Data center raised floors were initially developed to help to handle chiller lines, power feeds and most importantly the updraft required by mainframe equipment. Equipment needs, power and cooling requirements have changed significantly in data centers over the past 20 years since servers, storage and communication equipment started to occupy what was formerly occupied by mainframes and DASD equipment.

The original intent of the raised floor to cool the mainframe environment has since become a raceway for cabling runways, copper, fiber and power distribution in addition to the air flow.

Today's high density server farms, which are increasingly efficient heaters are requiring more power and cooling than ever before. The data center evolution of an all air cooled environment has become a real challenge for facility managers to deal with these heat related issues, cooling inefficiencies and increased server densities.
The challenge facility managers face is how to get the air that is beneath a raised the floor through the perforated tiles and into the front intakes of rack mounted vertically integrated server housings that are producing the heat.

The PlenaForm^® baffle system is a passive and contributory holistic solution that can be easily installed as an effective "VUF" or vertical under floor partitioning system, to direct air flow within the plenum space. PlenaForm baffles direct the source of the cold air from the CRAC units to where the air is or is not needed.

Velocity is the time rate of motion, therefore velocity pressure is the pressure caused by air in motion.  When air from a CRAC unit is forced through a partitioned air flow space, static pressure is created. Without dedicated partitioning, as the air moves further away from a CRAC unit, the air velocity decreases. To maintain velocity pressure to particular 'hot zones', PlenaForm baffles help maintain the static pressure further away from a CRAC unit and is a simple solution to cool thermal hot spots in information technology equipment centers.

It is of utmost importance for today's data center facility manager and design engineers to develop a master plan when laying out equipment in relationship to the CRAC placements. The ideal objective should be to create un-obstructed dedicated air flow paths to the equipment. Open floor penetrations must also be sealed to manage air flow more effectively.

Individual Comfort

Partitioning off raised floor around command control centers improves operator comfort.

Easily cool a hot spot by routing air from the CRAC.

Partitioning off perimeter corridors means more concentrated cold air is dedicated for the equipment areas.

Do more with less. Seal off unused space that does not require cold pressurized air flow.

So you want a true hot aisle/cold aisle? Not a problem with PlenaForm. Decide where you want the air to flow, snap the panels together at the desired height for the under floor space, drop them in, and attach them to the pedestals.

PlenaForm^® baffles prolong the life of raised floor cooling.

For additional reading please copy and paste the following link in your browser:

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/datacenter/2007/0402datacenter1.html?page=1

Except from the article: "Cheap chills: Inexpensive ways to cool your data center

Tips for cooling that don't cost a lot

But in the pursuit of a solution, we should not overlook some very effective and very inexpensive solutions that could at least minimize the problem or provide some relief for very little cost...

Guide the cold air and keep it “fenced” in. A very inexpensive and innovative solution is the use of under-floor barriers from PlenaForm to corral and direct cold air to where it is needed. If you wall off a section of the data center because you're building a NOC or because it is unused, there is no need to pump air under the floor. Even if there are no perf-tiles you will leak air unnecessarily. You can also use the barriers under the floor to direct the cold air to dense racks and in the ceiling to return it from the hot aisle to the CRAC. "

The following informative publications on data center cooling are provided in the .pdf format. To view these documents, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download from the Adobe Web Site (www.adobe.com)

• Measurements and predictions of flow distribution through perforated tiles in raised-floor data centers. (PDF)
   

• Raised-floor data center: Perforated tile floor rates for various tile layouts. (PDF)
   

• White Paper: Cooling Techniques That Meet "24 by Forever" Demands of Your Data Center. (PDF)
   

• White Paper: Changing Cool Requirements leave many Data Centers at risk. (PDF)