STULZ worldwide

Blanking Panels


Low energy consumption and optimal cooling performance are two fundamental aspects of advanced and efficient server cooling. Free slots in your server rack, between your servers, impair cooling by creating air shorts and allowing unused cold air to flow through. This unused cold air mixes with the heated air at the back of the rack, reducing the temperature of the warm corridor.

Air leakage is the mixing of cold supply air and warm exhaust air within the system, which is caused by an open air flow and prevents the efficient use of the cold supply air. Blanking panels offer the possibility of covering free slots for blades in server racks at the front, thereby directing the air flow specifically through the servers and making more efficient use of the air flow. By using blanking panels, cold and warm air flows can be separated from each other and prevented from mixing. This separation is essential for efficient and cost-effective cooling.
 

Both the air conditioners and the servers work most efficiently if the cooled air is only directed to the areas where it is needed. The cold air prevented from mixing by the blanking panels can be better used for direct air supply to the servers, where it is optimally used by the servers' own thermal management.

If the server temperature increases, performance reductions of the server are to be expected. The non-optimal air supply to the server can result in an increase in the server's power consumption, because now the server's own thermal management tries to balance this deficit and thus to maintain the server at an optimal operating temperature. As a result, potential savings can be achieved on both the server and the air conditioning unit.
 

At free slots in your servers, hotspots can occur due to a lack of cool air supply. These hot spots also heat up nearby servers and can impair their performance due to a constant increase in temperature. Furthermore, hotspots also heat up the cool incoming air, so that not only the directly adjacent servers are affected, but also all other blades in the same server rack can be cooled less.
 

Evaluating the relevance of blanking panels based on the size of the gaps to be filled is of secondary significance here. Even a few free spaces can cause the mentioned impairments. The increasing number of free slots, however, causes the energy loss to increase.
 

STULZ stands for reliable and energy-efficient air-conditioning solutions. Blanking panels have a high potential for permanently reducing energy costs. Investing in and upgrading with blanking panels is a relatively inexpensive option for saving energy permanently and reliably. The installation of the Blanking Panels provided by us represents a low effort in relation to the costs otherwise incurred.