This research examined the application of fan-assisted cooling within open and contained raised-floor data centers with the intention of assessing the effectiveness of the system's cooling method. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach that incorporated both airflow and thermal analysis was employed to examine the detailed effectiveness of fan-assisted air-cooling in a data center that exhibited the behavior of under-cabinet leakage. The CFD technique was also used to assess the impact that three distinct aspects had on the performance of the fan-assisted air-cooling system: cold aisle containment, straightened air flow and fan-to-tile distance. In addition, the mixed-level Taguchi statistical approach was applied to understand how variations in these parameters directly and interactively modified the heat transfer in the surroundings of the inlets of the server racks. The results of the research reveal that fan-assisted perforations, taking the combination of the key factors (the main and interact effects) into account, would represent a viable means through which the cooling systems employed in both open and closed aisle data centers can be enhanced. The well-constructed CFD-based Taguchi methodology might yield a good level of validity for use in substantial and timely optimization procedures to further improve the cooling effectiveness and efficiencies of data centers. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.