Air Conditioner Sizes

Critical cooling load refers to the load in a server room or datacentre environment of the usable cooling capacity. The critical cooling load does not include equipment in support areas outside the datacentre or server room floor.

HVAC is an industry acronym that stands for ‘Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning’. These three systems are often combined into one overall system within a datacentre building with specialists known as HVAC engineers. Air conditioning specialist suppliers may also be known as HVAC companies. The aim for an HVAC system is to provide a thermal comfort and acceptable air quality in an economically viable and energy efficient manner.

The equipment within a server cabinet can include servers, switches, routers and rack mount UPS systems. These devices tend to draw air ‘front-to-rear’ as a result of their design and fan operation. A hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment is an arrangement of server cabinets so that the front of the cabinets face each other (cold-aisle). Air conditioned (cool) air is drawn in from the front of the cabinets and exits the server cabinets into a hot-aisle. From the ‘hot-aisle’ the warm air is drawn back into the cooling system for cooling and re-circulation back through the cold-aisle.