A Quantitative Noise Survey in a General Room–Based Data Center

Abstract

Acoustic experimental data of IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) server room was taken to measure the acoustic noise characteristics of frequency and Sound Pressure Level (SPL). The purposes of this paper are measuring the noise pollution and its evaluation through the regulations. The measurements were taken in two stages. The first one was taken at 10 points by Sound Investigator 2260 using ISO 3741: 1999(E) standard. The results indicate that IRIB server room is an acoustic noise polluted according to Iranian National Building Regulations. Measured data and its frequency analysis show that the high sound energy belongs to low frequencies in the server room. This is confirmed by the next stage of measurement. It was an hour long non-stop noise measurement in the server room to investigate noise exposure level by customers and employees. The Equivalent instant noise level on Aweighting network was 75 dBA. The results are valid for all of data centres, although this study is involved with a special case study. Two main factors are important in server room noise pollution scenario; the amount of sound absorbance in the space and environmental noise characteristics. Most surfaces in server rooms are hard and have low absorbance coefficient, therefore, the intensity of travelling sound increases. On the other hand, the main noise sources in any server room are fans which work usually on a narrowband with a fundamental frequency. So as the main features of server room acoustic noise are the same, the presented results can be generalized to any server room.