Data Center Cold Aisle Containment Curtains

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Designing the System

Once you’ve considered all the impediments to successful aisle containment, the next step is to actually develop the design.

Hot Aisle or Cold Aisle Containment?
The first decision is choosing between hot or cold aisle isolation. There are pros and cons to each and often the decision is based on which yields a better or easier curtain installation. The argument for cold aisle containment is you presumably cool less air. Only the air in the cold aisle remains cool while everything else in the room is allowed to warm.

Ironically, this is the same reason some people like hot aisle containment; by keeping the entire room except the hot aisles cool, you create a cold air capacitor which can help you ride out a short duration cooling system interruption.

Initial Curtain Layout
With either hot aisle or cold aisle containment, the preferred layout is to align the curtains with the cold face of the rack. The motivation for this is the isolation plane is at the cold face of the rack. Any air behind the cold face is presumed hot and any cutouts or perforations in the top of the rack will allow the hot air to escape. If the curtains are along the cold face, the escaping hot air stays on the hot side of the curtain.

How High?
Next, will your curtains go all the way to the ceiling? This decision point will help you determine the length of the curtains between the cabinets or racks and the support rail. Depending on the cooling configuration and the ceiling height, the curtains don’t have to go all the way to the ceiling to be effective.

How to Support the Curtains?
Curtains can be supported in a variety of ways. The choice of support method depends on what type of ceiling is in the room and how high the curtains will be mounted. The common support schemes are:

Suspended Ceiling

Data Center Track

In this configuration, the curtain system is hung from the suspended ceiling grid - see the picture. To facilitate the installation, Data Clean offers a primary support rail called Data Center Track which is specifically for use in computer rooms with suspended ceilings. A purpose-built T-Bar scissor fastener (see the picture) is used to support the DCT from the ceiling grid. The DCT layout will follow the same line as the curtains. Once the DCT is installed, the curtain support rail or Flat Wall Hook Bar, is secured to the DCT either directly or with fuse links - see the picture.

Open Ceiling

In this configuration, the curtains are generally hung some distance down from the room deck via threaded rod. The curtain support rail, Flat Wall Hook Track or In-Jamb Hook Track, can be suspended by threaded rod support (see the picture) or attached to an intermediate mechanical structure such as a cable tray or structural channel system. Unless the curtains will create an isolated fire zone, there is no need for fuse links in this configuration.

Rack Top

This configuration is for end aisles only.

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