Design of data centre rack arrangements using open source software

In the design of a data centre (DC), engineers are increasingly using specialized commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software packages to predict thermal loads for various cooling configurations. This paper is the first to demonstrate how a set of open source software tools, namely OpenFOAM, Octave and paraview can be used to simulate and visualize the airflow in a real live 55kW private DC, with a particular focus on energy savings and reduction of hotspots.