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Intel Shows Data Centers Can Get By (Mostly) With Little AC
Ted Samson IW writes "InfoWorld reports on an experiment in air economization, aka 'free cooling,' conducted by Intel. For 10 months, the chipmaker had 500 production servers, working at 90 percent utilization, cooled almost exclusively by outside air at a facility in New Mexico. Only when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit did they crank on some artificial air conditioning. Intel did very little to address air-born contaminants and dust, and nothing at all to deal with fluctuating humidity. The result: a slightly higher failure rate — around 0.6 percent more — among the air-cooled servers compared to those in the company's main datacenter — and a potential savings of $2.87 million per year in a 10MW datacenter using free cooling over traditional cooling."
How about reducing the need for AC POWER as well by cutting down on the number of AC TO DC PSU's.
Makes sense to me. The most efficent places to store data centers is in the northern US or Canada where you have sub-zero temperatures from November - March and ranging between 0-15 in April/May and Sept/Oct and the rest of the year 20-30+ (Celcius of course) With these lower temperatures they could run a data center entirely off outside air from September - May each year. Put a heppa filter in between to scrub out dirt and dust and vola, o'natural cooling solutions
... in Anchorage you have all the free cooling you want!
The savings should be more than enough to pay for replacement hardware, and even for upgrades. And stepping back and looking at the big picture tells me that there is at least one brilliant person at Intel--whoever though of doing this study is a genius!
--MarkusQ
Well, it makes sense. Normal PCs run on essentially ambient air, and live for years even under heavy loads (games put a lot of load on systems) despite all the dust and cruft. Servers aren't that different in their hardware, so it makes sense they'd behave similarly. And there's a lot that can be done cheaply to reduce the problems that were seen. Dust, for instance. You can filter and scrub dust from the incoming air a lot cheaper than running a full-on AC system. In fact the DX system used on the one side of the test probably scrubbed the incoming air itself, which would explain the lower failure rate there. Reduce the dust, you reduce the build-up of the thermal-insulating layer on the equipment and keep cooling effectiveness from degrading. Humidity control can also be done cheaper than full-on AC, and wouldn't have to be complete. I don't think you'd need to hold humidity steady within tight parameters, just keep the maximum from going above say 50% and the minimum from going below 5%. Again I'll bet the DX system did just that automatically. I'd bet you could remove the sources of probably 80% of the extra failures on the free-cooling side while keeping 90% of the cost savings in the process.
I'd say that they will have to wait longer to get failures. Try to have a server running in that enviroment for 5 years and then we will see. I would not do it without having some good filters. But for a test it is a interesting experiment.
For datacenters in colder climates, you can already get cooling systems that cools the water using air only when the temperature is below a certain temperature(just forgot the number). When it gets above that level the water gets cooled like you normally do.
At work our old AC system was old and needed to be replaced and the new one does that. The outside temperature is so low that the water will be cooled with just air for half the year.
It was more expensive to install since it needed more and bigger cooling units(I belive they also talked about bigger slower fans that used less power) when just using air but it pays itself in a few years.
Another interesting experiment would be to use the heat again. I dont know if the water temperature is high enough so that you could use heat exchangers, perhaps as the first step on heating ingoing cold water.
I would think you'd get a vacuum sucking air up the chimney, as 20+ story buildings would have their exhaust exit at almost 200 ft above ground. Winds up there can move pretty quickly, causing the pressure at the chimney exit to be lower, creating suction, no?
I will rephrase your question. Would a .6% increase in the already tiny failure risk be noticeable to someone running a single server when their chances of failure were already so small to begin with that their server was far less likely to fail in the first place?
No, so yes, it is worth it from a cost perspective. They can take the money they save and replace the hardware twice as fast and their already small failure rate is less than half. This is a win all around and actually, the article never said what was the source of the increased failures, heat or particulate in the air. If the latter, this is a huge win for energy efficiency.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
There is another really smart thing you can do too. When it is hot inside and not hot outside yu can open a window. That seems obvious but how many office building have openable windows? For some reason Architects like to cool office space with AC even if there is "free" cool air out doors.
This is even easier with computers. The servers would be happy to run at 95F and much of the time even in the American SW the outside air is cooler than 95F.
I've been saying this for many years. I think the reason for resistance is that no one gets a take home pay bonus based on how much power is saved.
Well of course intel wants you to burn your machines up early. They get to sell you the replacement.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wear your damn sweater like a man, damnit.
I've often said, "You can always put on another sweater, but you can't take off more clothes than all of 'em." In most office environments, you probably wouldn't even want people taking off quite that much, anyway, so you set the level at the point where no one has to.
People like you, and Barack Obama with his "no one needs lower than 78" are making people smelly and uncomfortable to be around.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
That, and they become a single point of failure.
Having seen a few commodity power supplies fail in the most spectacular manner possible makes me shudder to think that companies are willingly switching to massive power supplies just to save a few bucks.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.