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CFD software is the must-have tool of data center designers. They use it for thermal management of both
individual racks and entire data centers. In this rack application, CoolitDC was used to boost rack
cooling efficiency by optimizing air flow. The optimization permitted using warmer incoming air without
adversely affecting the cluster cooling, resulting in a sizeable reduction in data center power
consumption.
The analyzed system cluster, has cold air entering at the bottom of the plenum on left, traversing each
node and exiting via the plenum on the right. Such racks have greater airflow through the top nodes
resulting in correspondingly lower temperatures. Since the lower nodes must be maintained at no higher
than their maximum permitted temperatures, top nodes are needlessly overcooled wasting energy.
Using CoolitDC and optimization methods the designer solved hundreds of cases to determine the optimal
rack configuration. CoolitDC's powerful solver dispatched all the cases within just a few
hours providing all the necessary information to optimize the rack configuration. The resulting design was
50% more energy efficient than the initial rack configuration.
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