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What Are Your Datacenter Temps? Frosty or Not So Much?!

Jeff C. asked about 1 month ago in Banktastic

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We have a Liebert unit in our datacenter (DC) that we have had since we built this building in 2003. A lot of equipment has been added to the DC in the past 5 years. And, with equipment comes heat. We like to keep our DC frosty! But, it’s not as frosty as we would like now.

What temp do you try to maintain in your DC? We may have unrealistic expectations for the temp in our DC and I’d like to see what others are doing.

Jon D.

10/02/08 at 02:29 PM

We maintain a constant 70 degrees in our datacenter. Even though we could go colder, we don’t. There are a number of reasons.

First, most computer systems are designed to run around the 70-72 degree range. MTBF numbers are calculated at those temperatures.

Second, the balance between too dry and too humid seems to be best around 70 degrees. Too cold and you have to add humidity back into the room to lessen the chances for static discharge. Too warm, you begin to lower the MTBF properties of computer chips and relative humidity starts to increase.

Next, if the temps are set too high , or more frequently, too low, then your Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) unit must auto switch from cool to heat (humidify), back to cool, back to humidify, etc. which lessens the useful life of CRAC unit.

The above statements become even more complex when you begin to add in the variables of hot aisles vs. cooling aisles and hot spots within certain areas of your datacenter.

Jeff C.

10/02/08 at 02:37 PM

Thanks, Jon! That 70-72 degrees seems to be an industry standard but I thought I would pose the question here to see what other FIs were running their DC temps at!

Thanks again for the reply!

Jeff