What is hot/cold aisle in data centre

Hot/cold aisle is a layout design for server racks in a data center. The goal of it is to increase the effectiveness of cooling system by managing air flow in data center.

In the simplest form, this design involves lining up server racks in different rows with cold air facing one way and hot exausts facing the other. Typically, cold aisles, which are usually composed of rack fronts, face AC output, and hot aisles face return ducts.

What’s the problem we usually meet? In many traditional data center or the room we called data center, we often see racks of rows facing in same direction. This design mixes the cold and hot air in ailes between rows, which costs more for cooling system to achieve the same efficacy.

Some best practices for the hot/cold aisle design containment include:

• Raises the floor to make sure air being pushed by AC can pass through
• Uses front-to-back or vice versa air flow devices when it is possible
• Locates devices with side or top exhausts in their own part of data center
• Install automatic door in data center
• Avoids mixing hot and cold in same aisle