Cooling solution for server room (condensed water only, no chilled water)
Dear experts,
We are looking for an AC solution for our server room. We are limited to condensed water solutions only as there is no chilled water.
We are in the closed building and we can't just add a portable AC unit (self contained), building allowed us to add one portable unit two years ago - APC Network Air 1000 but it is not nearly enough to cool the room let alone the room with all of our equipment in there.... now they will not let us have it unless it is a permanent ac solution.
APC recommended ACRD200 unit which runs for about $11,000 w 1 yr warranty and works with condensed water. Another vendor recommends Rittal LCP Inline Cooling (document attached). I will also be looking to purchase an extended warranty for a total of 3 years on whatever the appliance we decide to purchase....
If you look at the room layout, you will see that we also have 3 shelving racks (equipment that doesn't fit into the server rack plus additional hardware/software storage). if we were to install a traditional ac unit, I would have to get rid of the shelve and not have any room to place this stuff....
We have 6 servers, 1 tape appliance, 2 desktops plus router, switches, firewall, rack mount console etc.
According to one of the cooling contractors all of the equipment produces almost 23,000 BTUH
Based on the chart of the room attached as well as the fact that we only have condensed water and factors like cost, reliability and warranty, what would you recommend for our situation ? Building turns the ehxaust fans at 7pm daily...
$12,000 plus an additional $2,300 for warranty plus the cost to install the water pipes, it comes up fairly expensive, so ultimately I'd like to keep the appliance no more the $13k - $14k including the 3 year warranty.... If we purchased a server rack/ac combo such as Rittal in the attachment, I could then get rid of the shelve... however that woudl be out of our budget...
The guy that recommended Rittal said that Rittal is the company that makes the racks for HP Modular cooling systems.... If I had to chose between the APC ACRD200 and the Rittal appliance (see attachments) which one would you recommend ? Anything else that I should be looking at ?
Thank you in advance.
LCP--Inline.pdf
Rittal-IT-Liquid-Cooling-Package.pdf
server-room.pdf
We are looking for an AC solution for our server room. We are limited to condensed water solutions only as there is no chilled water.
We are in the closed building and we can't just add a portable AC unit (self contained), building allowed us to add one portable unit two years ago - APC Network Air 1000 but it is not nearly enough to cool the room let alone the room with all of our equipment in there.... now they will not let us have it unless it is a permanent ac solution.
APC recommended ACRD200 unit which runs for about $11,000 w 1 yr warranty and works with condensed water. Another vendor recommends Rittal LCP Inline Cooling (document attached). I will also be looking to purchase an extended warranty for a total of 3 years on whatever the appliance we decide to purchase....
If you look at the room layout, you will see that we also have 3 shelving racks (equipment that doesn't fit into the server rack plus additional hardware/software storage). if we were to install a traditional ac unit, I would have to get rid of the shelve and not have any room to place this stuff....
We have 6 servers, 1 tape appliance, 2 desktops plus router, switches, firewall, rack mount console etc.
According to one of the cooling contractors all of the equipment produces almost 23,000 BTUH
Based on the chart of the room attached as well as the fact that we only have condensed water and factors like cost, reliability and warranty, what would you recommend for our situation ? Building turns the ehxaust fans at 7pm daily...
$12,000 plus an additional $2,300 for warranty plus the cost to install the water pipes, it comes up fairly expensive, so ultimately I'd like to keep the appliance no more the $13k - $14k including the 3 year warranty.... If we purchased a server rack/ac combo such as Rittal in the attachment, I could then get rid of the shelve... however that woudl be out of our budget...
The guy that recommended Rittal said that Rittal is the company that makes the racks for HP Modular cooling systems.... If I had to chose between the APC ACRD200 and the Rittal appliance (see attachments) which one would you recommend ? Anything else that I should be looking at ?
Thank you in advance.
LCP--Inline.pdf
Rittal-IT-Liquid-Cooling-Package.pdf
server-room.pdf
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I was considering some of that already. CRT monitors were replaced with two smaller LCD, a couple of older servers were replaced with the newer ones as well as I also have a couple of VMs running. We still need to get AC solution in place. You can only reduce so much heat before you are stuck...
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correction for the APC ACRD200 cost, appliance is slightly over 10 grand, however 2 additional years under warranty is over 4 grand....
ASKER
I was considering replacing a solid wood door with a metal mesh door, but we are at the point where this is becoming a problem. 3 switches, 1 router and 3 server hard drives were replaced due to failure within the past 4 or 5 months. So limiting the ammount of heat is one way toward a solution but we feel we need more adequate cooling to resolve heat problems all together. Any help with the suggestions on APC, Rittal perhaps some others brands would be really appreciated.
How tall is your room? We ripped down the drop ceilings and have ~13ft from deck to deck. Hung a 3-ton unit (with seismic bracing!) and sent exhaust to the plenum air return. It's 240-3ph, and kicks on when the building air shuts off at night and on weekends.
Is there enough reserve cooling capacity in your building's cooling system to handle you for a 2- or 3-day weekend? Where we are it's ~$75-100/hr to get the towers running after hours, so that's why we picked an electrical unit.
Is there enough reserve cooling capacity in your building's cooling system to handle you for a 2- or 3-day weekend? Where we are it's ~$75-100/hr to get the towers running after hours, so that's why we picked an electrical unit.
