Comments on: A leg-up on raised floors? http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/data-center/a-leg-up-on-raised-floors/ A SearchDataCenter.com blog covering the latest data center news and trends. Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:37:02 +0000 hourly 1 By: Sprzyborski http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/data-center/a-leg-up-on-raised-floors/#comment-7 Sprzyborski Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:44:09 +0000 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/data-center/?p=10#comment-7 I don’t think raised floors will ever just go away. There is a role from them to play and if the design community would get smarter about how they design, much of your problems will actually go away. I hear the same compliants over and over. If you want more space under your raised floor, design it with a higher floor height. If you want your plenum to stay clean, try doing some scheduled maintenance. You are essentially comparing 30 year old designs to current designs and blaming the raised floor. You can actually create a plenum wall under your floor to decrease the footprint of your cooling space and increase the air pressure and the cooling that is being emitted from your air flow panels. You can buy a variety of air-flow panels that alow you to modulate the air pressure and direct the air pressure depending on the design intent. The big reason why raised floor has stayed around is that it gives the end user the ability to reconfigure their own space cheaply and effectively. It’s amazing that the ever changing technology community is going to be so fast to move to a system that is difficult and expensive to move once it’s in place.

]]> By: ScottA http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/data-center/a-leg-up-on-raised-floors/#comment-6 ScottA Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:27:52 +0000 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/data-center/?p=10#comment-6 I think your feeling that raised floor/CRAC unit designs have cooling limitations and cannot efficiently handle high density heat loads is unfounded. You may run out of cooling capacity if you are only using perforated tiles but with the range of airflow panels available you should easily be able to handle up to 20kW per rack under typical static pressures. New grates even angle airflow at the rack to reduce by-pass air and further improve capacity and efficiency. I completely agree with you (or Matt) that localized cooling near the heat source is a good solution. Especially one that can monitor the utilization and heat loads in the rack and adjust cooling accordingly. However, again this solution already exists for raised floor/CRAC unit design.

CRAC vendors may offer other cooling solutions, just as an in-row cooling companies may offer raised floors. I’m not sure there is a connection between product offering and the solution. I think the manufacturers may just want to be able provide a solution to meet the specific needs of any end user.

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