Data center raised floors were initially developed to help to handle chiller lines, power feeds and most importantly the updraft required by mainframe equipment. Equipment needs, power and cooling requirements have changed significantly in data centers over the past 20 years since servers, storage and communication equipment started to occupy what was formerly occupied by mainframes and DASD equipment.

The original intent of the raised floor to cool the mainframe environment has since become a raceway for cabling runways, copper, fiber and power distribution in addition to the air flow.

Today's high density server farms, which are increasingly efficient heaters are requiring more power and cooling than ever before. The data center evolution of an all air cooled environment has become a real challenge for facility managers to deal with these heat related issues, cooling inefficiencies and increased server densities.
The challenge facility managers face is how to get the air that is beneath a raised the floor through the perforated tiles and into the front intakes of rack mounted vertically integrated server housings that are producing the heat.