Temperature Management in Datacenters

Datacenters have developed into major energy hogs, and more than a third of this energy is spent on cooling. While estimates suggest that increasing datacenter temperature by just one degree could reduce energy consumption by 2–5%, the effects of increased temperature on server components are not well understood. In this article, we present results from a large-scale field study, which demonstrate that there is ample potential for increasing datacenter temperatures without sacrificing system reliability or performance.