A number of options are available to facilities professionals looking to improve cooling efficiency and reduce resources consumed by their data centers. Beyond implementing basic measures such as sealing moisture out of the data center and improving air flow, aisle containment to prevent the mixing of hot and cold air stands out as a method that can dramatically reduce energy costs, minimize hot spots and improve the carbon footprint of data centers.

While either hot aisle or cold aisle containment systems can be installed and are both capable of increasing efficiency and cooling today's high heat data centers, meaningful differences exist in how they function and are implemented. This paper reviews both approaches and concludes that cold aisle containment is the superior solution.