Add cooling capacity field to racks

[shield-9]

NetBox version

v3.7.1

Feature type

Change to existing functionality

Proposed functionality

• Add "cooling capacity" (unit: watts) field to Racks
• Add "cooling utilization" bar graph to Rack details screen
  • Can be calculated as {Allocated draw of devices in the rack} / {Cooling capacity of the rack}

Depending on the cooling method and design, it may be possible to calculate the cooling capacity of each rack in some way for some environments, but I think it is difficult to generalize and should be achieved by plugin.

Use case

All electronic devices consume power and also generate heat. In recent years, high-power devices such as GPU servers have been increasing in the market, and when installing such devices into racks, it is often necessary to consider not only the power consumption but also the amount of heat generated.

A rack's power and cooling capacity is constrained by different factors, such as:

• Power supply capacity: bus duct and UPS capacity, PDU specifications, etc.
• Cooling capacity: layout and specifications of air conditioners, CDUs, RDHx, chillers, other racks (nearby heat sources), etc.

So, to better understand rack utilization, it is good to have cooling utilization as an indicator, in addition to power utilization.

Database changes

No response

External dependencies

No response

[alehaa]

In my opinion, it would make sense to add this to locations as well, since smaller locations might not be cooling per rack, but per room / row / etc.