Liquid Blade Brings Immersion Cooling To Blade Servers

1sockchuck writes "In the past year we've seen several new cooling systems that submerge rack-mount servers. Now liquid immersion cooling is coming to blade servers. Liquid-cooled PC specialist Hardcore Computer has entered the data center market with Liquid Blade, which features two Intel 5600 Xeon processors with an S5500HV server board in a chassis filled with dielectric fluid. Hardcore, which is marketing the product for render farms, says it eliminates the need for rack-level fans and room-level air conditioning. In recent months Iceotope and Green Revolution Cooling have each introduced liquid cooling for rack-mount servers."

Comments

I want these at my data center...

[tnok85]

Although it's good we don't have them. I'd probably get fired when they find a rack of production servers running at 4.6GHz.

Re:I want these at my data center...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I'd get promoted if I did that... maybe you need to get your boss's job?

my server is leaking

[vacarul]

finally some good news for Joe the Plumber.

Re:my server is leaking

[Joce640k]

Do you need a snorkel and flippers to swap a network cable?

Upholding Moore

[MacGyver2210]

Do we really NEED liquid cooled servers in datacenters? Is this just our feeble attempt to validate Moore's Law despite diminishing returns on smaller process size and core multiplication...?

What the hell am I talking about? Of COURSE we need them!

Re:Upholding Moore

[TubeSteak]

Do we really NEED liquid cooled servers in datacenters? Is this just our feeble attempt to validate Moore's Law despite diminishing returns on smaller process size and core multiplication...?

Yes. No.
The massive densities you can achieve with liquid-to-liquid cooling allows for much smaller data centers (or much more performance in existing data centers).

Just being able to build a smaller data center can mean you've recouped the liquid cooling investment, even before factoring in the savings for increased cooling efficiency/watt, no AC, and no cooling fans.

serviceability

[arabagast]

How hard is it to say; change a disk in one of the submerged nodes ? or fix a loose ethernet cable ? If the nodes are separated in compartments, and you could isolate and drain one while servicing it, this would be really nice indeed.

Re:serviceability

[Kratisto]

The IT department is required to have SCUBA certification for regular maintenance.

Re:serviceability

[BiggerIsBetter]

How hard is it to say; change a disk in one of the submerged nodes ? or fix a loose ethernet cable ? If the nodes are separated in compartments, and you could isolate and drain one while servicing it, this would be really nice indeed.

Did you see the movie Sunshine? You'll have to immerse yourself in the coolant, possibly freezing and/or bleeding to death after getting your leg stuck in the rack. It had better be an important upgrade.

Re:serviceability

[GreatBunzinni]

That's exactly what got my attention. In the article, the CTO of hardcore computer is quoted as saying that "Our Core Coolant is 1,350 times better than air, by volume.". I don't know how that works out in energy spending when compared with air but if it has a linear relationship with the energy cost of cooling, I really doubt if the hypothetical energy savings can bring a net positive when considering the additional cost associated with meddling with the hardware, whether by maintenance or by hardware upgrades. After all, this slashvertisement is oh so keen in lauding the qualitative and subjective advantages of this toy but it doesn't even come near presenting the costs associated with forcing your company to be profoundly dependent (if not held hostage) of hardcore computer for support, maintenance of both hardware and cooling rig and upgrades.

Re:serviceability

[SpaghettiPattern]

How hard is it to say; change a disk in one of the submerged nodes ? or fix a loose ethernet cable ? If the nodes are separated in compartments, and you could isolate and drain one while servicing it, this would be really nice indeed.

Have you ever been in a huge data centre? There are mostly systems not needing any human interaction for years and in fact people need a map and an index to find the system. Human intervention -e.g. for failing hardware- is usually cast into procedures whereby an "operator" does the work needed. Disk storage is usually separated form application servers. Etc...

Huge data centres analyse the used hardware used and usually set up a palette of system types to select from. (Therefore anything outside of "the palette" is usually possible at significantly higher costs.)

I take these data centres will be capable of analysing pros and cons for using immersion cooling. Higher server density and thus lower real estate requirements add up to significant savings for one.

Re:serviceability

[obarthelemy]

that's PADI: http://www.padi.com/scuba/

unless you were thinking about rice.. ;hot water, rice... server farms finally derserve their names !

Re:serviceability

[obarthelemy]

it's mainly bullshit. my guess is, he's talking about the ability of the liquid to retain heat, which is nice and all, but you've got to get that heat in, and then out. basically, you're adding one motor (thing still needs a fan somewhere, plus the water pump), lots of tubing, liquid... i wouldn't use that in my home PC, let alone in a server room.

Re:serviceability

[drinkypoo]

We're talking about blade servers. they're not submerged nodes. they're submerged blades. storage happens on a SAN. What fucking year is it, anyway? In this design (big fat picture in the TFA, you lazy, reactionary fuck) each blade is sealed into its own unit which can be pulled separately. So it's even more of a non-issue. You just want something to complain about, when there is nothing to complain about. Thanks for helping make slashdot grate.

