The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) thermal guidelines are that the recommended temperature near the inlet of servers should range between 65° F to 80°F and the relative humidity should be between 40% and 60%.
To properly monitor rack temperature, ASHRAE recommends installing at least six temperature sensors in each rack: three in the front (top, middle, and bottom) and three in the back (top, middle, and bottom),
To ensure ASHRAE guidelines are met and equipment is operating safely and efficiently, data center managers leverage environmental sensors such as temperature and humidity sensors and use Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software to collect and trend the sensor data to monitor their environment.
To safely avoid overcooling your data center and reduce energy costs with environmental sensors and DCIM software, it is recommended to:
- Instrument the data center so you can understand temperatures coming into IT equipment.
- Set appropriate rack inlet thresholds so you can get alerts for over temperature conditions.
- Check your cooling charts to determine if you are complaint with ASHRAE recommendations and how much you by save by avoiding overcooling.
- Slowly raise CRAH/CRAC set points to ASHRAE recommended guidelines. Check your cooling charts after raising set points to ensure you are safely within the guidelines. Sometimes you can even turn off CRAH/CRAC units in lieu of or in addition to raising set points.
- Periodically check trends and heat maps or high-level overviews.
- Adjust where necessary.
Want to see how Sunbird’s world-leading DCIM software makes it easy for you to increase efficiency while remaining within ASHRAE guidelines? Get your free test drive now!
