ECHO Systems in Action
With the exception of individual rack coolers which require water or refrigerant piped directly to each cabinet, downflow Direct Expansion (DX) and chilled water air conditioning systems have historically been the preferred cooling method for data centres and IT rooms.
The ECHO High Efficiency IT Cooling System offers all of the practical advantages associated with the traditional downflow cooling systems, with the addition of the higher heat load densities and rack-by-rack control offered by in-row or close coupled rack coolers. Examples of these advantages are as follows:
- No chilled water/refrigerant connections at the rack or in the IT space
- ECU’s do not over cool, airflow demand is communicated via the ACE and rack demand
- Redundancy at room or zone level
- All wet/refrigerant services can be located outside of the technical space
- Control is at rack level, scheduling the ECU and ECHO Free-cool Chiller
- Use of thermal inertia in the room in event of ACE failure – no rapid overheat
- It is possible to designate higher density cabinets as the technical space is populated, not necessarily at day one
- The entire technical space is at front of rack temperature – no hot spots
- No loss of technical space ECU’s are potentially smaller than standard downflow cooling units