The following article was published in ASHRAE Journal, December 2007. ©Copyright 2007 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE.

Deployment of high density equipment into data center infrastructure is now a common occurrence, yet
many data centers are not adequately equipped to handle the additional cooling requirements resulting from
these deployments. This is resulting in undesirable conditions such as recirculation or mixing of hot and cool
air, poorly controlled humidity and costly wasted cooling capacity.

Deployment of high density IT equipment into data center infrastructure is now a common occurrence. Many data centers are not adequately equipped to handle
the additional high density cooling requirements. This results in non-desirable conditions such as recirculation or mixing of hot and cool air, poorly controlled humidity and costly over-provisioning. Heat containment systems provide a simple and cost effective solution to these problems by physically separating cold supply and hot return air.