Today’s modern enterprise data center must be capable of efficiently operating at current average power densities of 30 to 50 W/ft² (~320 to 540 W/m²) and, based upon industry trends, support growth in the foreseeable future toward 150 W/ ft² (~1,610 W/m²) and also incorporate provision to possibly support significantly higher power densities in local areas. This paper summarizes the industry trends toward greater power consumption and higher processing speed servers and gives an overview of current and expected techniques for cooling high power consuming cabinets and mainframes. The potential impact of these trends and new techniques on the design of the raised floor cooling system will also be discussed.

Additionally, during the installation of new equipment and the migration of equipment from other data centers to the new center, the new data center at start-up is often required to operate with almost no computing equipment load. The start-up conditions can be an operational problem for equipment sized to operate at maximum load. In response to the potentially large range of power density operation and the high costs of data center construction, the majority of owner/ operators plan to accommodate this expected power density growth in phases. This paper summarizes the planning to accommodate the various load conditions of the mechanical systems for one recently designed data center, including raised floor cooling, central plants, and pipe distribution.