Fluent's Coolsim RSolve

As you may know, we are in the process of moving the Green Bay RealWorld Lab. Our current facilities were not meeting our needs, so we are out prospecting new sites. The Green Bay Facility houses NWC Inc., which is open to all of our readers and simulates a business that sells the inimicable widget.Anyway, NWC Inc. can't go down - we'd lose 'customers', and you'd be upset if you couldn't order caffienated widgets! So I need to know that whatever new facility we choose is going to support us from day one, no questions asked.

Enter Fluent, wanting me to look at Coolsim. This is a service they sell that will allow you to diagram your data center, show where the AC units, baffles, racks, and floor tile cutouts are and will simulate your airflow to determine the adequacy of your cooling.

I went through the demo with them online because this is one of the areas we're concerned about, and one that we know some of you have to worry about.

They did an excellent job. Now no modeling tool is 100% correct (except the paint job on my 8th army models...), but I'm certain if you put in quality data you will get a plausible simulation out of it. Knowing where the hot and cool areas of your data center are is just enough information to decide whether moving machines in racks will do the job, or you need more A/C.

They sell it as a service because the actual calculations are run on their servers (they say supercomputers, I haven't seen so we'll take their word for it). I think that it being a service is a negative, but honestly it does the job, so what's the big difference other than a monthly fee?

If you're constantly fiddling with cooling in your data center, it is worthwhile to take a look at their service. After all of the hassles we've been through with AC in the last 18-24 months, I know I'm going to before we move. Modeling our new data center with several different layouts could save me a ton of work down the road. And none of us wants more work with no gain to the organization.Until next time.Don.