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The Data Dome: A Server Farm In a Geodesic Dome
1sockchuck writes In a unique approach to data center design, the new high-performance computing center in Oregon is housed in a geodesic dome. The new facility at the Oregon Health and Science University requires no mechanical air conditioning, using outside air to racks of servers reaching densities of 25kW per cabinet. The design uses an aisle containment system to separate hot and cold air, and can recirculate server exhaust heat to adjust cold aisle temperatures in the winter. It's a very cool integration of many recent advances in data center design, combining elements of the Yahoo Chicken Coop and server silo in Quebec. The school has posted a virtual tour that provides a deep technical dive.
In the video the narrator specifically states that the incoming air is filtered.
Better known as 318230.
Where the rubber meets the road is if the machines are in temperature and humidity specifications for the equipment, so warranties are not voided.
If this is workable, even during the winter or when it is extremely rainy/humid, this might be a useful idea. However, there is only a limited set of climates that this would work in. The PNW with its moderate temperatures makes sense for this. However, if I attempted to do the same thing in Texas, come summertime, I'd have a building full of BBQ-ed servers.
They should put the data center in a pyramid. Then, the servers would last forever!
You are welcome on my lawn.
In Portland, it's reasonably cool MOST OF THE TIME.
Temperatures reach or exceed 90 F (32 C) on 14 days per year and reach or exceed 100 F (38 C) on 1.4 days per year on average.
I'm thinking this project will last about 350 days.
You can take a look at their official page. http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/initiatives/data-center-west.cfm
The tour video and text talk about plants outside filtering. The video around 3 minutes, shows additional filtering inside.
I suspect prevailing winds will really screw with the site cooling.
The "Virtual tour" has more details than the rest. Nothing about humidity.
Their security seems odd. They talk about the security being very strict. The video shows the inside of each "pod" to be open to the common hot air area in the upper part of the roof. So they have security, but you can get around it by not going through the doors. {sigh}
I never got the idea of sticking square boxes in a round hole. They're wasting a lot of good real estate by leaving all that extra space between the servers.
It seems like it was drawn up with an ideal world in mind, which usually doesn't translate well to the real world.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Why did the chicken coop have two doors?
.
.
Becauase if it had four doors, it'd be a chicken sedan!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
1955. The Manchester Computing Centre was designed to be one gigantic heat sink for their computers in the basement, using simple convection currents, ultra-large corridors and strategically-placed doors to regulate the temperature. It worked ok. Not great, but well enough. The computers generated enormous heat all year round, reducing the need for heating in winter. (Manchester winters can be bitingly cold, as the Romans discovered. Less so, now that Global Warming has screwed the weather systems up.)
The design that Oregon is using is several steps up, yes, but is basically designed on the same principles and uses essentially the same set of tools to achieve the results. Nobody quite knows the thermal properties of the location Alan Turing built the Manchester Baby in, the laboratory was demolished a long time ago. Bastards. However, we know where his successors worked, because that's the location of the MCC/NCC. A very unpleasant building, ugly as hell, but "functional" for the purpose for which it was designed. Nobody is saying the building never got hot - it did - but the computers didn't generally burst into flames, which they would have done if there had been no cooling at all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's only cold in space when you are in the shade. Direct sunlight is pretty hot stuff, but if you use reflective surfaces it limits the absorbed energy.
The problem with space though, is it is a vacuum and usually weightless. No convective cooling, only radiative cooling. Which is why they put a huge ammonia based cooling system on the ISS that drives external hot plates they keep in the shade when they can. So apparently, cooling stuff in space isn't all that easy or cost effective.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101