Dell is marketing its 12^th generation PowerEdge servers and new storage and networking equipment to Fortune 500 companies interested in using fresh  air or free cooling in key markets across Europe, the US and Asia.

It said innovations initially carried out for energy efficiency and power and temperature monitoring in its equipment have led to the design of infrastructure that can be warrantied to withstand temperatures of up to 45 Degrees Celsius for up to 90 hours a year at 90% humidity.

In recent research, Dell discovered that in many key markets, servers and other equipment need to withstand excursions of up to 45C if the new methods of cooling are deployed.

Dell Enterprise Programs Marketing Manager, Hugh Jenkins - who focusses on Dell’s Fortune 500 market - said while most equipment is warrantied to run at 35C, fresh air and free cooling in key locations such as New York and London can put equipment designed to run at such temperatures at risk.

“We feel that 45C is enough to cover customers for those usually emergency excursions that may happen because of a chiller failure or some other temperature extreme,” Jenkins said.

 “It is well known that fresh air or free cooling can reduce the running cost of a data center by up to 30%. What this does is allows those with a conventional data center to avoid moving to a location (in a cold climate) that does not suite just to use these methods of cooling.”

Dell analysed world-wide climate data to find that most of the industrialized world such as the regions mentioned above are currently not well suited, with the current warrantied temperatures of 35C, to use free or fresh-air cooling.

It found that to deploy a chiller-less data center in New York, for example, an operating temperature of at least 38C will be required for at least 50 hours a year.

“Because New York City is located on the coast, it is a fairly humid climate and requires equipment with a relatively high dew point or approximately 25C, but only for about 100 hours a year,” Dell said in a research paper on its next Generation Services.

While in Washington DC, a data center can spend 87% of its annual operating hours within the ASHRAE recommended range of 18-27C, and has a maximum dew point of 25C – Washington DC’s figures are similar to those realized in Tokyo, Taipei and Shanghai.

“The climate data shows all that is needed to build chiller-less facilities in these regions is the ability to tolerate extended temperature and humidity levels for short periods and for a very limited number of hours per year,” Dell said.

Jenkins said Dell is now trying even harder to push the envelope around server infrastructure, storage and switching to drive out operating temperatures to provide more flexibility for customers wanting to move to chillerless cooling.

Its servers support platinum efficiency power supply units, have intelligent power monitoring built into the systems linked to variable speed fans and include energy efficiency standard settings which allow machines to self-regulate for power and cooling.

“We arrived at this, however, not by designing for the fresh air goal. We first designed these servers to be robust and reliable but we learnt, over a period of time, that they this also allows them to run at a higher temperatures than the normal 35C,” Jenkins said.

“In our previous generation of server platforms we had probably about three or four platforms warrantied to do this that have fresh air capability but back then we didn’t fully understand what customers would like to do with fresh air and chiller-less capability.”