Cooling
This feature was introduced in NetBox v4.7.
As part of its DCIM feature set, NetBox supports modeling data center cooling infrastructure, from facility plant down to the coolant connections on individual devices. This is used to document liquid- and hybrid-cooled environments (chillers, cooling distribution units, manifolds, rear-door heat exchangers, and cold-plate servers) as a source of truth.
Model Overview
Cooling infrastructure is modeled as a hierarchy running from facility plant down to individual devices:
cooling source → cooling feed → device cooling intake / cooling outflow
A few properties of the model are worth noting up front:
- Connections are direct references, not cables. Coolant hoses are not modeled as structured cabling; instead, an intake references the outflow that supplies it directly. Tracing a loop is a walk along these references.
- A single feed represents the entire loop. A cooling feed covers both the supply (cold) and return (warm) paths of a loop, rather than modeling each direction as a separate object.
- Intakes and outflows both sit on the supply path. Both device components describe the cold, coolant-distribution side of the loop: an intake receives coolant and an outflow passes it onward to downstream equipment. The warm return path is not modeled per-component — it is captured by the feed loop.
Cooling Sources
A cooling source is the furthest upstream cooling element modeled in NetBox, representing a chiller, cooling tower, dry cooler, or CRAC/CRAH unit. Each source is associated with a site, and may optionally be associated with a particular location within that site. A cooling source is not a device; it represents external facility plant, and records the coolant (fluid type) and total rated cooling capacity for the loops it originates.
Cooling Feeds
A cooling feed represents a coolant loop running between a cooling source and a particular rack. Each feed records an operational status, a rated cooling capacity, and a rated (design) flow rate.
Device Components
Devices participate in cooling through two component types, instantiated from templates defined on the device type:
- A cooling intake is a coolant intake on a device, such as a server cold-plate inlet or a CDU facility intake. It records the connector type, diameter, and rated maximum flow, and optionally references the upstream cooling outflow that supplies it.
- A cooling outflow is a coolant supply point on a device, such as a CDU or manifold outlet. It optionally references a parent cooling intake on the same device — the device takes coolant in through its intake and passes it back out through its outflow.
In-rack cooling equipment is modeled as a device
Coolant distribution units (CDUs), manifolds, and rear-door heat exchangers (RDHx) are modeled as ordinary (typically zero-U) devices installed in the rack — exactly as a PDU is modeled as a device with power ports and outlets. The device's make and model come from its device type, and its cooling connections are represented by cooling intake and outflow components. There is no dedicated CDU or RDHx model.
Racks and Devices
Racks and devices carry lightweight cooling attributes independent of the feed/component topology: