Making Blade Servers Cool

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

With its InfraStruXure, APC takes on rival Liebert, a Columbus, Ohio-based unit of Emerson Network Power. In the cooling arena, Liebert has launched the CoolFrame, a distributed platform that, like APC's offering, brings cooling directly to the server rack. The CoolFrame offering couples Liebert's XD waterless cooling solution with a high-performance rack-mount server, called the BladeFrame EX from Egenera.

This is not an OEM relationship, says Fred Stack, vice president of marketing at Liebert. VARs deploying the Egenera BladeFrame EX can offer the Liebert cooling solution or refer it to a Liebert solution provider. "We developed a cooling solution that basically plugs into the Egenera infrastructure," Stack says. "It comes with flexible hoses, and you simply connect it to the back of their rack. You don't need an electrician and you don't need a heating ventilation air conditioning [HVAC] expert. It's really an ideal VAR solution for providing cooling specifically to the blade frame from Egenera."

That's great for companies in the financial-services sector, many of which use Egenera's new servers (offered under the Fujitsu-Siemens brand in Europe and Asia), but what about where most of the server action is nowadays--with Dell, HP and IBM? Stack says Liebert is negotiating with other vendors, notably IBM, for which Liebert provided the initial design specification of IBM's CoolBlue cooling-system prototype. That system was unveiled last year, but IBM didn't use Liebert to manufacture the initial offering. "We'll be bidding on it the next time it comes up for renewal," Stack says.

He says IBM's CoolBlue technology, which Liebert designed, consists of a coil that connects to the server rack, a cooling-distribution system and a building's existing chilled-water plant. There are a couple of concerns with the solution though, Stack says. If not engineered properly, there could be water condensation. "That means you'll have water dripping someplace," he says. "And if it drips onto your server, you can end up having some challenges."

The other issue, APC officials say, is that CoolBlue is intended only for IBM racks, with a special door that goes onto the back of the IBM Enterprise Rack. The solution--5 inches deep and using about 19 kw of power--can remove about 55 percent of the heat from the room, says Alex Yost, IBM's director of product marketing. "It works like a radiator," he says, adding that partners who offer servers for the data center can offer CoolBlue as a natural extension of the solution. "If this isn't in your portfolio, though, you're left leading the customer to someone else, or you're forced to talk to someone around it," Yost says.

Meanwhile, HP in February released its Modular Cooling System, designed specifically for HP's newly released 1000 G2 Series rack. Like the IBM offering, HP's solution uses the data center's cooling system and distributes the cool air across the front of the server rack. The MCS allows for up to 30 kw on a single rack, which is three times the amount of capacity that existing racks support.

Nonetheless, ePlus' Csoke prefers the vendor-neutral approach that APC offers with its InfraStruXure. "The APC solution allows anybody's equipment to work," he says. "IBM allows their equipment; HP allows their equipment. Those will do the [job], but why would I use an IBM solution to cool an HP system?"