Energy Saving and Cooling Systems in ProLiant DL G7 Servers: Respond to Consolidation Growth

The development of server and telecom technologies is advancing today, and, in addition to a serious performance increase, new functions and optimization of known processes brings with it questions. First of all, it is a sharply increased density of computing power per standard unit of the server rack. And where there is high performance - there is high heat dissipation along with power consumption. And it turns out that now you can install fewer servers than before in a familiar rack with quite acceptable yesterday level of cooling and power supply.

Do not worry, exclaim a far from the real people - take the second rack! But the place in the data centers is not rubber, and in those countries where the computational resources of our planet are concentrated more densely, there is some shortage of it. Moreover, not all organizations that use serious servers place them in commercial data centers, and the rapid expansion of their own data center often becomes an impossible or impossible task. That is why, developing its own servers, routers and other equipment, the manufacturer simply must pay close attention to cooling technologies and energy optimization.

In the new, seventh, generation of ProLiant servers from HP , a technology package has been applied under the general name Thermal Logic for cooling control and a power management system called Intelligent Power Discovery. Some of these technologies were tested on the previous generation of servers, the G6, so it will be especially interesting to see how HP has advanced along the path of optimization. Unfortunately, while there is no way to physically compare G6 and G7, we can only predict real growth in the performance and reliability of the subsystems, but we tried to consult with those who actually use the G6 in a high-density environment and find out what the new generation of servers can provide them.

But first, about technology. The press release accompanying the launch of a new generation of servers, says the figure at 96% savings. But we are not discussing marketing tools and spherical horses in a vacuum, so we will start from the fact that the real savings are not so crushing, but still visible to the naked eye. The basis of savings is the Sea of ​​Sensors thermal sensor network, which monitors the temperature in various elements of the server.
')
Loaded areas are cooled more intensively, and idle areas are minimal. As a result, instead of blowing through the entire case, we obtain point cooling with the help of dedicated fans. The remaining proprietary technologies, Dynamic Power Capping and Power Advisor, improve monitoring and configuration, but ultimately all work with the same point cooling tools. Another of their functions is to reduce the role of the human factor in hardware failures - to configure something so that the server “falls” or critically overheats, it will not work. Disclaimer from the author: most likely, it should be understood as “will not work in most cases”, because the strength and power of aptly attached playful pens cannot be measured. Practical solutions also include unified, hot-swappable power supplies. If something happens, it will be possible to put new ones “on the fly” and not ring up the suppliers with bulging eyes in search of that specially certified form factor with delivery from two weeks to order.



Those who work intensively with a large number of HP servers expect from the seventh generation, on the one hand, better than their predecessor cooling capacity, and on the other hand, rub their hands in anticipation of huge amounts of RAM. For example, in the DL580 G7 you can put up to a terabyte of memory. The server occupies four units, decently cooled and has a good level of performance. It remains to connect the disk “shelf” to it more brightly and an excellent tandem for virtualization and serious business applications is ready. This position is held, in particular, by Alexander Titov, technical director of Oversan-Skalaksi, “For our company, new machines are interesting because they can be used to provide services to the most demanding customers who need a large amount of memory and computational resources without breaking tasks across multiple physical servers — one can handle a serious load. ”

After careful consideration of the new servers and the systems implemented in them, it cannot be said that they are revolutionary. The development takes place in an evolutionary vein, but it is very important to take into account that the workload grows spasmodically, data centers are clogged up to the eye, and the amount of transmitted data doubles almost every year. And here it’s just like Carroll’s: “in order to at least stay in place, you need to run very fast”. And HP with its G7 runs even faster.