[cherokeeflyer]

We recently built a small data center where I work. It has two rows of three racks each, back to back, so as to create a hot aisle between the two rows of servers (at the back of all the racks).

We had spec'd it to have two return air vents over the top of the hot aisle, and then have the cool air being blown in via registers all around the room. However, the HVAC guys thought we were crazy, so they put one large return air vent on the wall (closest to where the outside HVAC unit is) and put a few cold air registers over the server racks.

What seems to be happening is the cold air is simply being blown into the room and sucked out, without proper cooling of the server racks. We are struggling to keep the room cool.

Should we go back to our original plan, which was to have cold air vents circling the room, and the return vents over the top of the hot aisle between the server racks. The theory was this would suck the air 'across' and through the servers', and then the return air vents would im################y pull hot air out of the room.

Thanks in advance for any advice.