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In a head-to-head comparison CoolitDC, the powerful CFD software from Daat Research Corp., has trumped
major competitors in the data center arena. An analysis performed by Degree Controls Inc., Milford, NH,
on two data center applications with different thermal challenges, revealed that CoolitDC offers distinct
advantages in handling complex problems accurately and with a minimum of computing resources.
The first application involved a customer who supplies software, support and enterprise solutions to
higher education institutions. The company's data center was overheating because hot air was getting
trapped between the racks, preventing it from returning to the air conditioners. Instead, it was
circulating back toward the input and mixing with the incoming cold air. Since the data center had not
been designed to accommodate a hot/cold aisle, it was not practical to create one because employees had to
work in and move about the room.
The second application occurred at a co-location company providing wholesale data centers, co-location
and peering for financial, media and entertainment, healthcare, government and other industries. In this
case, the data center wasn't over heating; it was experiencing excessive cooling. This proved costly
because local energy costs were high. The problem couldn't be solved by randomly shutting off air
conditioners because that would have impacted air flow drastically. Instead, the room had to be thermally
modeled to assess various solution combinations involving shutting off a/c units, closing tiles and
erecting panels between servers. With a problem this complex, 50 or more thermal iterations typically are
required to zero-in on the most cost-effective solution.
When CoolitDC was used to model the two applications, several distinct advantages were observed.
CoolitDC can tackle the most difficult problems involving the complex custom devices often required in
data centers, while Tileflow cannot. Also, Tileflow uses modeling approximations to speed up
computations, but at the expense of accuracy. CoolitDC, on the other hand, does not take any modeling
shortcuts. When compared to 6Sigma, CoolitDC requires significantly less computing resources and
calculates answers much faster, making it an ideal choice for applications requiring numerous iterations,
such as the co-location company mentioned above.
"In the past if we had a complex model, we used 6Sigma which required large servers and significant
time," comments Degree Controls engineer, Feroze Khan. "I solved the same problem using CoolitDC on my
laptop and it was more than 10 times faster." In addition, CoolitDC matched even the most expensive
competitor's accuracy, and it proved easy-to-learn for engineers who had no training in the
product.
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