Microsoft goes chiller-less in its new data center

Microsoft unveiled its new, energy efficient, chiller-less data center in Dublin. The new data center runs without any chillers. Outside air is drawn into the facility to cool the thousands of servers powering the company’s "Live" suite of online services for users in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Microsoft claims it can run the server rooms at temperatures of up to 95 F, which is significantly warmer than the temperature range most data centers operate in- 68 F to 72 F.

Using the outside air in the data center air conditioning allows the facility owners to dramatically reduce the amount of energy used in cooling. Microsoft attributes the cooler climate in Ireland to the success of the design. If the outside air in Ireland ever reaches or exceeds 95 F, Direct eXpansion cooling will be used to cool the data centers.

The Dublin data center building totals more than 550,000 sq ft and it will use less than 1% of the water that traditional data center facilities typically use on an annual basis.

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