FAQs - Containment Aisles

Cold aisle containment is designed to eliminate hot spots in server racks, allows more space within the server rack to be used and reduce overall cooling cooling costs. Cold-aisle containment can be used with raised access floor plenums and/or overhead ducted supplies to improve cold airflow to the server racks. The plenum is then open space between the structural concrete slab and the underside of the raised access floor system. As well as for cooling, the plenum may also be used for cable runs via conduits.

Cold aisle containment systems are designed to eliminate hot-spots within server racks, server rooms and datacentres. These hot-spots typically occur at the top of server racks and are affected by hot exhaust air circulation. Cold aisle containment forms an enclosed ‘cold aisle’ over the top of the racks and by using sliding doors at both ends of the containment. By managing air flow at the top of the server racks, more of the space within the server rack cabinet can be used, reducing the space cost per server in the rack and the costs of cooling can be reduced.

Referred to as hot aisle/cold aisle containment is a server room layout design and arrangement for server racks whose goal is to a configuration layout the achieves the lowest cooling costs and conserves energy through efficient management of the hot and cold air flow from and to the server racks.