For problems encountered when renovating data center facilities, to choosing between reducing, reusing or recycling assets, OceanTech offers guidance on the process. We’ve gathered some helpful tips for frequently asked questions about old servers and data center overhauls.

Today, the power density for fully loaded server racks is 8 kW to 10 kW, with blade systems in the 12 kW to 16 kW range. Aging data centers and server rooms may have difficulty cooling these rack densities, in which case you should run some racks less than full and plan to incorporate new cooling infrastructures in the future.

Older rack cooling technology might not handle higher server density well. In a data center, the cooling system’s capability must equal the heat from server density for proper performance; an older system may be inadequately matched to cool higher server densities.  Since vendors are building energy-efficient technology into new server platforms, compute capacity can grow while the cooling system stays the same. But with an increase in rack server density, cooling with traditional technologies such as computer room air conditioners is extremely difficult. Consider data center renovations in order to match rack cooling technology with server density.