During a hardware refresh, a systems administrator populates the bottom 10 U and the top 8 U of a 42 U cabinet that sits in a raised-floor cold-aisle/hot-aisle layout. All installed 1 U servers draw air in from the front and exhaust out the rear. Soon after the systems come online, temperature probes on the front of the upper servers report inlet temperatures that are 8 °C higher than those recorded at the bottom of the rack, even though the CRAC supply temperature and airflow are within specification. Which rack-level action will BEST restore proper cooling for the affected servers?
Rotate the top servers so their rear panels face the cold aisle and their fronts face the hot aisle.
Install blanking panels in the empty rack units between the two groups of servers.
Increase the CRAC fan speed to raise static pressure in the cold aisle.
Replace the perforated rear door of the cabinet with a solid door to keep exhaust air inside the rack.
The open rack units located between the two groups of equipment allow hot exhaust air to curl back into the cold aisle and be drawn into the intakes of the upper servers. Installing blanking (filler) panels across those unused U-spaces seals the openings so cold supply air is forced through the equipment instead of bypassing it, eliminating recirculation and lowering inlet temperatures. Rotating servers so their rear panels face the cold aisle disrupts the hot-aisle/cold-aisle scheme and is specifically discouraged by industry guidelines. Swapping a perforated rear door for a solid door would trap heat rather than remove it, while increasing CRAC fan speed addresses room-level airflow-not the localized bypass caused by empty rack spaces-and wastes energy without fixing the root cause.
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