Not all servers within data centers have their own individual fans and air conditioning units. In fact, most data centers employ centralized cooling systems and airflow management techniques to maintain an optimal environment for the servers.
Here are a few reasons why individual fans and air conditioning units for each server are not typically used:
Cost-effectiveness: Installing and maintaining separate cooling systems for each server would be prohibitively expensive. Data centers often house thousands or even millions of servers, and outfitting each one with its own cooling unit would be financially impractical.
Efficiency: Centralized cooling systems can be designed more efficiently to cool multiple servers simultaneously. They utilize techniques such as hot aisle/cold aisle containment, raised floors, and precision airflow management to efficiently distribute cool air where it's needed and remove hot air from the data center.
Scalability: Data centers constantly scale and add new servers, and managing individual cooling units for each one would be challenging. Centralized cooling allows for easier expansion and reconfiguration of the cooling infrastructure as the data center grows.
Redundancy: Data centers employ redundant cooling systems to ensure high availability and prevent server overheating. Centralized cooling systems can be designed with redundancy in mind, providing backup mechanisms in case of failures.
Maintenance: Maintaining separate cooling units for each server would be labor-intensive and time-consuming. Centralized cooling systems can be more easily serviced and maintained, reducing downtime and operational costs.
That said, individual servers may still have their own fans for internal cooling, but the primary environmental control within a data center is achieved through centralized cooling infrastructure.