Slashdot Mirror
Cooling Bags Could Cut Server Cooling Costs By 93%
judgecorp writes "UK company Iceotope has launched liquid-cooling technology which it says surpasses what can be done with water or air-cooling and can cut data centre cooling costs by up to 93 percent. Announced at Supercomputing 2009 in Portland, Oregon, the 'modular Liquid-Immersion Cooled Server' technology wraps each server in a cool-bag-like device, which cools components inside a server, rather than cooling the whole data centre, or even a traditional 'hot aisle.' Earlier this year, IBM predicted that in ten years all data centre servers might be water-cooled." Adds reader 1sockchuck, "The Hot Aisle has additional photos and diagrams of the new system."
That's really nifty, and I'm sure it works ok and everything, but... how much does it cost?
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
For some reason, the filters at work won't let me view the article. Does it happen to mention how much the upfront cost for these bags are?
Living With a Nerd
Seriously. What do we do when a RAM module or a backplane fails? Will a simple hardware swap become a task for those trained in hazmat handling? I do not want to be on the help desk when someone calls and says "Help! The servers are leaking!"
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
In winter you'd get quite a few kilowatt hours worth of heating if you route the dissipated heat properly.
Face your daemons!
Won't this cause accessibility issues for the administrators who have to support these servers? Additionally, Google's evidence supports the idea that warmer temperatures are better for the life of some components, such as hard drives. Last, this may work well for traditional servers, but I fail to see how this can be made to support a large SAN array or something similar.
The problem with all this is you need a good piping and plumbing system in place, complete with quick release valves to ensure you can disconnect or connect hardware without having to do a whole bunch piping and water routing in the process. Part of the beauty of racks is you just slide in the computer, screw it in, and plug in the plugs at the back and you're done.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but just building a new case, or blade, or whatever isn't going to do it - you need a new rack system with built in pipes and pumps, and probably a data center with even more plumbing with outlets at the appropriate places to supply each rack with water. This is no small task for trying to retrofit an existing data center.
Not to mention that you have to make sure you have enough pressure to ensure each server is supplied water from the 'source', you cannot just daisy chain computers because the water would get hotter and hotter the further down the chain you go. This means a dual piping system (one for 'cool or room temperature' water and one for 'hot' water). And it means adjusting the pressure to each rack depending on how many computers are in it and such.
The issues of water cooling a data center go WAY beyond the case, which is why nobody has really done it yet - sure, the cost savings are potentially huge, but it's a LOT more complicated that sticking a bunch of servers with fans in racks that can move around and such, and then turning on the A/C. And there is a lot less room for error (as someone else mentioned, what if a leak occurs? or a plumbing joint fails, or whatever. Hell, if a pump fails you could be out a whole rack!).
The ES/9000 that I had contact with was a series of cabinets that were all water-cooled from the outside in...it was a maze of copper pipes all around the edges and back and looked like a fridge. When you opened a cabinet, you could feel a blast of cold air hit you.
It was no trivial feat to do this, they had to install a separate water tank, some generators (I remember one of the operations guys pointing to a Detroit Diesel generator outside in the alley and saying it was just for the computer's water system), moved a bathroom (only water they wanted around the computer was the special chilled stuff), and I can distinctly remember seeing the manuals(!)... 3-inch thick binders with the IBM logo on them, and all they were for was the planning and maintenance of the water system.
No wonder it took almost a year to install the machine.
I work with particle accelerators that draw enough power that we don't have much choice but to use water cooling, and even though we have major radiation sources, high voltage running across the entire place, liquid helium cooled magnets, high power klystrons that feed microwaves to the accelerator cavities etc... the only thing that typically requires me to place an emergency call during a night shift is still water leaks.
Water is just that much of a hassle around electronics. Even an absolutely minor leak can raise the humidity in a place you really don't want humidity, it evaporates and then condenses on the colder parts of the system where even a single drop can cause a short circuit and fry some piece of equipment. After it absorbs dirt and dust from the surroundings it starts attacking most materials corrosively, which may not be noticed at first but gives sudden unexpected problems after a few years. If you don't keep the cooling system itself in perfect condition valves and taps will start corroding and you get blockages. Maintenance is a pain because you have to power everything down if you want to move just 1 pipe etc...
I just don't see why you would go through the hassle with water cooling unless you actually have to, and quite frankly if your servers draw enough power to force you to use water for cooling then you're doing something weird.
Hmm... The Cray-2 was cooled via complete immersion in Fluorinert way back in circa 1988. I was an admin on one (Ya, I'm old). So, this is a bit different, but certainly not ground-breaking.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How much does a rack full of water-cooled blades weigh?
Never thought I'd see the UPS become the lightest thing in the server room.
The technique of using cheaper off-peak energy to freeze liquid and then use that liquid for daytime cooling loads is already used in a very few places. Combine that technique with the direct server cooling mentioned in the article and....wait a minute....they are already claiming a 93% cooling cost cut? Either their is huge waste now or they're already expecting to use off-peak energy. But then again, maybe the remaining 7% is still large enough to merit further savings.
Direct cooling makes far more sense than cooling rooms like I keep seeing around now.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Next up, cooling servers with a bag of frozen peas?
Ok, so they are British and they spell 'center' with the 'er' the other way around. Why don't they spell server as 'servre'?
First of all, it would be 'serveur', not 'servre'. And its use is too new to be one of those words in which the french spelling is retained from the days of the Normans. Incidentally, even in America, we fail to reverse the 'er/re' in some words, consider 'acre', 'massacre', and 'mediocre', so we're not exactly consistent either...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"Very little, since you're dealing with very low quality heat."
And that's why in the really good systems, the only acceptable option is Monster Heat, the finest quality heat available, and its even gold plated.
No spill (as in "almost insignificant", not as in "not too much, won't empty the whole system, but you better have some towel nearby just in case"), quick disconnect, low resistance valves for watercooled system have been already available for quite some time for enthusiasts.
(Koolance is an example of compagny producing such thing in the US, Aquatuning is an example of shop selling similar implements in the EU - no links to avoid gratuitous advertising to web spiders, but you can easily google the names).
Anyway, low conductance liquids are popular in application where spills and leaks aren't easily monitored (see above source). And don't forget that every other blade module is sealed too. So in case of leak you're just spilling... on a sealed container which isn't affected by external liquids anyway.
As for pressure : Well, uh, no. You would need tremendous pressure if you had to fill the whole rack using 1 single pump. Which would be a single point of failure and is bad.
The more sensible approach would be each blade module having its own small pump (Laing DDC for the win !!!) for pumping water out of the rack's main tank.
It's already the scenario used in most rack-cooling situation (see again mentioned sources above). And in case of pump failure, well, only 1 blade module fails. The rest of the rack is immune to it.
Well I'm sure most /.er have some ricer friend (the kind which custom hand compile gentoo with "-O9999" :-) ) to whom a massive failure of watercooling has happened some time ago. Watercooling safety has evolved since then and it's now much more secure even for simple enthusiast. Now, a company specializing into data-centers has even more possibility to offer safety.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]