DCN May 2017 | Page 24

design & facilities Management CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO Zac Potts, associate director at Sudlows, explains why fresh thinking and new ideas are vital to maintain the ongoing improvement in data centre design and management. I t’s sometimes easy for designers to do things simply because that’s the way it’s always been done. Every day we see the same applications of the same technologies even in somewhat dissimilar environments simply because that’s the way the engineer knew how to apply it. 24 | May 2017 Fortunately, data centres, I’d like to think, are quite different. In this industry, despite the mission critical nature, and the general adversity to risk, there is a surprising appetite for change, for innovation and for development. Data centre cooling has evolved from an almost brute force approach – cooling the whole room to 20°C with walls packed with pure DX cooling systems, moving more air than a small wind tunnel – to a tactful, well tuned approach, where cooling capacity and airflow are independently matched to the demands in the space, where temperatures are carefully