ASHRAE TC9.9 "Mission Critical Facilities, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment" was established to create guidance on the environmental protection of such environments in an energy conscious manner. Mission critical facilities take on many forms, including telecommunications central offices and data centers. The former are associated with overhead cooling, concrete slabs, network equipment, and DC power-plants whereas the latter are associated with raised floors, hot aisle/cold aisles, and AC-powered servers.

The challenges associated with telecommunications and data centers are the same in many respects but different in a host of others. The decade old approaches in the telecom industry do not work in the converged "Datacom" environment. Many telecommunications facility operators see a number of challenges, including introduction of high-density loads, unknown density limits for reliable operation during normal and catastrophic cooling outages, hot air recirculation issues as result of multiple equipment types, and varying levels of equipment robustness.

Today there is no single industry group pulling together the ideas, resources, and challenges of HVAC in different mission critical facilities. ASHRAE TC9.9 could play a key role in this work going forward.

Units: I-P