By Alaa Bawab, General Manager Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), Middle East & Africa
This summer brought with it record-breaking heatwaves around the world, and the extreme increase in temperatures brought with it some particular challenges for data centers, with some facilities even forced to shut down at peak times to avoid catastrophic overheating. While traditional cooling methods are normally capable of protecting against such scenarios, the recent high temperatures have pushed some facilities well past their operational limits.
The issue of high temperatures impacting on data centers is likely to continue, and while the Middle East is no stranger to hot summers, demand for more intensive data center usage is also increasing the heat load that data centers have to deal with. To manage the rising mercury in the data center, Lenovo has developed Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling technology, a new approach to data center cooling, which in combination with power management software and monitoring tools, is bringing new levels of performance and energy efficiency, and in some cases can remove up to 90% of heat produced.
Named after the Roman God of Water and Seas, Neptune follows a holistic approach that delivers cooling at all levels of the hardware, and just like Neptune’s three-pronged trident, it is focused on three main points – direct to node cooling on the processor, Thermal Transfer Modules that cool inside the server casing, and Rear Door Heat Exchangers that water cool the inside of the rack.
The result of Lenovo’s pioneered Direct to Node liquid cooled technologies, Lenovo’s Neptune utilizes water pipes directly into the system unit that allow direct cooling of components while also removing the need for system fans or chilled air. Direct cooling allows customers to run Xeon Scalable Processors at up to 240W+, beating the traditional limits of 165W, all with lower power consumption. Use of direct water cooling can provide up to 40% savings in data center energy expense including 25% reduction in annual air conditioning use, 5% energy savings by running CPUs cooler, and 4% savings by eliminating fans in the compute nodes. In addition, direct cooled racks can be deployed in much greater density, and less fans also means quieter operations.
Similar to how car radiators work, the Rear door Heat Exchanger brings water to the rear of the rack to reduce heat, enabling racks to run room neutral to up to 30kW with support up to 40kW. This system replaces the rear door of the rack and does not require power or other modifications. It can also be used with traditional air-cooled systems with 80% removal efficiency further reducing datacenter cooling costs
The Thermal Transfer Module is a key component which integrates a hermetically sealed liquid filled heat pipe inside a traditional heat-sink, inside the server enclosure. The TTM allows for higher wattage CPUs with more cores and computational power up to 205W with additional option of lower acoustic modes with modest fan speeds, by providing consistent heat dissipation throughout the enclosure
These technologies combined, pave the way for futuristic computing power, data storage and processing. For instance, Lenovo Neptune is being used by SURF, the new Dutch National Supercomputer,
where liquid cooling will remove 90% of the overall heat from the system, not only ensuring peak performance and availability to research users, but also reducing energy consumption.
That’s not all for Lenovo’s Neptune, with new expansions advancing the cooling solutions further. The new solutions will now have the capability to include Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), which in turn enable higher workloads including AI, VDI and high-end analytics and other functions that are common in today’s data centers. GPUs enable more computing functions to be packed into smaller footprints, which can increase heat density, making it essential that cooling solutions keep up with the increased adoption of GPUs in enterprise environments.
In the world of technology adaptability is the key word and with today’s climates getting warmer, data centers need to adapt lest they face the consequences of unexpected shutdowns, over heating or even data loss. With Lenovo’s solutions in the form of Neptune, customers can be assured that their data is safe, no matter how hot it gets outside.
