Submerged Servers – New Era of Data Center Cooling
When looking for cooling solutions, only choice data center operators are left with is hot or cold aisle layout. To solve the problem and to make cooling in data center more flexible a new cooling technology just hit the world of data centers, submerged servers.
This new kind of cooling technology promises to cool high density server installations with an operating cost of one third of the traditional cooling of data centers. The process of submerged servers look like rack tilted on its on back and servers are introduced into slots in the enclosure, which is then filled with a coolant somewhat similar to mineral oil.
According to the experts the technology of submerged servers will allow data center operators to save a large amount of money, since the cooling of data centers will be done without CRAC units or chillers and raised floor cooling. Cooling system of data center consumes most of the electric power and hence covers most of the operating cost of a data center. Raised floor plans, hot and cold aisles, CRAC units and chillers are the basics of cooling in data center all around the world.
All these units or designs are good in keeping equipments of data center cool, but they worth too much. They consumes huge amount of power and therefore increasing operating cost of data centers.
Submerged cooling will be a great success in the field of cooling in data centers. Biggest hopes are developing Asian countries like India. Data centers India offers and uses the same technique to cut the operating costs. The idea of submersion cooling is not new and mineral oil is being used as a coolant in immersion cooling for a long time. Mineral oil is a good coolant as it transfer heat just like water without conducting any electric charge. The coolant to be used in the technology of submerged servers is specially modified for the use of cooling in data centers. This special coolant is named as GreenDEF and it can handle heat loads more than 100 kilowatts per 42U rack.
This capacity is way beyond the capacity of current average units which can only handle 3-9 watts per rack and high density units which can handle 10-30 kilowatts per rack. This coolant is different from coolants that were previously used in immersion cooling. GreenDEF can be easily removed for enclosure level maintenance and servers can be removed easily as well. This new technology of submerged cooling is the future of cooling in Data Center Services. There are many advantages associated with submerged cooling which covers cost to performance like:
- CRAC units and Chillers will no longer be used thus reducing power usage.2. Data center operating costs can be reduced up to 35%.
- No need of air management engineering.
- Overall maintenance cost is reduced.
- Can handle load more than 100 kilowatts.
- Nearly all the servers care compatible with this new technology.
- Container version can be installed anywhere thus making it more flexible than other cooling options.
Tier System in Data Center
A famous term associated with Data Centers is tier standards. Tier standards can be defined as standardized channels used to figure out availability in a data centers. Tier system is very much important for all the data centers let it be Fully Managed Data Centers India or partially managed data centers. Tier system was developed by Uptime institute. It helps companies to calculate performance and ROI (return on investment).
There are 4 tiers in a tier system, with tier 4 being the best and tier 1 being in the bottom. Do decide which data center facility belongs to which tier Uptime Institute issue a certificate. This reduces the risk from companies which falsely claims for the certification for their facility. Till the start of the year 2008 more than 25 data center round the world had been certified by the Uptime Institute.
This certificate helps customers to figure out the standard of the data center facility in which their servers will be placed. In the fast jet age it is very important for a customer to check the standard of a facility, since e downtime of few seconds can cost million of bucks. Process of certification begins with engineers at Uptime Institute review submitted documents of the design.
Following the review Uptime employees visit the site and examine whether the site is newly built or just an expansion from a older facility. The inspection also includes various other service checks at the data center services india. In order to amplify the sustainability of the tier standards, Uptime Institute also added an grading system.
Below is a brief explanation of the four tiers of data center:-
| Tier Level | Requirements from data center |
| Tier 1 | 1) Non-redundant capacity IT equipments
2)Non-redundant and Dedicated distribution path for all the equipments. |
| Tier 2 | 1) Redundant IT equipments including all Tier 1 requirements |
| Tier 3 | 1) Distribution paths for the IT equipments are independent and normally one path serves equipment at a given time.
2) IT equipments should be completely compatible with the topology of the site architecture and also they should be dual powered. 3) other than these all the Tier 1 and 2 requirements |
| Tier 4 | 1) Cooling facility should include HVAC systems and chillers along with being dual powered.
2) All the distribution networks should be fault tolerant, let it be storage or electrical. 3) All Tier 1, 2 and 3 requirements. |