The secret’s out about PolarDam

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This month we followed our customers’ lead and ‘let the cat out of the bag‘ about all the ways to use PolarDam Air Dam Foam to seal off air gaps throughout the data center.

polardam_air_dam_foam_promoYou probably remember the old story about 3M’s accidental invention of Post-It Notes.

bitcoin-aha-momentThe invention of PolarDam Air Dam Foam was a little like that:

  • Accidental product insight
  • Simple solution to a real problem
  • Subsequent use case proliferation

If you spend as much time with customers as Polargy does, you become very familiar with the details and nuance of their challenges. This means we’re often positioned to solve—and even anticipate—customer problems with innovative containment solutions.

Almost more importantly (for business), staying close to a large number of varied customers allows Polargy to recognize common pain points across the market.

polardam_air_dam_foamIn the PolarDam case, our customer needed to close about a hundred air gaps of varying sizes, and it was clear that brush grommets weren’t going to get the job done. The high cost of brush grommets alone made them a bad option but they also just didn’t work.

IMG_6064Together with the customer, we developed a simple, customizable air gap sealing solution that beats brush grommets every time in terms of fit, cost and flexibility. It was clear to us immediately that the same air gap challenges this customer had were common to data centers everywhere.

So that’s where it started, but now it’s taken on a life of its own. I even made a video about it.

“Everyone knows that air leakage reduces data center cooling efficiency. The best kept secret for sealing air gaps is PolarDam Air Dam Foam.”

And here’s a little gallery of some of the most popular PolarDam applications:

photo(1)

Normal cable cutouts where you could use a brush grommets (but prefer PolarDam’s far lower cost)

 

PolarDam 2

Odd-shaped or obstructed cutouts that no brush grommet will fit

 

IMG_1126

2-post racks, either on top or through the floor

 

 

photo 1Blanking inside racks when you’re blanking off an entire 1U or 2U (or more) but especially when you’re running cables out through the front of the rack. Try to do that with a rigid blanking panel.

 

PolarDam 3Pipe penetrations through a floor or near a wall…

…and there are so many more.

The important thing to remember is that PolarDam closes all these air gaps in seconds. No tools, no measuring, no messy drilling. Just tear it to the perfect size and push it into place with your hands.

Just one part number: PD24

Saving Energy “Down Under” with Rack Tech

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Last week we announced a new partnership with Australia-based rack manufacturer Rack Technologies. Rack Tech will distribute, sell and service Polargy’s data center containment solutions in the Australia/New Zealand region. This partnership is an important step for Polargy as we expand our global reach.

IMG_1920Rack Tech manufacturers 19” and 26” specialty rack systems and accessories for the communications, electronic and security industries. Founded in 1990 and acquired by Preformed Line Products (PLP) in 2000, Rack Tech has now grown into one of the region’s largest manufacturers of enclosures and accessories.

We’re thrilled to partner with Rack Technoligies. Fred Garnier (Polargy’s VP of Channel Sales) said in the press release:

“Rack Technologies is an ideal partner for Polargy in Australia. Their local design, manufacturing and installation expertise is the perfect extension of Polargy’s US manufacturing, sales and service operations. Their strong customer support orientation will help ensure optimal outcomes for customers of all types and sizes.”

Together, we are well positioned to reduce operating costs for large and small data centers across Australia, reflecting growing environmental awareness and responsibility in the data center industry.

Design 2SBAirflow management and containment solutions have rapidly become an operating best practice in both new construction and legacy data centers worldwide, and under this agreement, we can continue promoting best-practices in hot- and cold-aisle containment domestically and internationally.

Space is Limited in Manhattan

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I visited a banking customer in Manhattan last month and finally had the opportunity to revisit an installation Polargy had completed several years back. The bank had discovered too many hot spots in their data center and looked to Polargy for a solution. Their problems were caused by the room’s space limitations of a short ceiling and a cable cluttered  12” raised floor. As densities grew, so did their hot spots.

Al Helmke of JEM Tech in the Bank

Al Helmke of JEM Tech in the Bank

After assessing the available space and airflow patterns, Polargy installed PolarPlex TM Drop-Away Panels for cold aisle containment and a strip curtain door to close off the end of the aisle. The project was a success in that it solved the bank’s hot spot problems: intake air temperature dropped from 90°F to 70°F.

