Chilled water, CDUs, direct-to-chip, rear-door
Data center cooling commissioning software for halls where air and liquid cooling now share the same white space.
AI-density racks put CDUs, direct-to-chip manifolds and rear-door heat exchangers alongside CRAH units, chillers and containment in the same hall. Deskely holds chilled water, air-side and liquid-side systems as linked subsystems, so a rack cannot be marked cooling-ready while the loop it depends on is unproven.
- Systems
- Chilled water, CRAH, CDU, RDHx
- Density driver
- AI racks and liquid loops
- Verification
- Airflow and containment
- Gate
- Rack-ready cooling capacity
Choose your project type
The problem
Two cooling technologies, one hall, one commissioning gap.
Chillers, CRAH/CRAC units, air containment and now CDUs and direct-to-chip manifolds are commissioned by different trades against different drawing sets, but they all feed the same racks.
A rack is only cooling-ready once the plant, the air path and the liquid loop that serve it are all proven — a fact that spreadsheets rarely reconcile before racks are energised.
Deskely models the chilled water plant, air-side distribution and liquid cooling loop as linked subsystems, so rack readiness is derived from all three rather than assumed from one.
Setting up the register
Plant, air path and liquid loop are subsystems with explicit dependencies.
Chillers, pumps, cooling towers, CRAH/CRAC units, containment aisles, CDUs, manifolds, quick-disconnects and rear-door heat exchangers are tagged assets under their own subsystem.
Mechanical drawings, piping and instrumentation diagrams and rack elevations are parsed into the register, so a CDU's dependency on the technical cooling water loop is recorded rather than remembered.
That structure is what lets a chiller plant complete its own commissioning while liquid cooling loops are still being pressure tested.
Execution
Flushing, pressure testing and airflow verification recorded at the loop and the aisle.
Technicians capture flushing, fluid quality, pressure decay, leak testing and coolant distribution unit start-up on tablets at the equipment, including inside white space with hot aisle containment in place.
Air-side commissioning — CRAH airflow balancing, containment integrity and hot/cold aisle differential verification — is recorded against the same aisle the liquid loop serves.
Punch from a failed pressure test or an airflow imbalance is raised immediately and categorised by whether it blocks rack energisation.
Cooling readiness
A rack is cooling-ready when plant, air path and loop all say so.
System readiness certificates for the chilled water plant, the air-side system and each liquid cooling loop feed a single rack-level readiness view, rather than three disconnected sign-offs.
The cooling dossier per hall gives the operations team fluid quality baselines, airflow balancing results and CDU commissioning records from day one.
Punch carried past energisation stays live with an owner, which matters when a liquid cooling loop is still being tuned during initial IT load.
Liquid in a room built for air is a new failure mode
A CDU leak isn't a punch item, it's a live-hazard event next to racks that were never designed to get wet.
Rear-door heat exchangers and direct-to-chip loops put pressurised fluid a few centimetres from live IT equipment, in a room whose fire and electrical safety case was built around air cooling — which makes leak detection cabling, drip trays and automatic isolation valves as much a life-safety commissioning item as a mechanical one.
Dielectric coolant loops raise a different question at commissioning: quick-disconnects have to be proven not to weep under repeated connect/disconnect cycles, since a CDU services multiple racks over its life and every reconnection is a fresh chance to introduce a leak path that wasn't there during initial pressure testing.
Deskely records leak detection cable routing and zone coverage, drip tray placement and isolation valve response time as their own test set against each loop, distinct from the flushing and pressure decay records, because a facility can pass every hydraulic test and still have a blind spot in the row where a leak would actually be detected.
How it runs
From chiller plant to a rack that can take load.
Mixed air and liquid cooling is where data centre commissioning most often loses the dependency chain — Deskely is built to keep it.
- 01
Model plant, air and liquid subsystems
Chilled water plant, CRAH/CRAC air distribution and liquid cooling loops tagged as linked subsystems.
- 02
Parse mechanical drawings
P&IDs, rack elevations and CDU schedules drafted into a reviewed asset register.
- 03
Record flushing and pressure testing
Fluid quality, leak testing and pressure decay results captured per loop before energisation.
- 04
Verify airflow and containment
CRAH balancing, containment integrity and aisle differential recorded against each hall.
- 05
Roll up to rack readiness
Plant, air-side and liquid-side records combined into a single cooling-ready status per rack.
- 06
Certify and hand over
System readiness certificates issued from signed records, with the dossier exported to operations.
FAQ
Questions about Cooling and liquid cooling scopes.
Keep reading
Data centre commissioning
The full sector view: system-level commissioning, Level 5 integrated testing, ITRs and energisation gating.
Read moreCertificates
System readiness, Level acceptance and energisation certificates issued from signed records.
Read moreAI drawing parser
P&IDs, single lines and equipment schedules turned into a reviewed asset register.
Read moreOther data centre project types: Hyperscale new build data centres, Colocation facility commissioning and SLA acceptance, Edge and modular data centre commissioning, Retrofit and capacity upgrade commissioning, UPS and power train commissioning, Standby generators, fuel and switchgear, White space rack, power and busway fit-out, Integrated systems testing and Level 5 commissioning, Campus substation and utility interconnection.
