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Startup's Submerged Servers Could Cut Cooling Costs

Posted by timothy on from the alliteration-alternation dept.

1sockchuck writes "Are data center operators ready to abandon hot and cold aisles and submerge their servers? An Austin startup says its liquid cooling enclosure can cool high-density server installations for a fraction of the cost of air cooling in traditional data centers. Submersion cooling using mineral oil isn't new, dating back to the use of Fluorinert in the Cray 2. The new startup, Green Revolution Cooling, says its first installation will be at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (also home to the Ranger supercomputer). The company launched at SC09 along with a competing liquid cooling play, the Iceotope cooling bags."

5 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. how much does it cost? by alen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the new Xeon 5600's run at less power than previous CPU's. and SSD's also run a lot cooler. how much does this liquid cooling enclosure cost and what is the performance compared to just upgrading your hardware?

    HP is going to ship their Xeon 5600 servers starting on the 29th

  2. Maintaince Access? by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How much harder does it make doing standard move cables/switch harddrives/change components maintenance?

    One of the advantages of a standard rack to me is that all of that is fairly easy and simple, so you can fix things quickly when something goes wrong.

    --
    'Sensible' is a curse word.
  3. Submerged hard disks? by JPerler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hard disks aren't sealed, there's always (at least, on the dozens of disks I've taken apart) a little felt-pad or sticker covered vent on them. I figured it was for equalisation or something crazy, but I'm not positive.

    Given hard disks aren't sealed, wouldn't they fill with fluid and assuming they'd still function with a liquid screwing up the head mechanism (given modern disk's head's float above the platter surface on a cushion of air) wouldn't the increased viscosity slow down seek events?

  4. Fanless low power servers are the future by colordev · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A server with this Intel Atom equipped mobo draws something like 25-35W under full load. And the performance of these D510 dual core processors is comparable to better Pentium 4 processors.

  5. Mainframe by snspdaarf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I seem to remember mainframes using distilled water for cooling decades ago. Not being a member of the correct priesthood, I was not allowed in the mainframe room, so I don't know how it was set up then. I have seen how oil-filled systems work, and I would hate to work on one. Nasty mess.

    --
    Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!