FOCUS COOLING UPDATE
Issue 8, Feb/Mar 10
TWO VERY DIFFERENT DOE-FUNDED DATA CENTER EFFICIENCY PROJECTS EXPLORE COOLING FUTURES
Industrial equipment manufacturer Eaton is one of the companies to benefit from the grants recently distributed by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to organisations working to boost data center energy efficiency, while boffins led by the Edison Materials Technology Center seek to develop a whole new super dense liquid- cooled computer topology.
For its part, Eaton is now confirmed as part of a multi-million-dollar project by HP to develop a so-called “enclosed row” of IT equipment, complete with an energy efficient cooling infrastructure and electrical systems with capacity to interface with renewable energy sources. The modular solution will be geared toward small and mid-size enterprises.
“With this grant, Eaton and HP’s combined expertise will enable us to create an innovative technology solution that increases energy efficiency and meets government mandates to reduce carbon emissions while diminishing the need to build new power plants to support data centers,” said HP’s VP of Converged Infrastructure Doug Oathout.
The solution comprises a high-voltage AC electrical supply, a distributed DC electrical system and a chilled-water cooling system. According to a project description provided by the DOE, new power distribution and cooling technology will reduce energy losses and the amount of heat the system generates. It also aims to integrate intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.
As part of the same US DOE initiative, the Edison Materials Technology Center (EMTEC) is to lead a project into developing a very dense liquid-cooled computer platform, which Dr Michael Martin, VP Alternative Energy Technology for EMTEC, told the press “has the potential for up to a 36% reduction in data center cooling energy usage,” allowing for significant data system energy efficiency improvements.
EMTEC will conduct the project in collaboration with firms including software giant CA and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
As, historically, upwards of 45% of the total energy consumed by data centers has been
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www.datacenterdynamics.com
contrast, HP and Dell warranty their servers to 95F (35C) and rackable to 104F (40C), for example.
The study doesn’t suggest you throw away all your fans, however, contending that a much more flexible and specific cooling infrastructure needs to be developed to cool specific hot spots that may cause issues, rather than seeking to chill the entire space.
Does this mean tomorrow’s data center managers will be working in swimwear? A worrying thought.
used to provide cooling, such a platform would be of great potential interest, especially if it delivers on goals of realising a fundamentally new architecture based upon liquid cooling and encompassing both infrastructure and equipment.
EMTEC contends the architecture “will be low cost, have a small carbon footprint and design that comprehends board layout for heat transfer from the servers’ internal components to ultimate dissipation of the heat to the ambient environment”. Existing components, technologies and work practices will be used wherever possible, it adds.
ONLINE
www.eaton.com/EatonCom/OurCompany/ NewsandEvents/NewsList/NewsArticle/CT_263267
www.emtec.org
THE 90 DEGREE DATA CENTER APPROACHES?
Data center energy management company Sentilla has a possibly surprising answer to the problem of cooling the data center: stop doing so much of it.
According to its new white paper, though the overall ambient temperatures are set to rise in such environments by at least five degrees by 2015, it believes, “cooling is not going to be a major contributor to data center costs in five years [as] servers are being built to handle the [increased] heat.”
The authors contend that we have so much cooling as a result of packing data centers with relatively inefficient kit in the 1980s and 1990s and hence cooled to keep this older generation of machines working. In
ONLINE
www.sentilla.com/files/pdf/Stop-Cooling-the-Data- Center.pdf
IBM ’DATA CENTER IN A CAN’ NOW HAS BUNDLED POWER AND COOLING
A containerised data center with power and cooling from American Power Conversion (APC) by Schneider Electric is now shipping from IBM, with Big Blue’s Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) container version based on APC’s InfraStruxure architecture.
The product builds on a 2006 global alliance between APC and IBM when the former was selected as a key data center physical infrastructure provider to IBM’s Scalable Modular Data Center (SMDC) project.
Last month IBM spotlighted a number of other suppliers for provision of power and cooling options for its containers including Anixter, CommScope, Eaton Corporation, Panduit, Siemon and Vette Corp.
“Our footprint in IBM’s modular data center offerings demonstrates the adaptability of our solutions to meet customer demands in a variety of business applications,” said Jim Simonelli, Chief Technology Officer, APC.
“APC’s data center physical infrastructure design lends itself well to IBM’s PMDC, focusing on maximising efficiency through a modular and scalable approach. The pre- engineering and pre-testing we do for our products ensure the PMDC solution is highly reliable and available,” adds Steven Sams, vice president, Global Site and Facilities Services at IBM.
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