Burton Group on data center strategies and cooling: When all you have is a hammer

Everything looks like a nail, a truism that ASHRAE (The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) has just demonstrated in its advice to data center operators on how to achieve greater cooling efficiency in the data center (see ASHRAE Standard 90.1). In ASHRAE’s opinion, the way to achieve data center cooling efficiency is through the use of various economizer techniques (air-side, water-side …) to reduce the amount of energy used by the cooling plant. Unfortunately, this is a rather narrow view of the problem, focused on the stuff that ASHRAE members do best, i.e. air-conditioning and chilled water plants. The ASHRAE standard has now drawn a universal thumbs down from some of the largest data center operators (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros Technology and Nokia) who issued a joint statement urging ASHRAE to re-think it’s position.

more of the Burton Group blog post

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.