Data Center: Why Data Centers Must Fundamentally Change — Part 2.1
By Douglas Gourlay for Network World
I started writing this section, and when John Peach from the UK commented to me, “Doug, this isn’t a blog, it is a dissertation” I felt I needed to shorten it a bit to make it more consumer-friendly. Well, I didn’t want to shorten it too much, in case I lose something important, so it got much easier to break it up into chapters- a relatively easy way out.
Before diving into network details comparing and contrasting addressing changes, tunneling mechanisms, mobile workloads, new levels of abstraction/indirection, and upcoming standards on topology construction I wanted to spend a brief moment talking about the fundamental foundation of the data center itself – the floor.
Why do we use raised floors?
Doesn’t it seem somewhat non-intuitive to take COLD AIR and force it up? Doesn’t cold air naturally like to go down? This has always struck me as somewhat odd, but it didn’t come into play in a major way for me until I toured a data enter specifically designed to support high-density compute workloads.
One of the many things they did to optimize the data center and lower the PUE is to fill the entire room with cold air, then pull that through the equipment into a contained hot aisle, almost like a chimney that went up and to a false ceiling.
This has several results…
