Enclosure Climate Control: The Best Solution for Cooling the Closet

July 08 2020

Product Insight

Just a couple IT racks? With the right cooling, you can put them just about anywhere.

“What climate control options do I have to cool equipment in a small space, like the classic `IT closet’? The building AC does not allow me to optimize the temperature in that room.”

Sound familiar? This is a common and troublesome question. IT professionals who manage small spaces to support IT equipment – those with just one to a few racks – can find themselves at the mercy of the building’s AC system to try maintaining ideal equipment temperature. Yet, often these spaces are simply repurposed storage closets, break rooms, mail rooms or the like, and were never intended to house and address the climate requirements of IT equipment. Without proper cooling in place, heat builds up, dust accumulates and moisture can seep into the room, all of which put equipment at risk for failure.

Read Here: Data Center Cooling-The Best Methods for Different Needs

The Ideal Enclosure Cooling Solution for a Less-Than-Ideal Room

One answer to confined space cooling challenges is a system similar to the building’s own AC – one that uses direct expansion (DX). Like a traditional AC system, heat removal is achieved by using a compressor / condenser refrigeration cycle to reach and maintain the optimum temperature. The difference is that, unlike a central AC, these systems are designed to work at the cabinet or room level. Because cooling is dedicated to the enclosures (sometimes called cabinets) or the small space, this targeted method is highly efficient.

Rittal recently launched the ideal DX-based liquid cooling solution for these less-than-ideal server locations. The LCP DX 20kW is an IT enclosure with up to 20kW heat removal capacity, available in both closed loop rack and open loop inline options.

In addition to the small footprint (achieved by using large surface area coils within the system), these Rittal enclosure cooling solutions offer these benefits to small, on-premise data centers:

  • Precise temperature control. The system maintains your set-point temperature even as heat loads vary
  • Local Climate Control. Airflow is provided to a single or multiple footprints in a closed airflow system or can provide cooling to the space in an open airflow configuration
  • Easy to maintain. Features designed to reduce downtime and optimize system operation include tool-less EC fan replacement, easy-access electrical connections,  electronic expansion valve to immediately react to changing thermal loads, and remote notification of all operational parameters
  • Redundancy. Up to 8 units can be interconnected, with coordinated air flow, alarms, and time-of-day operation

Confined spaces can, in fact, make ideal rooms supporting Edge deployments or local network communications, but only when the right cooling system is in place. Enclosure climate control like the LCP DX 20kW brings temperature control directly to the equipment to reduce the risk of downtime and ensure optimum system performance – even in the harshest of small spaces originally built to support just about anything other than IT equipment.