Al Hemlke, of JEM Tech, is pictured above in the cold aisle of the data center. Al is a well-known, respected industry veteran who is deeply familiar with the NY/NJ market and leads our relationship with this customer. The PolarPlex Drop-Away Panels are situated just above him and the strip curtain door can be seen at the far end of the aisle behind him. Generally, we avoid strip curtains because the curtains can sometimes dance due to airflow characteristics at the end of aisles. However in this case, the airflow was not strong enough to create a problem.

Because of space limitations in Manhattan, many data centers have relocated outside the city proper, to surrounding communities in New Jersey, other New York neighborhoods, or into Connecticut. Confined spaces can lead to the types of density problems our banking customer experienced. However, as they discovered and I was able to see in action, sometimes all it takes to solve the problem is a reevaluation of containment and airflow solutions. High density issues can still be addressed even while working in a limited amount of space.

Soften the Blow with CRAC Dampers

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This past week, while visiting data centers in Michigan, we discovered that one of our customers was in the midst of deploying about ten CRAC damper/extensions on their legacy floor units. The customer had upgraded their cooling system to have rooftop units ducted to the raised floor, but kept the floor units around for backup. Upgrading cooling systems is a normal part of a datacenter’s lifecycle, but our customer was running into a few problems during the process. Their issue was that these existing floor units effectively acted as “big holes in the floor” that allowed air to leak back through them and into the room.

This same problem is sometimes associated with the deployment of either hot or cold aisle containment in legacy sites where the goal is typically to turn off CRAC units (those not equipped with VFDs). However, once a CRAC unit is turned off, it effectively becomes that “big hole,” leaking cold air back through the unit and reducing the efficiency of the data center’s HVAC system. In the past, Polargy has offered CRAC Covers to help prevent that leakage, which is fine when units are manually turned on and off. The covers won’t work for CRAC units that are remotely controlled on and off such as those connected to a DCiM, for obvious reasons. This is the case for our customer in Michigan. So, what can be done?

CRAC Damper Top Mounted

CRAC Damper Top Mounted

Dampers can become the solution for this problem. CRAC Dampers are custom built to the size of the unit and the height is also specified for each individual project. These are delivered as large, rectangular boxes and are simply attached to the tops of the units with sheet screws. Since the damper assembly impedes access to the CRAC unit from above, filters are installed above the dampers on flanges that are built into the extension. The easiest and simplest way to add dampers to an existing CRAC unit is to mount gravity operated dampers to the tops of the units. This is exactly what our customer was doing during our visit. The damper housing was about 18” tall to also act as an extension, grabbing hotter air from higher up in the room.

Gravity Operated Louvers

Gravity Operated Louvers

Just like our Michigan customer, check on your CRAC units. If you know they will be manually controlled, CRAC Covers can be a good solution. For the CRAC units connected to a monitoring system that dynamically controls them, dampers are the way to go.

Containment Crosses into Architectural Partitions

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Hard containment, soft containment, and partial containment only touch on the most common uses of containment in data centers. In the course of working with customers looking to partition air in a particular way, Polargy is occasionally asked to build architectural walls. Because we spend our time creating innovative containment strategies and structures, and we’re good at manufacturing and installing airflow partitions, it becomes a natural next-step that we are asked to apply this expertise to other areas within the data center. Also, containment costs generally fall lower than the expenses associated with installing traditional architectural partitions; harnessing Polargy’s knowledge of partition construction can provide a cost advantage as well. These requests usually accompany a larger containment project where the site needs architectural walls for very specific applications.

A “Light Box” for a PDU Room

 One example application we’ve encountered was the need for materials to function as walls but still display some transparency. As part of a new 232,000-foot data center being built by DPR, the owner came to us because he was interested in creating a “Light Box” effect for the isolation around a long bank of PDUs. Polargy simply re-purposed our standard containment panels for this project. To meet the needs of this customer, we replaced the normal clear panel inserts with opaque ones to diffuse the light. We also added 10” kick plates to the bottom of the panels to prevent damage from carts and cleaning.

A Test Space on a Data Center Lab Floor

A second application of Polargy’s containment solutions was for a complete internal construction project. In the course of building a 16,000-foot lab for a networking equipment company, the owner sought to utilize approximately 200 square feet of unoccupied floor space for test benches and lab desks. Polargy was commissioned to build the room, which consisted of floor to ceiling walls and a door. We again changed the panel inserts, but from clear to bronze in this case, in order to give the room a little more privacy and an attractive aesthetic.

