Cooling requirements for POE switches?
Solution 1:
Nothing from hard experience, but I would take it as a given that PoE switches draw more current than their regular cousins.
Cisco has some numbers for Catalyst 65xx series equipment. To summarize a 48-port 10/100/1000 board dissipates 443 BTU/Hr and the PoE version of that board puts out 518 BTU/Hr (+17%). To be safe I'd inflate the heat load by 20-25%...
Solution 2:
Yes there are extra cooling requirements.
POE uses more current, current equals heat - so yes you need more cooling (and power of course, in fact choosing the best PSUs for POE-equipped Cisco Cat 65xx's can be more than a 2 minute decision).
As for how much more cooling, well I always say hope for the best but plan for the worst, look at how much power you COULD pull, multiply it by 3.41 and that's how many BTUs you'll need to clear.
Hope this helps.
Solution 3:
We're facing this exact problem as we're deploying POE switches into our edge in preparation for an eventual VOIP project. We don't know what brand of VOIP we're going with, we just know that in the lifetime of these edge switches we'll need to support POE. In the process we had to upgrade the power outlets in many closets as the POE switches need something other than NEMA-15 plugs.
Yes, do plan on cooling for the rated draw of the switches. This is a non-trivial expense, and we had to do it too. It's a future-proofing thing. If money really is an issue and your VOIP project is well down the road, you can defer the cooling upgrade until there is money for it, but you will have to upgrade your cooling.
Solution 4:
The real question here is "how much" more cooling is required. Cisco and APC have a white paper that addresses this exact issue.
Here is the link: http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/RMEN-65ZRMF_R0_EN.pdf
But the short answer is, Input rated power in Watts X 0.6 is the heat output load. They also give the same information for UPS heat loads. The UPS rating in Watts X 0.09 BTW, be carefull, a "2200 KVA" UPS might be rated anywhere between 1980 Watts and 1540 Watts.
I'm in the middle of this exact exercise myself, and found this page with my Google search. When I got around to closing the window, I had found a few answers that I think might help.
Cheers,