Disqus - Latest Comments for GrisoLM1

Re: IBM claim that water cooled servers are the future of IT at scale

GrisoLM1 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:34:59 -0000

I'd like to compare data on fan power vs cooling power. You can contact me at wally.phelps@degreec.com

Re: IBM claim that water cooled servers are the future of IT at scale

aelarsen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:39:37 -0000

kw/ton for chillers is 6 to 7 times more than fans.
if you want to save $ concentrate on reducing tonnage.

Re: IBM claim that water cooled servers are the future of IT at scale

GrisoLM1 — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:06:29 -0000

Is clustered systems technology different from spray cool? i.e. heat removal from the chip itself.

Fans take an inordinate amount of power, both in the server and cooling units. If there is a cheap, reliable and redundant way to extract heat right out of the chip, the fans can be eliminated. So far this has been elusive but at some point rack densities will increase to where it makes financial sense. It's anybody's guess where this point is, possibly the 60-100KW range?

Re: IBM claim that water cooled servers are the future of IT at scale

GrisoLM1 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:56:37 -0000

All the above is true, liquid cooling can be the most efficient if designed right. There are several important business issues keeping liquid cooling out of the mainstream, and these won't go away soon. For newly designed sites that are planning on 15-30KW racks, liquid is the technology of choice but for most others the following still very much applies.

1. Redundancy is much more problematic and expensive with liquid than air. An extra CRAC or two in the data center can be used as a backup for a fairly wide expanse of racks. How do you get cooling redundancy for a 20KW liquid cooled rack? Not impossible but very expensive.

2. Cost of equipment is significantly higher, at least today. Rather than a Single CRAC servicing 20-30 racks, the liquid solutions are most always one per rack. Even with densification of the racks, the costs of liquid cooling equipment inside the data center are many times that of air. The costs outside the data center are nearly equal. Of course with wider adoption and standardization the costs will come down - but when. With bleeding edge IT technology changing so fast it's a brave soul who can bet on a new technology to be around or even supported in 5-10 years, add to this the fact it's much more expensive and it's no wonder liquid is not yet mainstream.

3. How many data centers really have a "SPACE" problem? With the 6-10KW racks of the typical data center replacing the traditional 1-3KW racks, very few sites run out of space before they are up against serious power and plant cooling constraints. 6-10KW is easily handled with traditional cooling solutions and proper airflow design.

Comments?

Wally Phelps
www.adaptivcool.com

Re: How to keep muck out of your data center

Wally Phelps — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:50:45 -0000

These are used extensively in Semiconductor clean rooms for the same purpose. Search for "Tacky Mats".

Just don't ask your staff to wear the matching bunny suits or you will have a mutiny on your hands.

Wally Phelps

Re: Hot Aisle Containment and Fire Protection

Wally Phelps — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:16:22 -0000

We have discussed containment with several customers and it always comes down to fire code issues. To get around this we have developed an active airflow system which effectively gets the same results as containment but is done by an air curtain.

www.adaptivcool.com

Re: Cold Aisle Curtains gain Popularity

GrisoLM1 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:57:08 -0000

For any containment strategy to work there needs to be sufficient cool air in the cold aisle. check out www.adaptivcool/hotspotr.html for an effective solution to supply the right amount of cool air in the cold aisles regardless of underfloor obstructions etc.