Many large-scale data centers take full advantage of the outdoor ambient conditions to provide cooling for servers and other critical network equipment.
Data centers and their cooling systems have been evolving for many years as engineers continually work on reducing energy costs and improving reliability and sustainability. Advances in the reliability and tolerance to environmental conditions of data center equipment have led to many large-scale data centers taking full advantage of the outdoor ambient conditions to provide cooling for servers and other critical network equipment to lower the PUEs for these facilities. Systems using air-side economizing and evaporative cooling have consistently delivered PUEs in the 1.14 to 1.3 range.