Re:serviceability

[EdIII]

I would not characterize what he said as reactionary. He does have a valid question, which is how easy is this to service? Your right, that the hard drive is a non-issue since you would want to use SAN, but hard drives generate heat too, so why would we not want it for that too?

Not everybody uses Blades. I looked into it and I found it costly and proprietary compared to other solutions that could provide even greater density.

Even if we did create a completely sealed 1U server case, we would still need to hook up intake and outtake ports. One of those will bust eventually and we are left with a pretty damn big mess on the floor and a server with no capabilities to cool itself. What does it mean if a leak in one server eventually causes an entire rack to empty out? These are valid questions even for these liquid cooled Blades.

Complaining to just complain is stupid. However, I have yet to see a liquid cooling solution for data centers that really addresses all of these issues and provides contingencies for malfunctions.

Eventually you will need to remove a module and service it. How easy is it to service? How messy is it going to be? How reliably can you seal it back up? Will there be tests you can run under pressure to check proper seal before putting it back into production?

Under normal operation are there any safety valves that can detect loss of pressure and isolate a module and shut it down? What redundancy can be provided on coolant loops?

You see there really are a lot a valid questions about how this is going to work, what else are we not thinking about, normal operations, etc. I hardly think we could call that reactionary.

And if the dielectric fluid is non-compressible...

[voodoo cheesecake]

I'd like to be under the sea in an octopuses data garden in the shade...

The blind leading the ignorant.

[GuyFawkes]

Immersion liquid cooling is something I have done in the past, and that is all well and good, it is after all HOBBY level tech.

For commercial level tech it isn't even a joke, imagine opening the bonnet / hood of your new 2010 car and finding a big tub full of water with the engine immersed in it.

Internal combustion engines have had closed circuit internal liquid cooling circuits for decades, and frankly computers and electronics have had closed circuit internal liquid cooling circuits for decades too.

Think backplane technology and hollow main boards, the liquid coolant flows through the hollow PCB, and mates and either side with the "backplane".

All the advantages of liquid cooling, and almost none of the disadvantages of liquid cooling.

Air cooling has one great advantage, "leaks" don't matter. Provided you have sufficient mass flow you can leak air all over the place.

Older internal combustion engines didn't even have forced circulation in the closed loop liquid coolant systems, they used thermal syphon, much like the space between the racks.

The salient fact here is you have to design in the cooling circuit at the engine block / PCB mechanical design stage, until and unless you do that you are going to be dealing with some god-awful heath-robinson kludge, like fitting an old "stationary engine" (google it) into a 2010 Dodge rolling chassis.

Instead of a 50 buck case containing a 100 buck mobo, you end up with a 100 buck case and a 200 buck mobo for closed circuit air cooling, or a 200 buck case and a 400 buck mobo for closed circuit liquid cooling, and these prices are for large volume manufacture with full economies of scale.

Now go back to your Dodge dealership and take in two 2010 rolling chassis for the annual service, one is running a bog standard cummins, the other is a kludged up stationary engine, and ask the mechanics which one will be more expensive to service.

Closed circuit liquid cooled electronics are not new, it is routinely used in avionics, which of course means that you can back 200 watts of thermal rejection (a modern desktop computer) into a package the size of an iphone, and run it flat out 24/7.

But it costs.

Unless you are in Hong Kong then the cost of land per acre is cheaper, and air is free, and leaks don't matter, and the coolant doesn't cause shorts.

The only other advantage of liquid coolant is it is much quieter, but even so, you can cure that problem by making everything bigger to accommodate much larger passive heatsinks.

http://hackedgadgets.com/wp-content/_hs2.JPG for example, this stuff is extruded and bought by the metre, it doesn't have a failure mode.

Re:The blind leading the ignorant.

[Zemplar]

Immersion liquid cooling is ... all well and good, it is after all HOBBY level tech.

Really? Cray started doing this back in 1985, so I wouldn't call it "HOBBY level tech."

Re:Or you would get a raise.

[davester666]

So you have to pay twice as much?

Re:Or you would get a raise.

[jetole]

Well I didn't say I would buy it from them but then again I might. Fact is I won't buy it though till I know the big dogs are supporting it and economically speaking, by the time it's adopted by trusted firms, well it's reasonable to assume that the cost of the technology itself may have dropped to the point where the firms who charge more for it will probably be cheaper then what it costs now when it's a new product since prices are almost always higher when a new technology has been released and hasn't been widely adopted yet.

Re:liquid heatsinks?

[petermgreen]

I doubt sealing to the board would be very practical, it would be very hard to get a good enough seal there and anyway most of the heat comes out of a CPU through direct conduction to the heatsink anyway so I don't see a whole lot of point in immersing the CPU itself.

What you can get easily are "waterblocks" which attatch in place of a regular heatsink and take the heat from the CPU in the regular manner but are designed to transfer it to piped water rather than to the air.