Effect of rack server population on temperatures in data centers

To reduce energy wastage during equipment upgrades that require changing the number of servers inside a rack, this paper investigates the effect of the server population of a rack on air temperatures in a data center facility. A rack-level containment system was implemented and air temperatures in cold and hot aisles with different numbers of servers were measured. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based numerical model is used to study the air flow field. In addition, this paper includes the investigation of the effect of void locations on CPU temperatures. The study reveals that the server population inside a rack has a significant impact on air temperatures.