When it comes to optimizing your data center’s cooling, it’s fairly well known (and commonly discussed on this blog) that airflow management improvements can lead to many benefits. This includes increased IT equipment reliability by elimination or reduction of hotspots and the ability to make adjustments to cooling unit controls. This in turn can allow for increased cooling capacity, reduced operating costs, deferred capital expenditure and extended data center life. While much of this is common knowledge, what’s less known are the metrics that help you manage and monitor your site more efficiently to fully reap these benefits. Today I’d like to walk through these fundamental metrics that are essential to optimizing your data center’s cooling.