Energy Efficiency Data Center: Water and Refrigerants
Infrastructure solutions providers and their partners are certainly seeking to optimize their business model and are rebuilding the data center and all kinds of subsystems with regard to new products. There are many tasks here: from improving the quality of services provided to minimizing the negative impact on the environment.
As a result, all these tasks are “poured” into issues related to energy efficiency, electricity consumption and stability of operation of all data center systems.
/ Photo poolie CC
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Fingering innovative solutions, companies are not afraid to experiment and often come to the need for a radical review of how the data center service subsystems work. Someone even introduces very extreme technologies for cooling.
One example is a data center owned by Alibaba. It uses water from a nearby lake to cool it. AliCloud - the owner of this data center - is a subsidiary of the entire Alibaba group, and the data center itself is already among the most energy-efficient data centers among all sorts of analogues in the world.
For the operation of such a cooling system, special communications were built that stretch for several kilometers and give this data center as much as 80% of the savings compared to the classical approaches to cooling.
Water cooling is one of the most effective approaches in terms of cost optimization. However, modern data centers compete not only in terms of economic efficiency, but also highly value the image component. So, data centers are becoming more and more "green", and a large consumption of water turns into an unpleasant flaw in the public eye.
This is where refrigerants come to the rescue. Still have the opportunity to use mineral oil. The effect is the same - reducing costs by a third or more, but in this case we are already talking about very different possibilities for circulation.
Many prefer to use dielectric fluids. Such solutions are used for two-phase immersion cooling.
A huge number of companies - from the Finnish Google data center to the Swedish Interexion - work with water-cooled data center cooling systems. The latter take sea water, run it through their system and give it to the city to heat the living space. Finns work in a similar way - they pump seawater to cool the data center. Swiss colleagues, as in the case of AliCloud, consume water from the lake.
It is important to understand here that, for the time being, many are not ready to completely abandon traditional solutions. This has its pros and cons. For example, hybrid systems that combine liquid and air cooling require almost twice the amount of service equipment. In this case, the possibility of savings is questioned.
On the other hand, there are more extreme options. For example, Microsoft's data center - it is called Natick. He no longer needs kilometers of communication for pumping water - he himself is on the water. Similar data centers can function without problems only in the port, and this is already suggestive of the cost of water filtration systems and anti-corrosion treatment, which will certainly raise the level of capital investment.
PS Additional reading:
As a result, all these tasks are “poured” into issues related to energy efficiency, electricity consumption and stability of operation of all data center systems.
/ Photo poolie CC')
Fingering innovative solutions, companies are not afraid to experiment and often come to the need for a radical review of how the data center service subsystems work. Someone even introduces very extreme technologies for cooling.
One example is a data center owned by Alibaba. It uses water from a nearby lake to cool it. AliCloud - the owner of this data center - is a subsidiary of the entire Alibaba group, and the data center itself is already among the most energy-efficient data centers among all sorts of analogues in the world.
For the operation of such a cooling system, special communications were built that stretch for several kilometers and give this data center as much as 80% of the savings compared to the classical approaches to cooling.
Not only water
Water cooling is one of the most effective approaches in terms of cost optimization. However, modern data centers compete not only in terms of economic efficiency, but also highly value the image component. So, data centers are becoming more and more "green", and a large consumption of water turns into an unpleasant flaw in the public eye.
This is where refrigerants come to the rescue. Still have the opportunity to use mineral oil. The effect is the same - reducing costs by a third or more, but in this case we are already talking about very different possibilities for circulation.
Many prefer to use dielectric fluids. Such solutions are used for two-phase immersion cooling.
Seas and lakes
A huge number of companies - from the Finnish Google data center to the Swedish Interexion - work with water-cooled data center cooling systems. The latter take sea water, run it through their system and give it to the city to heat the living space. Finns work in a similar way - they pump seawater to cool the data center. Swiss colleagues, as in the case of AliCloud, consume water from the lake.
It is important to understand here that, for the time being, many are not ready to completely abandon traditional solutions. This has its pros and cons. For example, hybrid systems that combine liquid and air cooling require almost twice the amount of service equipment. In this case, the possibility of savings is questioned.
On the other hand, there are more extreme options. For example, Microsoft's data center - it is called Natick. He no longer needs kilometers of communication for pumping water - he himself is on the water. Similar data centers can function without problems only in the port, and this is already suggestive of the cost of water filtration systems and anti-corrosion treatment, which will certainly raise the level of capital investment.
PS Additional reading:
- Game industry: how IaaS gave a new life to the popular game Angry Birds
- High technology in the world of sports: why the cloud will become the standard of the future
- Comparison of four top disaster recovery solutions
- Cloud services: experience of using IaaS by Russian companies
- Rent a virtual server or rent a virtual data center?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/266607/
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