Data Center HVAC Design & Infrastructure (Dual Certificate)

Explore how to design air conditioning, heating, and ventilation systems for data centers by controlling temperature and humidity, ensuring equipment operates within tight tolerances and stays efficient.

A properly designed hvac system stabilizes data center temperature and humidity. It prevents overheating, keeps servers running, and avoids reliability issues caused by fluctuations.

Explore the HVAC cycle as the core of all HVAC systems, equipping you with essential mechanical engineering knowledge. Learn how core components interlink for optimal functioning across the industry.

Master the refrigeration cycle, the core of hvac systems, by examining its four components—evaporator, compressor, condenser, and expansion valve—and how heat is absorbed from space and rejected to the environment.

Explore the two cooling mediums in data center hvac design: air cooled direct expansion systems and water cooled chilled water systems, detailing refrigerants, evaporator, condenser, expansion valve, and compressor.

Compare air-cooled and liquid-cooled hvac systems across efficiency, footprint, noise, cost, maintenance, and cooling capacity, highlighting when each is best for data centers.

Explains the direct expansion air-cooled HVAC cycle, including evaporator absorbing heat, refrigerant vapor compression, condenser heat rejection with fans, and expansion valve throttling, vs. water-cooled systems.

Explore data center hvac system category #2, a water cooled medium using chilled water systems, water cooled chillers, and cooling towers, contrasted with air cooled chillers.

Discover key data center hvac design concepts, including heat load, cooling capacity, delta t, and redundancy strategies like n plus one to ensure uptime.

Explore data center hvac systems, including cray computer room air handlers, crac units, chilled water network, liquid cooling, and in-row cooling.

Explore the crash unit, a computer room air handler that cools data centers with chilled water from an external chiller plant, absorbs heat via coils, and delivers cooled air.

Explore the crack system and CCU options for data center cooling, including direct expansion and chilled water, with raised floors, cold aisles, containment, and air circulation.

Compare crack unit and cry unit hvac systems, detailing direct expansion with a compressor and condenser versus chilled-water operation without refrigerant, and explain transfer via cooling coil and chiller.

Explore liquid cooling for data centers by submerging servers in a tank and transferring heat via heat exchangers to a chilled water system.

Explore compact data center in-row and in-rack cooling systems, including hot/cold aisle dynamics, parallel cooling, and versatile connections for chilled water or direct expansion setups.

Compare in-row cooling with traditional crac units, detailing air circulation, hot and cold aisle separation, containment benefits, and expansion considerations for the design of data centers.

Compare in-row cooling, CRAC units, and liquid cooling for data center HVAC, outlining cooling mediums, efficiency, capacity, space use, costs, redundancy, and suitability for high density, HPC, and AI deployments.

Explore the resources library, download guides and blueprints, and use them alongside your coursework to support your educational and professional development.

Adopt governing standards such as Ashrae, Uptime Institute tiers, and ISO to guide data center HVAC design, reliability, redundancy, and efficient operations from the outset.

Explore ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 standards for data centers, focusing on quality management and information security, and learn how these guidelines boost efficiency and reduce downtime.

Explore the uptime tier classification from the Uptime Institute, detailing tiers 1 through 4, redundancy, reliability, and how standards and certification guide data center design for client requirements.

Explore the data center tier system under uptime institute classifications, from tier 1 to tier 4, detailing uptime targets, redundancy, and maintenance considerations.

Tier 1 data centers provide the basic, no-redundancy infrastructure with a single power and cooling path, no backup, requiring shutdown for maintenance and offering 28.8 hours of downtime per year.

Enhance tier two data centers with redundant power and cooling to achieve 99.741% uptime and up to 22 hours downtime, using uninterruptible power supply, backup generators, and raised floors.

Design tier three data centers for concurrent maintenance, enabling operations to run during upkeep via multiple power and cooling paths, achieving 99.982% uptime with N+1 redundancy and 72-hour outage protection.

Tier four data centers achieve fully fault-tolerant, fully redundant power, cooling, and network with 99.995% uptime, two n plus one redundancy, and 96 hour outage protection.