A company has had problems with their HVAC system being able to cool their datacenter as they have grown. Which of the following could BEST be used to help reduce the load on the HVAC system?

Replacing CAT5 with CAT6 cables has no meaningful impact on heat generation - the thermal difference between these cable categories is negligible and unrelated to HVAC load.

Water-cooled racks use liquid (typically water or refrigerant) to absorb heat directly from servers and transfer it outside the datacenter, which is far more thermally efficient than air-based cooling. This directly reduces the volume of hot air that the HVAC system must process, relieving the cooling bottleneck as the datacenter scales. It is the most targeted and effective solution for a growing datacenter with a strained HVAC system.

Turning off non-critical servers during off-hours reduces heat only part of the time and sacrifices availability, making it a poor long-term solution compared to addressing the cooling mechanism itself.

Removing a redundant power supply slightly reduces power draw but also eliminates hardware redundancy, creating a single point of failure without providing a significant enough thermal benefit to justify the risk.