page_title: Data center
section_title: Power and cooling analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Data center / Energy use / Power and cooling analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: The CERN datacenter with World Wide Web and Mail servers. The rear of the equipment racks are exposed to the room, indicating cold aisle containment is being practiced. Nederlands: Het CERN datacentrum met World Wide Web en Mail servers. Français&#160;: Le centre de données du CERN avec des serveurs du World Wide Web et des serveurs mail.
context_page_description: A data center or data centre is a building, dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.
  Since IT operations are crucial for business continuity, it generally includes redundant or backup components and infrastructure for power supply, data communication connections, environmental controls and various security devices. A large data center is an industrial-scale operation using as much electricity as a small town.
context_section_description: Power is the largest recurring cost to the user of a data center.  Cooling it at or below 70 °F (21 °C) wastes money and energy. Furthermore, overcooling equipment in environments with a high relative humidity can expose equipment to a high amount of moisture that facilitates the growth of salt deposits on conductive filaments in the circuitry.
  A power and cooling analysis, also referred to as a thermal assessment, measures the relative temperatures in specific areas as well as the capacity of the cooling systems to handle specific ambient temperatures. A power and cooling analysis can help to identify hot spots, over-cooled areas that can handle greater power use density, the breakpoint of equipment loading, the effectiveness of a raised-floor strategy, and optimal equipment positioning (such as AC units) to balance temperatures across the data center. Power cooling density is a measure of how much square footage the center can cool at maximum capacity. The cooling of data centers is the second largest power consumer after servers. The cooling energy varies from 10% of the total energy consumption in the most efficient data centers and goes up to 45% in standard air-cooled data centers.
caption: Data center at CERN (2010)
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 450D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:05:09 12:37:11", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "220", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1082", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6930", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/15", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:03:12 11:07:13", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:03:12 11:07:13", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "4", "EXIF ApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "03", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "03", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "03", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "956", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2136000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "356000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}