Liquid Cooling For Servers
01 December 2009 Source: In house
Boston is proud to introduce its partnership with Iceotope, a specialist in the field of liquid immersion cooling, to produce end-to-end liquid cooling solutions for data centres and high-density computing environments.
Introduction
With spiralling power and cooling costs, environmental concerns and an increasing emphasis on efficiency, data centre managers are under increased pressure to improve data centre cooling and efficiency whilst reducing overall costs and environmental impact.
Addressing these concerns, the innovative and unique solution developed by Iceotope and Boston can yield a 93% reduction in cooling costs compared to a traditional air-cooled server room environment.
What's involved?
Unlike traditional server cooling solutions which transfer heat generated from servers to the server room air which are then released into to the atmosphere via a sequence of power-hungry air conditioning systems and heat exchangers. The Boston & Icetope solution employs a system of complete immersion and end-to-end liquid cooling heat rejection principles.
How it works
Cross section through a single Iceotope module
Unlike traditional servers, which depend on a constant flow of cool air passing over components for cooling, the motherboards and
associated parts in our compute modules are fully immersed in an inert liquid coolant which transfers heat away from components. The heat from the inert coolant is, in turn, transferred to the front side of an integrated heat transfer surface.
A water supply from the local rack is pumped through a channel in the reverse side of the heat transfer surface before returning to the cabinet via a rack localised heat transfer unit.
This whole process eliminates the need for any air cooling at the server level and increases thermal transfer efficiency dramatically as water transfers heat 4000x better than air.
The Supermicro X8DTT-IBQF motherboard used within our motherboard module
Key features:
- Dual Intel 5500 series Xeon Quad/Dual-Core, with QPI up to 6.4 GT/s
- Intel 5520 (Tylersburg) Chipset
- Up to 96GB DDR3 1333/ 1066/800MHz ECC Registered DIMM / 24GB Unbuffered DIMM
- Intel 82576 Dual-Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller
- 1 (x16) PCI-E 2.0 slot
- Integrated IPMI 2.0 with KVM and Dedicated LAN
- Integrated Matrox G200eW Graphics
- Mellanox ConnectX QDR Infiniband 40Gbps Controller w/ QSFP connector
Practical Benefits
Operational Savings
Using a 600kW server load as an example, the power requirement for traditional air cooling is approximately 300kW. At $0.10 per kWh, the 3-year cooling would be $788,400.
Using our liquid immersion cooling technology, the power required for cooling would be approximately 20kW, equating to $52,560 over the same time period - a saving of $735,840.
Secondary cooling stage - chassis level
The secondary water circuit is a relatively straightforward heat transport stage that ultimately delivers the heat to the heat rejection stage. In some cases it is possible that the modules are connected directly to the building water circuit. However, having an isolated secondary circuit means that pressures, flow rate and temperatures can be more carefully managed.
The secondary stage consists of a local pump, pressure management system and compact liquid-liquid heat exchanger that transfers heat into the third and final (building) water circuit.
Operational savings
Using a 600kW server load as an example, the power requirement for traditional air cooling is approximately 300kW. At $0.10 per kWh, the 3-year cooling would be $788,400.
Using our liquid immersion cooling technology, the power required for cooling would be approximately 20kW, equating to $52,560 over the
same time period - a saving of $735,840.
Environmental impact
Using the same 600kW server load example, and using the same power requirement saving for cooling, the reduction in CO2 emissions equates to approximately 1054 Tonnes per year.
Capital expenditure
The capital expenditure of chiller plant can be removed (if entirely liquid cooled) or reduced (if a mix of air and liquid cooled hardware is expected) in the following scenarios:
- Newly built data centre
- Additional capacity to be added, where air cooling is limiting factor
- Additional capacity where space is the limiting factor and more dense equipment is being installed.
Heat re-use
Using liquids to capture the heat increases the useful working temperatures that can be reached, raising the possibility of using that heat for building heating or even driving other mechanical processes.
Removal of requirement for raised floor
The raised floor traditionally used in the data centre is required for delivering cold air. Cabling may also be laid in this way. With liquid cooling, there is no need for a raised floor - if cabling and water connections are provided from above, the need for the raised floor is removed, simplifying design of new facilities.
Ruggedisation for extreme environments
The primary coolant chamber is sealed so humidity and pollution are not an issue for liquid-immersed servers, giving rise to possibilities for deployments extreme environments.
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