Munich airport's 600m3 computer room has undergone a transformation which saw raise the room temperature by 6 degrees from 22 to 28 degrees as part of an project which saw it knock 35% off previous air conditioning use.

The operator changed everything from installing hot aisle/cold aisle containment, re-routing cable runs within the server cabinets and reconfiguring the floor tile layout.

Supplier Schroff said it was able to save some 35% of the previous air conditioning energy usage and provide headroom for the installation of additional servers in the existing cabinets. At the same time, the temperature gradient within the server cabinets was reduced, extending the life of the servers and improving reliability.

Floor panels, blanking plates, cables runs, all changed
The payback time on the cost of the additional hardware installation was measured in months, not years.

The data centre holds 75 server cabinets arranged in three rows in a computer room with an overall volume of 600m3. The room was cooled by five 32kW air conditioners; during normal operation, four were running at full capacity with one as a redundant back-up. After the installation of the Schroff hardware, which was retrofitted to the existing cabinets supplied by a third party, three of the air conditioners running at 50% capacity were enough to cope with the thermal load.

Within the cabinets, the installation of 1U blanking panels at the front of the racks, the rerouting of cable runs, the sealing of the base apertures and the installation of ventilated front doors reduced the top to bottom temperature gradient from 10