People lose their cool, fads become uncool and some places like Death Valley in the US were never cool to begin with, but if there’s one place that must remain cool at all costs, it’s the IT environment. To ensure that remains the case, APC by Schneider Electric has a range of cooling products for every environment, application and need.

“It’s the bane of a network engineer’s life that every kilowatt of heat used by IT equipment creates a kilowatt of heat power, and if it’s not removed from the environment, it will accumulate and raise the surrounding temperature. The problem is that all IT equipment has a fairly low, manufacturer-recommended operating temperature of between 21ºC and 24ºC, and exceeding this can result in equipment failure and concomitant data and/or financial loss,” said Louise Taute, Comstor Director at Westcon-Comstor Southern Africa, the local distributor of APC products.

Cooling then is of the utmost importance, and can be achieved in a variety of ways depending on the environment, equipment density, and cooling requirements. APC has a wide range of cooling products in the following categories: Room Air Conditioners; Containment and Distribution; Chillers; Air Economisers; and Close Coupled Air Conditioners. The company also offers Modular Access Floor flooring solutions to accommodate ventilation and cooling of the space beneath equipment.

Room Air Conditioners
APC’s Uniflair range of perimeter cooling units offers efficient, modular and flexible room level control of cooling for everything from network closets to large data centre environments.

The line includes: the Uniflair LE intelligent precision cooling units that are able to maintain temperature and humidity within tight tolerances; the Uniflair WM self-contained, wall mounted cooling units for outdoor installation, available in a free cooling configuration; the Uniflair SP split-system units, available in a free cooling configuration; the Uniflair AM discrete perimeter cooling units; and the Uniflair MB wall-mounted units for indoor installation, available in a free cooling configuration.

The performance and functionality of these room cooling products is further enhanced with a range of complementary room cooling accessories that include condensate management, floor stands, plenums, and spare parts.

Containment and Air Distribution
To manage airflow among racks, rows and in hot spots, APC offers a range of containment and air distribution products that include Thermal Containment, Rack Air Distribution, and Room Air Distribution solutions.

APC’s EcoAisle thermal containment solution intelligently manages airflow to increase the efficiency of IT cooling systems and deliver predictable cooling by separating hot and cold airstreams. Deploying the Active Flow Control moreover closely matches cooling to the IT heat load and allows the fan speed to be adjusted so that cooling to power ratios can be right sized for maximum efficiency.

APC Rack Air Distribution rack-based cooling solutions are ideal for power dense racks, low-pressure areas and hot spots. They may be integrated into or installed on individual rack enclosures to work with existing cooling products, to either supply cool air or remove heat from rack enclosures, as the situation demands.

The company’s Room Air Distribution and heat removal solutions are similarly well suited to environments like wiring closets, where they exhaust hot air from the closet to an adjacent space, allowing conditioned air to enter via the Air Intake Grill and cool the load.

Chillers
The APC Aquaflair range of chillers supply water-cooled applications with chilled water in mission critical environments. The range includes: Aquaflair WC water-cooled chillers for large installations, which may be combined with remote dry-coolers, cooling towers, or remote condensers; Aquaflair FC free-cooling chillers that leverage external air to remove heat; Aquaflair AC air-cooled chillers that provide the most efficient solution for large data centre environments; and Aquaflair DF ducted chillers for mission critical applications where airflow must be ducted.

EcoBreeze Air Economiser
For medium to large data centres, APC offers its high-efficiency EcoBreeze modular, indirect air economiser. The unit’s intelligent controls and redundant components ensure reliability and availability during constantly changing ambient conditions. It is moreover scalable to ensure its continued ability to meet expanding requirements, and when using the supplemental mechanical cooling circuit is able to maintain the environment’s cooling set point in even the worst of ambient conditions.

Close-Coupled Air Conditioners
Finally, APC offers its energy efficient close-coupled air conditioners that prevent the recirculation of hot air and closely couple cooling with the IT heat load, for intelligent and effective cooling of both low and high-density environments.

Within this range, InRow Chilled Water units offer chilled water cooling to maximise efficiency in medium to large data centres, while InRow Direct Expansion products offer air, water, and glycol cooling for wiring closets, server rooms and data centres.

“Every IT environment is unique and so too are its cooling needs, and whatever those may be, APC has an intelligent solution to ensure the continued, optimal performance and longevity of temperature-sensitive IT equipment,” concluded Taute.