Viability of dynamic cooling control in a data center environment

Data center thermal management challenges have been steadily increasing over the past few years due to rack level power density increases resulting from system level compaction. These challenges have been compounded by antiquated environmental control strategies designed for low power density installations and for the worst-case heat dissipation rates in the computer systems. These state of the art techniques are not energy efficient for the highly dynamic and high power density data centers of the future. This study examines several opportunities for improving thermal management and energy performance of data centers with automatic control. We describe the results of a set of experiments that demonstrate how simple, modular controls strategies could be implemented. Based on these results, we identify three strategies that could significantly improve the energy performance of the data center while maintaining proper thermal management conditions.