We suspect that Polargy will continue to see these dual purpose partition usages in our new builds. Containment easily creates these architectural partitions and can sometimes address the specific construction needs of a project even better than traditional partitions.  The above examples used containment practically, in terms of the transference of light, and aesthetically, for improving the color and comfort of a space. While these are two uses of containment, panels and doors can be designed to fit other partition needs as well. We always look forward to becoming involved in architecturally-focused projects since they challenge the traditional use of our solutions, expand our scope for creative containment, and ignite news ways of thinking about data center design.

Where Is Containment on the Adoption Curve?

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Containment has been around for years, but the mainstream adoption of containment is just now happening. In terms of the Technology Adoption Curve, the market has clearly moved beyond the initial “Innovator” phase and is well into the “Early Adopter” phase, perhaps even now bordering on the “Early Majority” phase.

We have seen innovators and technology enthusiasts like NetApp, Facebook, Cadence Design Systems, and Pixar Animation deploy containment well over six years ago. Then, we have seen that second phase of visionaries looking to get ahead of their competition. This group would include Verizon, Barclays, Equinix, Digital Realty and Kaiser Permanente who all have adopted containment to some degree over the past several years.

Today, we are seeing more and more architects and engineering firms design containment into their data centers, and we are seeing more pragmatic companies start to consider containment. This is in parallel with continued pressures of rising density and power costs, the original catalysts for containment. What we can conclude is that the bulk of the containment market is still untapped and that the volume of containment work will continue to increase over the next few years as the Early and late Majorities go through their adoption.

The blue line is the distribution of adoptions, i.e. 13.5% of the companies/ people out there are “early adopters,” while 34% of the companies/people in the world are “Late Majority Adopters.”                                                                                                                                        The yellow line shows the total market penetration of the new technology (containment in this case) over time and represents the sum over time of the blue line. So, “X” is time and “Y” is market share or percent of market using the new technology.

Inch By Inch: US versus International Racks

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  With rigid hot and cold aisle containment systems, inches are important. Any slight variances matter in the containment world, because the difference of even one inch can dramatically impact the fit and installation of the containment system. To get the containment design right the first time, a designer needs to pay attention to the following:

1.       609mm versus 600mm rack width

APC, Chatsworth, and Rittal racks, among others of their type, are built to 600mm width international standard, which accommodates their global distribution model. More domestically oriented rack makers, like Polargy, Damac, and ElectroRack, provide 24.0” or 609mm wide racks. That 0.4” difference is slight, but it matters when trying to accurately size the containment.

2.       Slab versus raised floor rack to tile alignment

What can be tricky for containment is that on raised floors, as built domestically, the rack layout often aligns to the tiles, leaving a 0.4” gap between each rack for those 600mm racks. It is important to pay attention to this detail when specifying panel sizes.

3.       Groupings of 23.6” racks and if they are gapped by 0.4” or not

When identifying a containment system that is based on the racks, the designer is well served to pay attention to the true rack size.  A 24.0” wide roof panel leaves a 0.4” overlap on a 23.6” cabinet, as illustrated in the photo above. This variance is multiplied ten times for a row of ten racks and the resulting overlap is a whole 4.0”.

4.       The last rack of the row relative to the other racks and their consequent widths and gaps.

What can be especially tricky is the last rack of the row. In the scenario of 23.6” racks aligned to 24” tiles, one would have all 24.0” wide panels but for the last panel, which would be 23.6” since that is where the aisle truly ends. And, if that last panel is sticking out by 0.4”, then it will obstruct the placement of the aisle end door. These subtle differences in measurements between the US and international standards should be specified with deliberation, because in the containment world, inches count.

Blanking Panels Go All the Way

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Empty Racks Blanked Off with PolarFlex 42U Blanking Panels

More and more we see completely empty racks that need blanking. This makes sense as operators procure full rows of racks to either gain volume price advantages or because they are deploying containment and need completed rows to support their hot or cold aisle containment systems.

New, easy, economical way

Old, costly, painful way

The PolarFlex 42U Blanking Panel is an easy, fast, and cost effective way to seal empty racks or to fill large unoccupied spaces with in the rack. Learn more at www.polarflex.biz.

Call Polargy at 888-816-8338 to order.

San Diego Gets Hot

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We recently finished a new construction Hot Aisle Containment project for a health care company in San Diego. We worked with a Design/Build firm who prepared the below plans.

Plan View Drawings for Hot Aisle Containment Layout

 

Polargy created shop drawings from these plans to prepare a material list and installation instructions.

Shop Drawing of Hot Aisle Containment

 

The finished project looks great.

San Diego Hot Aisle Containment

 

Here is another view.

San Diego Hot Aisle Containment Corner View