N+2 Cooling Configuration

[laisquared]

Hi everyone,

I'm new at designing data centre and currently i'm coming up with a conceptual design for my project. But i'm faced with some questions with regards to providing the redundancy for the cooling system.

I'm going to utilise CRAC units for the cooling of the data centre, and the redundancy required is N+2. So my question is, do I use a single CU to support my CRAC units (the N number) and a separate CU to support the redundant CRAC units (the +2)?

Comments are appreciated, thanks alot!

Rgds,

Newbie Engineer

[SolutionProInc]

I would say to be true N+2 you have to be able to take two failures of equipment and still be running. This does not just mean that you need two additional CRAC units but there is more to it.

If you have 10 active CRAC units and 2 spares and you lose the controller that manages the 10 you can not really cool with just the 2 units running.

But to make it a simple answer I would put my additional units on their own CU. More so than that I would put half of my units on one CU and the other half on another or get even more aggregated than that.

Draw up a vision of each piece of the chain that is required to provide cooling. Then remove 1 thing and a time to see what effect this will have. (Example: You lose a CU. How many Tons of cooling will not fuction now?)

From a drawing like that you can brainstorm alternate plans and find the best solution.