Challenge:

Instor was part of a 2-year energy efficiency project covering everything from
upgrading air conditioning and power systems to airflow balance and cold aisle
containment.

This legacy data center’s major hurdle when
addressing the cold aisle containment system was being compliant with the fire marshals’
strict requirements; the private university has its own fire marshal.

Solution:

Instor custom designed the hard containment to allow
overhead fire suppression and detection systems to function properly. In order
to allow access to the fire suppression system and smoke detectors in the cold
aisles, a containment roof on these pods could not be implemented to contain
cold air. The sides of the contained pods implemented sliding Electrorack
doors.

All custom polycarbonate panels, normally cloudy in
appearance, were designed to be clear so that anyone inside the pod could
clearly view the EXIT signs from within.

Rows were offset, so Instor custom designed clear
polycarbonate corner gap panels for these aisles. Instor also designed several
polycarbonate walls and gap panels to accommodate older bulky equipment.

We also provided 166 fire resistant floor seal pillows
of varying sizes (4”x4”, 6”x6”, 9”x9”, 12”x12”) and placed them in holes in the
raised floor tiles to improve static pressure below.

Benefits:

The university significantly improved
PUE and consequently received over $300,000 in rebates from PG&E. According
to Mark Monroe, the Director of Sustainable Computing at Sun Microsystems, data
center managers can save 4 percent in energy costs for every degree of upward
change in the set point. The university was able to raise set
points 6 degrees, with an estimated 24% total energy savings each month.