What does frying an egg have to do with data center efficiency? Well, nothing really, but when we’re looking at the concept of exergy, i.e. the measure of not only energy itself, but the usefulness of that energy, the example of frying an egg helps explain this particular law of thermodynamics (which does impact data center efficiency).

If you’re frying an egg, you place a pan on top of the stove and then crack a raw egg into the pan. At a certain temperature, the heat transferred from the stove through the pan is enough to fry the egg. However, suppose there is a baking sheet between the stove and the pan. The amount of heat the stove is producing does not change, but the heat is now being spread across the entire baking sheet. In this scenario, the pan is receiving less heat and you have now lost the ability to use the stove for what you intended it for. In this case, to fry an egg.

You make be thinking, “why would there be a baking sheet between the stove and the pan?” This is clearly an inefficient way to fry an egg, and you would remove the baking sheet. When it comes to the data center, the “baking sheet” or efficiency bottleneck for that matter, may not be as easy to see. This is where flow network modeling can help. In situations where there may be inefficiencies in the various components of the data center (IT equipment, power equipment, and cooling equipment), flow network modeling can help pinpoint efficiency bottlenecks that may not be as easy to observe as say, a baking sheet between a stove and a frying pan.

For more information on flow network modeling and identifying data center inefficiencies, check out our recent webinar titled, Thermal Control Strategies for Reliable and Energy-Efficient Data Centers, presented by Aaron Wemhoff and Rehan Khalid of Villanova University. This webinar is part of our 4^th Annual Airflow Management Awareness Month webinar series.