Liquid Cooling for a Greener Data Center

In “Seven Design Considerations for a Green Data Centre,” an article published recently on the Green Cars & Green Fuel Center website, the author provides recommendations for improving the energy efficiency of data centers. One of the author’s seven recommendations is to investigate liquid cooling. The author, Wolfgang Jaegel of Datacraft, writes “To meet the challenges of blade servers and high-density computing, more organisations are realising the need for effective cooling and heat management solutions. Many are welcoming liquid cooling systems into their infrastructures to achieve better cooling efficiency…”

Liquid cooled server cabinets are very energy efficient, consuming up to 40% (1.2 PUE) less energy than air cooled infrastructures. In typical applications, the payback from energy savings is less than one year. Rack level liquid cooling also allows for cooling capacity to be added as servers are added, saving the data center money in up front costs.   

Lytron offers a Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU), a standard liquid-to-liquid cooling system specifically designed for data centers. The LCS50, a 150kW CDU, supplies coolant at precisely controlled temperatures to liquid cooled cabinets and transfers the waste heat to facility water. Lytron also offers heat exchangers for cabinet cooling and cold plates for electronics cooling  and has partnered with a liquid cooled cabinet supplier to offer a complete data center liquid cooling solution. For more information, please call Kathryn Whitenack at +1-781-933-7300.

International Space Station Image Courtesy of NASA

Although most of us aren’t working in conditions quite as critical as those encountered on the International Space Station (ISS), the majority of us are very concerned with the uptime of our systems. On Saturday a liquid cooling system on the International Space Station malfunctioned, forcing the crew to power down some of the station’s vital systems. The downtime situation aboard the ISS serves as an excellent reminder about the importance of designing in redundancies on critical systems, as well as the importance of having spare parts readily available.

The malfunction on the ISS was the result of a pump module failure in one of the station’s two large liquid cooling loops. The second, or backup, cooling system is keeping the ISS up and running; however the station still has some of its operations shut down as the backup alone cannot handle 100% of the operations. The crew plans to replace the pump module this week with one of two backup pump modules that is located on the station. Although the backup pump module must be retrieved via a spacewalk, at least it didn’t have to be sent up from Earth!

The space station’s liquid cooling systems remove waste heat from electronics using cold plates and heat exchangers. There are two separate cooling loops within each cooling system. The process side cooling loops inside of the space station use water as the coolant while the external cooling loops use liquid ammonia to prevent freezing.

In a Space.com article about the malfunction, Denise Chow writes, “…while the intricacy of all the space station’s parts can sometimes lead to technical problems, the interaction of these complex systems is also what has kept the station operating successfully for over a decade.” According to Boeing, it was the first malfunction of the cooling system.

Cooling systems used for many applications, including data center cooling, medical equipment cooling, or manufacturing process cooling, are often considered “mission critical” equipment. To address this, Lytron can design and manufacture cooling systems with redundancies as well as other features to help ensure uptime. For example, Lytron’s LCS50 liquid cooling system for data centers has redundant pumps, optional redundant modulating valves, and isolation valves for hot swapping of all major components. Lytron also offers spare parts for its cooling systems.  

Sources:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/international-space-station-complexities-100802.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/science/space/02shuttle.html

DatacenterDynamics

Lytron will be exhibiting its new LCS50 at the DatacenterDynamics tradeshow in San Francisco on July 16th. The LCS50 Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU), a liquid-to-liquid cooling system, supplies coolant at precisely controlled temperatures to liquid cooled cabinets. In addition to cooling systems, Lytron also designs and manufactures cold plates and heat exchangers for liquid cooling in data centers. If you plan to attend the tradeshow, please visit us at our booth!  

Verari Portable Data Center

Data centers produce a large amount of heat that must be removed in order to keep them running properly. Verari Systems produces portable data centers that have a built-in patented cooling solution called Vertical Cooling Technology™. With so much power in such a compact area, highly efficient cooling is critical.

Verari’s portable data center, called the FOREST Container, houses over 2,880 servers or 26PBs of storage in a 40’ x 8’ x 9.5’ space. According to Verari’s website, “Energy spending is dramatically reduced by the Verari FOREST Container’s ultra efficient power subsystems and patented Vertical Cooling Technology™ boosting reliability and performance.” Verari also states that it can “reduce total energy costs by improving data center efficiency by up to 110%.”

 As part of Verari’s Vertical Cooling Technology, there are twenty flat tube evaporators in the ceiling of the container. These custom heat exchangers were designed and manufactured by Lytron. The heat transfer fluid used by Vertical Cooling Technology is refrigerant that is cooled by facility water.

Lytron also designs and manufactures standard and custom liquid-to-liquid cooling systems, recirculating chillers, ambient cooling systems, and cold plates for liquid cooling data centers and IT equipment. Our LCS50, a 150kW standard liquid-to-liquid cooling system, was designed specifically for data center cooling. The LCS50 supplies precise temperature-controlled coolant to liquid cooled cabinets and transfers the waste heat to facility water.