A digital twin for the indoor climate in data centers

4DCOOL is a digital twin for the indoor climate in the server rooms of data centers. It provides an actual and accurate 3D view of the temperature and flow. In addition 4DCOOL allows operators to run what-if scenarios. This lets them play with settings for the cooling so as to minimize costs and avoid local hot spots.
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4DCOOL is a digital twin for the indoor climate in the server rooms of data centers. It provides an actual and accurate 3D view of the temperature and flow. In addition 4DCOOL allows operators to run what-if scenarios. This lets them play with settings for the cooling so as to minimize costs and avoid local hot spots. 4DCOOL has proven to lead to a serious reduction in cooling costs.

A digital twin of the indoor climate in data centers

How does it work?

This is how 4DCOOL builds a reliable 3D view of the temperature and flow in the server room:

  • A set of wireless sensors measure the temperature at specific locations.
  • This sensor data is merged with a simulation of the temperature and flow, which therefore accurately reflects the actual situation at all times.
  • This gives an optimal combination of the measurements and model computations.
  • A high performance implementation of the computational procedure allows for short update times.

As the simulation model is always a reliable reflection of the actual situation, running this model in ‘forward mode’ to assess effects of control measures will give a reliable prediction.

Proven technology

4DCOOL is innovative technology, but has already shown impressive results:

  • A cost reduction of € 10.000,- per month in a state-of-the-art datacenter.
  • Monitoring modifications in another data center that were intended to alleviate cooling problems.

A joint effort

The 4DCOOL project was started at the initiative of TNO. Apart from VORtech, the other parties involved were Actiflow, ATS-Global and SenseAnywhere. Within this consortium, VORtech was responsible for the development of the computational infrastructure and part of the algorithms.