Mark Fontecchio: Data center leaders: ASHRAE standard flawed

A group of six leaders in the data center industry say that a new standard by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers is too “prescriptive” in its attempt to promote data center cooling efficiency, in part because of its support of airside economizers for all data centers, rather than just for those where the technology fits best.

The data center users involved include:

* Chris Crosby, Senior Vice President, Digital Realty Trust
* Hossein Fateh, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dupont Fabros Technology
* James Hamilton, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer, Amazon
* Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations and Google Fellow, Google
* Mike Manos, Vice President, Service Operations, Nokia
* Kevin Timmons, General Manager, Datacenter Services, Microsoft

Recently, ASHRAE added data centers to its building efficiency standard. The standard defines energy efficiency for most types of buildings in the United States, and is “often incorporated into building codes across the country,” according to a statement on setting efficiency goals for data centers released by the group of six. Here is what they had to say specifically regarding airside economizers:

more of the SearchDataCenter article from Mark Fontecchio

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.