The hot weather is endangering IT equipment. What can be done to protect it?

The 30-degree heat wave may be behind us for now, but we never know when extreme weather conditions surprise us again. While the fortunate can seek relief from the summer heat in cool lake water, it is not a feasible solution for IT equipment. How can we be sure that our devices can survive the heat wave?

Cooling equipment on the roof of Greenergy Data Centers facility near Tallinn. Photo: Tõnu Tunnel.

Electricity is guaranteed even in hot weather

Let us start with electricity. The reliability of power lines, transformers, and other electrical equipment of the Estonian transmission networks in hot weather is already considered during their design. The fact that the weather may be warmer or colder than it is on average during the Estonian summer/winter is taken into account in the relevant requirements. Therefore, there is no need to apply separate measures in hot weather. Transmission lines and electrical equipment are also constantly inspected to detect potential problems before they occur. This means that the necessary power supply for IT equipment is also ensured during a heat wave.

Next, we come to the IT equipment of various organisations. In summer, the server room is probably the hottest place of them all, because the equipment that receives, processes, and transmits data is constantly in operation. The Internet never sleeps. As a rule, server rooms that require proper cooling are located in offices, data centers, or clouds (which, ultimately, are also located in data centers).

Temperature is one of the most significant risks in data hosting

‘Heating, ventilation and air conditioning, which in our field is known by the abbreviation HVAC, is one of the most significant sources of risks in data hosting,’ says Ardi Jürgens, one of the owners of Zone Media. In addition to the temperature of the air, attention must also be paid to its cleanliness, humidity, and much more.

Zone has been a customer of various data hosts for over 20 years, therefore Jürgens knows the problem areas well – including the risks related to HVAC systems. ‘Fortunately, these risks do not materialise often, but they have a very big impact when they do occur,’ he notes.

According to Tõnu Grünberg, chairman of the board of Greenergy Data Centers (GDC), heat continues to be one of the most important villains of IT equipment. ‘When bad circumstances coincide, a hot summer can mean, first of all, shutdowns in various office buildings due to an overload or excessive temperature. As a rule, when the equipment stops, so does the work, which, in turn, halts the normal activities of organisations operating in the digital world,’ explains Grünberg.

The recent practice where building managers reduce the output of ventilation equipment during non-working hours can also have an effect. Instead of the expected savings, such a practice can lead to a disaster in some rooms, because the IT equipment does not go home in the evening.

In a couple of decades, the situation has changed drastically

Ardi Jürgens recalls that at the turn of the century, data hosting premises in Estonia were often nothing more than a room in a building with a good Internet connection, where a few air conditioners called ‘penguins’ were installed on the wall. ‘Slightly more advanced conditions prevailed at the premises of what was then AS Eesti Telefon, some of which were located in basements as far as I remember, and in telecommunication buildings built during the Soviet Union era, where, of course, concrete was not spared for security reasons,’ says Jürgens.

According to Tõnu Grünberg, who has extensive experience in the telecommunications sector, the pieces of equipment used a few decades ago differed from modern ones primarily in terms of their size and power consumption. ‘Back then, a mobile telecommunication station took up an entire room. Nowadays, the corresponding devices fit in one equipment cabinet. The cooling systems of that time had a modest reliability and, as a rule, had no backup. If one thing stopped, so did everything else,’ Grünberg recalls.

There is no question that server hosting has evolved tremendously over the past few decades: providers have become more professional, equipment more reliable, and customers more demanding.

According to Jürgens, as a result, the probability of incidents related to cooling has generally decreased in Estonia, but compared to Zone’s experiences with service providers located in foreign countries, we still currently have more of them. Jürgens cites three factors as the main reasons for this:

• the need for computing power is great, the development of technology and the demand for efficiency forces it to be placed more and more densely;

• a large part of Estonian data centers are still located in buildings that were not built for that purpose, but adapted for it;

• global warming is not a myth.

The risks related to cooling have also been taken into account by the team of the largest data center in the Baltics. In their example, the dangers are already mitigated during the design phase. ‘Our server rooms are designed and built according to the logic that the power and cooling devices have a reserve of power, and in addition, there are backups for everything. That means we are ready for a greater work load, and if something were to happen, backup systems will take over,’ the chairman of the board of GDC points out, detailing the advantages of a building constructed as a colocation data center.

In addition, the automation of the cooling systems is entrusted to a Siemens artificial intelligence, i.e. a computer program capable of learning, which operates the temperature-maintaining devices in the server rooms. This is an innovative solution in the global context and means energy savings of approximately 25%.

‘The largest cooling machines at GDC have a capacity of 1.5 megawatts. To bring a comparison from everyday life, for example, in our daily use, a phone charger has a capacity of 15 watts, which is 100,000 times less. On our premises, IT equipment is very well protected from the summer heat,’ adds Grünberg.

We wrote about the reliability of the GDC and how to protect your e-business from costly interruptions in our blog last month.

The right server manufacturer helps mitigate risks, but the main burden is on the data centers

‘If you were to ask me which hosts I am generally concerned about in Estonia, it would be telecommunications buildings that have been converted into data centers,’ says Ardi Jürgens. Compared to the owners of new centers, the managers of such ‘data centers’ have to try much harder to survive the extraordinary conditions. Especially if they have been optimistic about global warming and have therefore largely relied on ambient air for cooling.

Jürgens wishes luck and all the best to all climate technologists who have their hands full during the heat waves. ‘Our technicians are also on high alert during heat waves to respond promptly to possible incidents – we ourselves also measure the temperature of the ambient air and servers in the data centers in real time,’ he notes.

For Zone, the choice of server manufacturer also contributes to mitigating risks. ‘For a very long time, we have mainly used Fujitsu servers, whose newer models are already designed to work at higher temperatures for environmental protection purposes,’ says Jürgens. Nevertheless, the owners of data centers bear the brunt of heat waves.

According to Grünberg, chairman of the board of GDC, summer presents challenges for organisations operating in the digital field, but they can be overcome: ‘Just as it is worth putting on protective sunscreen before going to the beach on a hot day, it is wise to proactively take measures to ensure the reliability of your IT equipment to avoid interruptions caused by the heat’.