommodation of cooling unit on the floor due to space constrains.
- Misconceptions on the use of traditional comfort cooling units as a better alternative to precision air cooling units since they are cheaper and convenient even though they are incapable of supporting high sensible load which results to an unorganized and fragile system architecture and escalated the TCO.
- Continuous duty cycle is imperative for the success of the mentioned services and therefore, uptime of power and cooling services are crucial factors in operations.
- Plastic body material for indoor units creates a high risk of fire hazards.
Being an architect of continuity, Vertiv always prioritizes technology support for critical business operation and come up with inventions that support uninterruptible operations in critical applications; may it be a small equipment room or a large data hall. Vertiv’s Liebert thermal management solution supports high SHR (>0.9) and are designed with such components that support 24x7x365 operations. It is easy to exercise control by monitoring and managing on temperature, relative humidity, dust, and debris using the integrated micro-controller. This makes the supervisory task easier compared to the decentralized control mechanism of a traditional comfort system.
For floor space issue of indoor cooling unit (inside technology room) placement, Liebert SRC–G is the ideal solution as its series are available in wall mounted & ceiling mounted (in future) configurations. Outdoor-based condensing unit is very compact in design and connected with indoor units through interconnecting copper pipes (max equivalent length up to 60m).
Recently Vertiv has announced the availability of the Liebert SRC-G in Australia and New Zealand, greater India, and Southeast Asian countries. To learn more, click here.