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Yep, I was considering putting a 3+ ton unit in the server room or over the ceiling, but building engineers said that it will not help with the heat over the weekend and not only over the weekend but after 7pm... that`s why they recommended that we go with something from APC.... If it comes down to cost, I may only be able to approve a standard 3+ton ac unit as it does cost 3 to 5 times less then some of these APC and Rittal appliances. Another issue is storage and noise. Stuff that I have in the server room can not be placed anywhere in the office and if we put the ac over the ceiling this raises noice concerns for our management..... The room is tiny 100" x 95" x 149", i don't think it is adequate enough to hold everything that we have in there and this will be another reason I maybe pushing for APC/Rittal as it sort of addresses the storage issues...
>engineers said that it will not help with the heat over the weekend
Strange thing to say. Works fine for me, and had the approval of the building engineer and the city. It's called "supplemental cooling", and has been around for a quite a few decades. :)
I have a 12" duct to exhaust to plenum, and a 24x24 register that blows into the server room. I also have a 6" duct with inline fan that leads to a register right over my desk. On nights and weekends, I'm beyond comfortable...chilly even.
The height is the thing. We wedged this between beams, sprinkler pipes, low-voltage cable trays, and managed to plumb a drain line and water supply line. Three guys and a hand-cranked Genie-lift. Took 2-3 days IIRC, including the new electrical sub-panel and shutoff switch.
My room is ~15x15ft. Unit was made to fit inside a 2x4 drop ceiling tile space if we had chosen to replace the drop ceiling to make it "pretty".
This was purpose-built for server rooms, labs, etc. It's a Stulz unit with cooling and humidifier.
Strange thing to say. Works fine for me, and had the approval of the building engineer and the city. It's called "supplemental cooling", and has been around for a quite a few decades. :)
I have a 12" duct to exhaust to plenum, and a 24x24 register that blows into the server room. I also have a 6" duct with inline fan that leads to a register right over my desk. On nights and weekends, I'm beyond comfortable...chilly even.
The height is the thing. We wedged this between beams, sprinkler pipes, low-voltage cable trays, and managed to plumb a drain line and water supply line. Three guys and a hand-cranked Genie-lift. Took 2-3 days IIRC, including the new electrical sub-panel and shutoff switch.
My room is ~15x15ft. Unit was made to fit inside a 2x4 drop ceiling tile space if we had chosen to replace the drop ceiling to make it "pretty".
This was purpose-built for server rooms, labs, etc. It's a Stulz unit with cooling and humidifier.
ASKER
Can you please post what model you have? My walls a fairly thin and probably have little to no insulation so noise maybe an issue, but again units like yours only make noise when they need to either turn on or off, correct? I will check with my engineers about it again. as far as the exhaust duct... we have that, but i can't notice any air being removed at all. Just removing some of the ceiling tiles actually helped a little bit.
>My walls a fairly thin and probably have little to no insulation so noise maybe an issue
Std drywall on steel studs. Faint hum, but the building's AC and the servers are just as loud.
>units like yours only make noise when they need to either turn on or off, correct?
Correct.
>Just removing some of the ceiling tiles actually helped a little bit.
Then your drop ceiling is a return-air plenum. This means that that space is not "dead", but actually carries old air back to the building HVAC. If you remove tiles, this increases the amount of air exhausted from your room, but may also produce a draw where air from other rooms gets sucked in through the door openings. This brings dust, depending on where the door leads.
I have a Stulz CeilAir, like those on this page:
http://ats.stulz.com/products/precision-cooling/ceilair-ceiling-mounted/
Std drywall on steel studs. Faint hum, but the building's AC and the servers are just as loud.
>units like yours only make noise when they need to either turn on or off, correct?
Correct.
>Just removing some of the ceiling tiles actually helped a little bit.
Then your drop ceiling is a return-air plenum. This means that that space is not "dead", but actually carries old air back to the building HVAC. If you remove tiles, this increases the amount of air exhausted from your room, but may also produce a draw where air from other rooms gets sucked in through the door openings. This brings dust, depending on where the door leads.
I have a Stulz CeilAir, like those on this page:
http://ats.stulz.com/products/precision-cooling/ceilair-ceiling-mounted/
ASKER
thanks aleghart,
I copied your response and sent it to building engineers for them to review.
I copied your response and sent it to building engineers for them to review.
ASKER
my engineers state that unless we get the unit that is capable to recycle the hot air when stuff is turned off at 7pm daily as well as over the entire weekends that wouldn't work. So that`s what they were referring too when they said suggestion wouldn't work.
Found out the condensed water temperature in the water line is 74%
The Rittal unit wouldn't work unless I get a chiller unit. So, every time I speak to the vendors the price just keep on going up. Anyway, I'm still considering Rittal and my engineer is also suggesting a low profile Liebert wall or ceileing unit. Either way, once I get all of the quotes it will probably come down to the cost. Liebert units can cost $3,000 - $5,000 if I'm not mistaken however any inrow unit with 3 year warrangty will be at least $15,000. I'm thinking of leaning toward a conventional unit that can recycle air and if this thing breaks within the next couple of years we can just replace it and still save money as opposed to APC, Rittal or whatever other high density units they make....
Found out the condensed water temperature in the water line is 74%
The Rittal unit wouldn't work unless I get a chiller unit. So, every time I speak to the vendors the price just keep on going up. Anyway, I'm still considering Rittal and my engineer is also suggesting a low profile Liebert wall or ceileing unit. Either way, once I get all of the quotes it will probably come down to the cost. Liebert units can cost $3,000 - $5,000 if I'm not mistaken however any inrow unit with 3 year warrangty will be at least $15,000. I'm thinking of leaning toward a conventional unit that can recycle air and if this thing breaks within the next couple of years we can just replace it and still save money as opposed to APC, Rittal or whatever other high density units they make....
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Guys, thank you for your help.
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