Air Free-Cooled Tropical Data Center: Design, Evaluation, and Learned Lessons
Duc Van Le, Yingbo Liu, Rongrong Wang, Rui Tan, Lek Heng Ngoh
Abstract
Air free cooling is an energy-efficient cooling scheme that has been adopted in the dry and cold climate zones. To adopt this cooling scheme in Singapore's tropical condition, we designed and implemented an air free-cooled DC testbed integrating sensing and control systems for the server and room conditions. Then, we conducted extensive experiments on the testbed to understand its energy efficiency and server reliability. This paper presents the key observations, experiences, and learned lessons obtained from our testbed over a duration of nearly two years. The experiments show that (1) the air free-cooling design can achieve the power usage effectiveness of 1.05, (2) the tropics’ year-round high temperatures up to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$37^\circ$</tex-math></inline-formula> C do not impede the air free-cooling, and (3) the implementation of the air free-cooled tropical DCs requires special cares to deal with airborne contaminants to avoid fast corrosion rate and dust-induced server faults. Based on our experiment data, a set of recommendations on the temperature control and the selection of IT equipment for air free-cooled tropical DCs is made. The descriptions of the learned lessons, the resulting recommendations, and the released data can be useful to the relevant research communities, governmental agencies, and standardizing bodies.