Pumping DC power to the data center
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Start-up Validus DC Systems gets $10 million in funding for direct current power supply systems.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM researchers are counting on a 40-year-old technology to keep modern, state-of-the-art datacenters running cool and allow companies to squeeze more computing power from the electricity they consume. These considerations are more important than ever. The power consumed by a rack of servers has risen from around 5 kilowatts (kW) of power per server rack five years ago to as much as 30 kW today, thanks to the introduction of more powerful processors and denser blade servers. And the power-consumption levels will continue rising in the years ahead. "People want more compute power and we can give it to them because we can package this into a smaller footprint, basically," said Roger Schmidt, chief thermal architect and distinguished engineer at IBM's Server and Workstation Division. The challenge that Schmidt and his colleagues face is how to dissipate the increasing levels of heat these systems generate. "We're working on this all the way from the chip to the datacenter," he said. At the datacenter level, Schmidt sees an expanded role for water cooling as a means to bring heat levels down. Water cooling, which uses small pipes filled with distilled or deionized water to dissipate heat, was first used by IBM to cool mainframe computers during the 1960s. The technology, which was used in more than 90 percent of mainframes by the mid-1980s, was given a second lease on life in 2005, when IBM introduced its line of Cool Blue water-cooling products. One such product is IBM's $4,299 Rear Door Heat eXchanger, which attaches to the rear of a server rack. Four inches thick and weighing about 32 kilograms (70 pounds) when filled with water, the Rear Door Heat eXchanger, can absorb more than half of the heat coming from a server rack, according to IBM. IBM's water-cooling systems, as well asÂ competing products from companies like Hewlett-Packard, offer several benefits for datacenters. Most importantly, water can absorb more heat than air, and the pumps required to circulate water in a cooling system consume less power than air-conditioning systems. And IBM plans to expand its line of water-cooling products in the months ahead. "We've got other enhancements coming out shortly," Schmidt said, declining to elaborate on specific details. One potential enhancement is to extend water cooling from the rear of the server rack to specific components, such as processors -- as was done with some IBM mainframes. "Once you bring water to the rack, you've got a lot of options," Schmidt said. Convincing datacenter operators to pipe water through racks filled with expensive servers and invaluable data is not always easy. The easiest to convince are those IT managers with experience from the days when water-cooled mainframes were the backbone of large corporations, Schmidt said. But many remain nervous at the thought of water-filled pipes coursing through rooms filled with expensive servers and invaluable data -- even though water is already a key component of all datacenters. "Water cooling in datacenters is already there," Schmidt said. "The chilled water that's brought to the air conditioning units? That's water and it's in the pipes right above the server racks. We're just plugging into that to apply that at the rack level."
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A new computer chip developed by Intel promises to perform calculations as quickly an entire data center, while consuming as much energy as a light bulb. By the Associated Press.
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This data center brings down all 11 of its servers in order to install a new generator on the emergency power supply. And when they come back up, they all work fine -- except one.
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Opteron to gain power preservation tech - and other goodies
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InfoWorld - Like other adopters of server virtualization, Purdue University was concerned that its datacenter would hit the wall, exceeding physical space, power, and cooling limits. The use of EMC VMware let it combine 140 physical servers into three Hewlett-Packard DL-585 servers, a 40:1 compression ratio, says Mike Rubesch, director of IT infrastructure systems. &quot;It helps postpone the inevitable,&quot; he adds.
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Start from scratch Datanet, the UK business ISP, suffered a power outage in of its server racks this morning which crocked its customers' internet access and email for most of the day.â¦
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Company says laptop-like technology will be useful in server systems, where it can help companies save on electricity and cooling costs in data centers.
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SCIENTISTS have sounded the death knell for the plug and power lead.   In a breakthrough that sounds like something out of Star Trek, they have discovered a way of 'beaming' power across a room into a light bulb, mobile phone orlaptop computer without wires or cables.
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Computers built with Advanced Micro Devices&#39; Opteron processor soon will be able to take advantage of the same power management technology the company has already built into its laptop and desktop microchips.
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Avoiding crisis in the rain-forest Meat Cast Ah, data center efficiency. The big vendors have embraced this topic like an admin embraces a bag of Dorritos.â¦
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PowerEdge Energy Smart line saves on electricity bill, vendor says.
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The backup generator for this data center kicks in about 12 seconds after the power goes out, says an IT pilot fish who works there. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission is considering introducing a voluntary code of conduct on energy efficiency for datacenter operators. Next week, the Renewable Energies Unit of the Commission's Joint Research Center will meet in London to discuss the idea. If adopted, a code of conduct would be voluntary, said Antonia Mochan, spokeswoman for the science and research unit of the Commission. Those organizations that adopt it would agree to abide by certain principles or standards, she said. The London meeting will include a session on the technical capabilities for reducing datacenter energy use and what a code of conduct -- if one is to be adopted -- should include. Participants will include hardware manufacturers, including Intel, datacenter designers and datacenter operators. The Commission has made few regulations about computer energy consumption, said Kevin Fisher, Intel's standards and regulations manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, earlier this week. Environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, which placed limits on greenhouse gas emissions for countries, are driving government interest in reducing energy consumption, Fisher said. Enterprises are interested in reducing utility costs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)Â Energy Star programÂ is used internationally as a specification for energy-efficient desktop computers, but the specification does not address servers. Part of the problem is a lack of metrics for establishing efficient server power consumption, although several efforts are under way, Fisher said. The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit group based in Warrenton, Virginia, is developing a first-generation benchmark for evaluating the energy efficiency of servers. The benchmark will measure energy use in conjunction with performance metrics. In December, U.S. PresidentÂ George Bush authorized the EPAÂ to study datacenter power consumption. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab at the University of California is also study energy issues with servers, and a report is due to the U.S. Congress in June, Fisher said. The Renewable Energies Unit meeting is a day after the UK Energy Summit organized by Datacenter Dynamics at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London and will be held in the same venue. Â
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The computing technologies to go beyond Moore's Law
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InfoWorld - Cisco Systems wants to turn the enterprise data network into an electricity meter.
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Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard.