The (infrastructure) “X factor”
I’ve recently talked about the problems of heat removal in Data Centres and the use of computational fluid dynamics tools to predict airflow. I had a trip over to Liverpool this week to see a showcase state of the art site that had the footprint of only 10% of an equivalent data centre. The site was at a John Moores University building known as Digital Liverpool at Edge Lane, a former Marconi site and next to the Art Deco former home of Littlewoods Pools, part of a large reconstruction project by the RDA. Traffic is really horrible round there at the moment due to all the work going on but we are promised that it will be worth the wait.
The Data Centre belonged to the AIMES centre, which stands for Advanced Internet Methods and Emergent Systems. Catchy huh? They are researching and putting into practise all sorts of interesting technologies, the pertinent one her being grid computing.
Imagine if you will, a device in your house not much more than a smart screen that doesn’t need Windows, starts up in a few seconds and can’t get infected? They already exist, being known as “thin clients”. Here, the intelligence is at the other end, centralised onto Servers, rather than the distributed model we have today. The people who can benefit fronm this are the disenfranchised on the other side of the digital divide, although it is interesting to hear a Professor say that the barriers to this aren’t necessarily cost. They have a pilot project in the Parr area of St. Helens and apparently many of the 250 users also have Sky TV and large Plasma TVs. I never got round to asking what percentage of traffic was
(I have to admit that my mum is disenfranchised from the internet, but this is based on fear, ignorance and a certain level of disinterest. A thin client in her flat (or even a fat one in the communal lounge) would help in this but she is generally having too good a time to be bothered surfing).
The way this data centre works is based on a high density approach. There are twelve Server racks arranged back to back with six half-width cooling racks evenly interspersed. The heat comes out of the back of the racks (into the middle) where it is contained by a plastic roof and large end doors. The hot air is then sucked through the smaller cooling units and blown out of the front into the general room space where the Servers suck it back in again in the heat exchanging merry-go-round.
Something rather interesting about this site is what they call the manifold, or what the manufacturer calls the “InfrastruXure Cooling Distribution Unit“. The cooling racks need a lot of chilled water and this box is where the smaller flexible rack pipes join the larger supply and return feed pipes. It seems that the system had to be balanced, just the same as your central heating has to be at home.
This system was designed to be able to dispose of more than 120kW of heat, although at the moment it only has about 15kW of load as it is considerably sub-equipped with only sixty or so servers.
Servers generally have a little blue light on them for identification purposes (you press a button and it lights up blue on the friont and the back) which is very useful when you have a rack full of them (you can get 42 Servers in a regular rack, if you can get rid of the heat, that is). At AIMES, they have gone one step further and added some blue pinspots as well as the regular working lights. At least they resisted the temptation to fit windows to the Server Room as many showcase Server Rooms compromise functionality in the name of style.
I was impressed to see the solution in action, less so to find that the hot aisle wasn’t hot at all because of the small load. Server Rooms have a habit of filling up quickly though!
(Image acknowledgement APC- if you want to send me goodie bags, please email for the postal address!)
