Cold servers are great, but I agree that it is very hard to do from under the floor these days. One 3' long HP server at the bottom of the rack works as a fairly effective air plug and then you need a perforated tile in front of the rack. I have pretty much given up on raised floors. They are expensive in the long run, people use them for invisible cabling, which eventually conflicts with cooling, when you have leaks under the floor you dont see them till its too late etc. My previous company had a simple concrete floor, blown air (not even ducted) and it was uncomfortably cold in that room. The servers werent as cold as I would like, and there were some warm racks for sure, but overall it worked great.
These rittal units intrigue me. They are designed to deal with normal racks with more like 6" in front of each server with front to back air flow. It seems like such a direct, efficient approach. Why make the room cold, when what you are actually trying to achieve is cold air into the fans of the servers - ambient temperature of the room itself is kind of irrelevant. You are also not blowing the air very far, so there is zero potential for leakage due to bad ductwork etc. On the APC question I honestly don't know. MGE was pretty respected as the runner up to Liebert prior to their purchase by APC. I *love* APC racks more than any other rack I have ever worked with. I also think their metered PDUs are fantastic - build quality and reliability is first rate. I think I will end up talking to them about their solution as they have an in-row cooling product as well. Keep the comments coming. I will definitely let you know how my thinking, and perhaps as importantly, pricing progress. Rob _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
