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Technology Access Group has a state of the art, weight saving, versatile containment solution with unlimited flexibility.
Why is containment important?
Data centre cooling represents up to 50% of overall energy consumption. An enormous amount of energy is consumed every day to maintain acceptable intake temperatures to IT equipment. Containment creates a fundamental structure within the Data Center to ensure energy savings of hundreds of millions of rands/dollars and decreased data centres’ carbon footprint.
Two types of containment
- Cold Aisle Containment
- Hot Aisle Containment
Why separate cold from hot air?
Simply put, the separation of cold from hot air creates a uniform and predictable supply temperature to the intake of IT equipment as well as a warmer, drier return air to the AC coil. Building a containment solution increases the air efficiency, translating to increased up-times, longer hardware life, valuable energy savings and increased profits.
The benefits of cold and/or hot aisle containment are essential to any Data centre, namely:
- Reduce energy consumption
- Increase cooling capacity
- Increase rack population
- Additional power availability
- Increase equipment up-time
- Longer hardware life
- Increase bottom-line revenue
- Allow for standby duty rotation on cooling units resulting increasing their lifespan
- Cooling unit reduced maintenance
- Opportunity to monitor temperature conditions closer to IT equipment ensuring the temperature on the supply unit is reaching your critical equipment
- Separates supply and return airflow which provides a uniform and predictable to both IT temperature and AC equipment
- Eliminates hot and cold air mixing
- Works in both a raised floor and slab environments
- Increases cooling capacity
- Saves energy and improves data centre cooling efficiency
Establish optimal operating efficiencies is key. Cold Aisle Containment isolates the cooled supply air from the CRAC/CRAH units within direct proximity of the air intake of critical equipment.
Cold aisle containment ensures that the IT equipment is being cooled within the manufacturers’ specifications. Hot spots impact the ability to achieve the efficient operating conditions. The Containment creates a uniform and predictable airflow that eliminates hot spots, ensuring optimal operating efficiencies.
Hot aisle containment consists of a physical barrier that guides hot exhaust airflow back to the AC return. Warm air has a natural property to rise. Hot aisle containment takes advantage of this natural properties and directs the upward airflow to an AC return system such as a drop-ceiling void. This in turn, can increase cooling efficiency by 30% or more.
Hot Aisle Containment can double the cooling capacity. Hot aisle containment increases the effectiveness of your data centre cooling. This is achieved by keeps hot exhaust air emitted from server racks separated so that it returns to the AC coil both hot and dry (low relative humidity) increasing the AC’s cooling capacity. With Hot aisle containment, the hot air is given a separate pathway back to the AC intake without mixing with the cold air. In some cases, by containing the hot air and having it hit the AC coil at the hottest temperature possible, it can double the cooling tonnage. Hot Aisle Containment can double the CRAC/CRAH cooling capacity.
Space Efficient
Data centre space is expensive however, many companies do not populate the top 15% of the rack due to inconsistent supply air temperature. The area at the top of the rack is typically affected by hot exhaust air recirculation. Cold aisle containment systems are designed to eliminate these hot spots, allowing data centres to get more out their space. Under populating the rack increases the space cost per server ratio (Sp ~ SerR). While most ROI formulas compute the real cost of cooling saved, the increase in rack population alone saves companies millions of dollars towards new data centre expansion. For CoLo sites, this would mean increased revenue per square foot.
Our Solution
We offer various aluminium frame profiles but the most common profile size we use is a 40mm X 40mm extruded square tube with grooves that provides unlimited flexibility to containment solutions.
The aluminium construction saves on weight and helps you make an easier decision for deployment when faced with weight constraints on existing building, ceiling and/or floors constructions. We have extrusions that seamlessly integrate LED lighting that forms part of the extrusion profile, removing all unwanted bulky light attachments. In this way, the structure becomes your lighting solution.
The containment frame extrusion design was purposefully created with a centre passageway that can be used to house electrical cabling for either lighting, biometrics or thermal monitoring.
Our extrusions are locked together with a pre-fitted tension lock that is concealed within the extruded tubing. The simplicity of fitting and locking members together is as easy as turning a tork head screw 180 degree clockwise. The result is a clean, unobstructed modular system with unrivalled flexibility.
The roof and sidewall sections are made up of clear, high gloss plexiglass sheets that are highly transparent and colourless allowing the most light through at 92% light transmission. In additional these sheets are weatherproof and break resistant, making then an extremely popular choice for the application.
Should you have open areas for future rack deployment, we have you cover with our retractable lock blanking panel system, this gives your teams the ability to remove the panels in situ in as little as two minute and slide in an additional cabinet in giving you the power to make changes according to your needs and schedule.
Flexibility is endless:
- Sliding window for greater to both sides of an aisle
- Drop in roof sections that can be removed should you need to work above your containment
- Aluminium sliding or hinged doors
- Door functionality : full manual, auto manual closer or fully automated
- Biometrics integration
- Integrated LED lighting
- Retractable locks on Cabinet blanking panels
- Ultra transparent plexiglass inserts
- Concealed fixing points allowing for a clean unobstructed finish
- Mounting of monitoring equipment to the frame using the groove profile
- Additional tray supports from the containment removing the need for excessive threaded rods within the whitespace
- Through ways to allow for cabling and tray work to traverse a containment construction. The use of high-density brush panels is installed in these throughways
- Customised branding
- Customised designs to meet your requirements
We manufacture locally to ensure a competitive edge throughout the globe.
Join us on this exciting journey to improve your efficiencies, reducing your power consumption and ultimately saving you money.
Published by Travis Sheasby
Operations Manager
