This guide provides an overview of best practices for energy-efficient data center design which spans the categories of Information Technology (IT) systems and their environmental conditions, data center air manage-ment, cooling and electrical systems, on-site generation, and heat recovery. IT system energy efficiency and environmental conditions are presented first because measures taken in these areas have a cascading effect of secondary energy savings for the mechanical and electrical systems. This guide concludes with a section on metrics and benchmarking values by which a data center and its systems energy efficiency can be evaluated. No design guide can offer ‘the most energy-efficient’ data center design but the guidelines that follow offer sugges-tions that provide efficiency benefits for a wide variety of data center scenarios.
Author(s): Litner, W., B. Tschudi, and O. Van Geet