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When the latency involved in sending data to a centralised or cloud data centre is too long and becomes an inhibitor , this drives the need for localised processing capabilities , in other words edge data centres .
However , these edge data centres must often share an area that ’ s already serving another purpose , and which may not have cooling systems intended to handle the IT equipment at the edge of the network .
Cooling requirements
IT equipment can produce large amounts of heat on a continuous basis . Organisations must therefore take steps to ensure the proper cooling of that equipment in order to protect it and ensure its availability . Placing sensitive IT equipment into spaces designed originally for some other purpose can present challenges , especially with respect to cooling .
For example , an office building is optimised to be comfortable for its employees , while a more open space , such as a factory floor or warehouse , has its own heat and cooling requirements . In either case , the existing cooling system may not meet the stringent requirements for the proper functioning of a data centre . This is especially true for high-density IT equipment , including hyperconverged infrastructure , which can generate large amounts of heat from a relatively small space .
Companies are now routinely installing edge data centres in two general categories of spaces , as follows :
• Controlled office environments , which are geared towards standard comfort cooling for humans
• Uncontrolled environments such as manufacturing spaces , which may or may not have ambient cooling and humidity control in place .
The typical office environment uses room-based cooling systems provided by building heating , ventilation and air conditioning , HVAC systems , or de-centralised mini-split cooling systems . Cooling capacity is calculated based on the heat load the comfort cooling system needs to handle , typically measured in watts , W or kilowatts , kW .
A typical office HVAC system could have a cooling capacity to deal with a heat load in the range of 50 to 100W per square metre , or perhaps 1 to 2kW for an entire room . But a single rack of IT equipment may produce a heat load of 3 to 4kW or more . As a result , a cooling system designed for 1kW of cooling could now be asked to deal with as much as four times that capacity .
This is likely to have several repercussions :
• Employees may be uncomfortable as the comfort system struggles to maintain a target temperature .
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