Unusual Ideas Emerging to Improve Data Center Cooling
FOSTER CITY, Calif.—Cooling is one of the key cost factors in the data center, and it is likely to grow more acute as virtualization and software-defined architectures lead to increased hardware density, according to an article in IT Business Edge. Some organizations are going to extreme measures when it comes to so-called “free cooling,” with many locating data centers in temperate or even arctic climates. Also, some are finding ready sources of coolant in unexpected places, such as liquid natural gas facilities. Amazon is considering an idea to place a data center atop an offshore desalinization plant, which typically pulls sea water from depths of 100 ft (30 m) or more. Cooling costs can also be reduced by simply using higher temperatures. NEC Corp., recently released the Express5800 series server, which is rated for up to 104°F (40°C), which is well above the normal operating range of most data centers.
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