Dell spruiks hotter data centre kit

Dell has announced a range of 'Fresh Air' air-cooled systems capable of operating at up to 45 degrees Celsius.

The line of servers, storage, networking and power equipment could do away with chillers; Dell claimed that its gear could run at 40 degrees Celsius for 900 hours per year and "up to" 90 hours at 45 degrees. 

Dell said data centre locations were limited by standard allowable temperature of 35 degrees for today’s IT kit, noting that Google, Facebook and Yahoo! data centres had “demonstrated a shift towards air-cooled data centres that do not rely on chiller technology.”

Facebook’s Oregon data centre has adopted air-cooling, while Google more recently employed water-cooling for its European data centre in Finland.

HP also opened a wind-cooled datacentre last year, according to PC World.

“In some climates, the capital cost to build a chiller plant as part of the data center facility can be eliminated altogether,” Dell said. 

Cooling, along with space and power, are key pressure points for data centre operations with the trend towards higher-density computing, analyst firm Gartner has previously reported.