Server Room Humidity Standards

An updated look at recommended data center temperature and humidity.

Server room humidity standards. In a data center or computer room maintaining ambient relative humidity levels between 45 and 55 is recommended for optimal performance and reliability. There are several ways in which a data centre can combat the humidity problem in its server room. Ambient server room monitoring or data center monitoring is the environmental monitoring of the room for its humidity and temperature levels. How to reduce humidity in data centres and server rooms.

These definitions apply to these terms as they are used in this document. A server room is a room usually air conditioned devoted to the continuous operation of computer servers an entire building or station devoted to this purpose is a data center. Potential hot zones inside the server room or data center near air conditioning units to detect failure of such systems. Lower temperature and humidity extremes than the cold aisles or ballroom areas.

The computers in server rooms are usually headless systems that can be operated remotely via kvm switch or remote administration software such as secure shell ssh vnc and remote desktop. Computer room air conditioner data center. Temperature and humidity sensors are typically deployed in. Based on the data in table 1 figure 2 shows a graphical representation of recommended and allowable operating envelopes defined in the 2011 ashrae data center guidelines.

The optimum condition is where the room is at the design criteria of 22 degrees c 71 6 degrees f and 45 percent humidity. When relative humidity levels are too high water condensation can occur which results in hardware corrosion and early system and component failure. Because temperature is also a problem most data centres will use air conditioning to help control the humidity level. In late 2005 we published an article outlining recommended data center temperature and humidity levels over the years that article has been one of our most popular pages and has helped thousands of customers establish monitor and maintain appropriate data center environment conditions.

Humidity can cause a lot of damage to a data centre and its servers. A large facility designed to support large numbers of servers in a large. This specification is an absolute maximum. A much smaller volume of cooling air is provided to these areas compared to a cold aisle or ballroom because the it support equipment generates much less heat than it equipment and has a far greater tolerance for ambient environmental conditions.