Making Blade Servers Cool

Page 1 of 2

Think of a high-tech data center and blade servers will probably be the first thing to pop into your mind. Forget mainframes, right? But blades and mainframes have something in common. They both generate lots of heat, and that means they both require massive cooling systems to keep them from going up in smoke.

But just as computing platforms have evolved, cooling systems have, too, and several vendors are bringing a new idea to market: decentralization. By cooling and ventilating the very racks and chassis where blade servers reside, American Power Conversion, Liebert, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and others are making the installation and management of these systems easier. They're also cutting down on power usage.

This newfangled cooling equipment is also opening doors for solution providers, who, up until very recently, wouldn't have thought about offering it as part of a data-center buildout or upgrade.

Just a year ago, cooling systems were "a conversation for the facilities manager," says Mike Csoke, enterprise account executive at ePlus, a solution provider based in Herndon, Va. "We didn't get engaged [on that end]. But now that air conditioning is available as a rackable solution, it's a discussion for us."

Csoke especially likes APC's newly launched InfraStruXure, which puts the cooling ducts into rows with the computing, storage and networking equipment. According to Kevin Nusky, APC's infrastructure product-line manager, that design provides more efficient air distribution and reduces power consumption by 25 to 50 percent.

The traditional, more centralized, approach to cooling the data center has several drawbacks, Nusky says. First, it's harder to provide consistent cooling because air is pushed throughout the room. Second, those cooling systems tend to be inefficient.

"Now we're running our motors at the row level so they don't have to work as hard," Nusky says. "We also increase our efficiencies, because we're gathering the hot air at the point where it's produced. If you can prevent the mixing of the [hot and cold] air, you can have your air conditioning work less, and you get the increased efficiency."

APC's InfraStruXure InRow RC consists of modular air-conditioning units that are bolted onto the side of each rack, providing 60 kilowatts of cooling per rack--30 kw with full redundancy; a cooling-distribution unit that feeds water to each InRow RC unit; and a rack-air-containment system (RACS), a modular system that prevents warm exhaust from working its way into the cooling environment.

As for APC's channel partners, they get training tools and professional installation services with the InfraStruXure system. And because each rack is IP-enabled and can be linked to existing SNMP-based management systems, partners can offer both power and cooling as precursors to any data-center redesign. "Now they're talking about the physical layer before they even talk about selling the server," Nusky says.

A system that includes the UPS, racks, rack-power distribution, cooling and overlying systems management typically costs anywhere from $25,000 to $35,000, although Nusky says pricing is variable depending on the configuration.

NEXT: Offerings from Liebert, HP