Arrangement of IT equipment cabinets to maintain dedicated hot and cold IT equipment cabinet aisles has long been considered a basic element in computer room cooling design. Thus, a move toward isolating these hot and cold aisles to eliminate mixing of the cold (supply) and hot (return) air streams seems a natural progression as the industry strives for more energy efficient cooling methodologies. Containment in a purpose-built data center, where an owner can maintain some level of control over IT cabinet configurations, is generally fairly straight forward. However, implementing containment in a co-location data center environment brings with it a unique set of challenges.
