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