Coolant Distribution Unit

A Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU) sits between the facility's primary chilled water or glycol plant and the liquid cooling manifolds attached to server racks. Its core functions are to: regulate coolant supply temperature (typically 40–50 °C for rear-door or direct liquid cooling, lower for immersion); maintain flow rate and pressure within manufacturer limits per rack; provide an isolation point for rack maintenance; and report real-time flow, temperature differential (ΔT), and leak status to BMS/DCIM systems via Modbus or BACnet.

In AI factory deployments using NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 hardware, the CDU is a critical path component — each rack requires approximately 120 kW of liquid cooling, and any CDU fault immediately threatens GPU performance through thermal throttling. PODTECH's DCIM integration practice covers CDU commissioning, protocol integration, and alerting thresholds for leak, flow, and out-of-limits temperature conditions.