Cool technology: Submerged blade servers escape the heat

Keeping servers cool is a challenge, even in a purpose-built data centre. Imagine for a moment the difficulty of doing so as part of an oil pipeline in the Australian outback, or as part of a military command post in the deserts of Afghanistan. I can tell you from experience that cooling is a serious issue even during a …

[Neil Barnes]

You have my limited sympathy, Trevor...

The computer stuff I design has to work from -40C to 150C... which is a bit of a bugger as most components are only rated to 85C.

Fortunately I don't have to do gigahertz processing; the chips I use are thick as a brick and about as much fun to program. I spend a lot of time keeping total power usage down so that the majority of the heat is coming from the environment rather than the circuitry; I'm using milliwatts rather than watts.

Still, it pays the mortgage and the challenge is interesting!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You have my limited sympathy, Trevor...

You both have my sympathy…

We recently had the experience of supporting an industrial computer that was installed (unwittingly) in the path of a chiller air vent, pumping out air at 60°C.

Needless to say, in the very hot weather we've been having here in Brisbane, the machine cooked a little. The machine is one of the newer Advantech x86 machines, and it's rated to 60°C. The CPU apparently got to 110°C.

Today we noticed the mSATA SSD inside is now acting up, as /usr/sbin/cron had become corrupt. Luckily, I could copy that across from another machine, but methinks we're going to have a lot of problems with this box.

We also have some boxes rated at 85°C: ARM machines running Freescale i.MX286s. Unfortunately the software we need now only runs on x86, and it needs the horsepower so we're stuck for now.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Interesting and humorous read. I will point my students to this whenever they complain about difficulties in the computer lab (which is computer heaven compared to what you need to go through)

[Steve Davies 3]

Ah... The memories

Of having to regularly replace ALL the electronics in a couple of PDP-11/70's. There were used to control a Sulphuric Acid plant. The problem was that the Air filtration wasn't good enough and small particles of H2SO4 would get into the Computer Room (that what we called the Data Centre back then) and literally eat the PCB's etc away.

As you are well up on this tech Mr Pott, has anyone thought of using Ground Source Heat Exchangers for the 'Sheds'?

Drill a borehole, drop some pipes down , fill it up again and away you go (simplisitc view!)

Then in the summer the ground would be heated and then that heat extracted in winter.

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: Ah... The memories

We tried a few times. The problem isn't really cooling, but how then keep it warm enough during the winter. Winters in the mountains or up north can get pretty cold, and the heat transfer has to be sunk crazy deep to be of any use. That isn't always possible. Where it is, oddly enough, there tends to be a more permanent admin trailer (or other setup) which will generally allow for more systems than we would put in a "shed".

Sheds go where people don't want to. 'round here that usually means "where the ground 'ain't dirt and getting heavy machines in is really freaking expensive."

[Jim 59]

HP/Apollo

Dagnabit. Us old Unix codgers got all excited there for a minute.

[Anonymous Coward]

Baby oil

Toms hardware did a machine in a tank full of baby oil a while back.

Not sure why water is preferable in an electrical environment...

[Tom 7]

Condoms

I've used a condom filled with water for cooling overheating CPUs before. It has the ability to wrap around components for good thermal transfer and so long as its filled carefully wont burst.

Now if someone could come up with some non-electrically active graphene type stuff....

[User McUser]

Clogged Filters

Seems like there should be some way to have a centrifugal blower to separate out the heavier metal dust from the incoming air stream. Then you wouldn't have to worry about anything becoming clogged as you could simply redirect the unwanted particles outside the box.

[keithpeter]

Boggle our minds

"I have seen PCBs I cannot unsee."

Care to share a few or is it really that bad?

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: Boggle our minds

I'm going to be honest and say that I suppressed my internet troll instinct to photograph and spread the pain. Some things should not be shared. Thus I don't actually have pictures of any of these things. If I could forget them, I would.

[James 125]

Magnetic dust a problem, how about this then ?

An old trick to reduce the amount of metal shavings circulating in an engine (and reduce wear) is to magnetize the sump plug.

Not quite sure how that would be implemented in your situation, but if you're flowing oil in a system, having a removable magnet (away from the sensitive electrics) might reduce the amount of magnetic dust ?

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: Magnetic dust a problem, how about this then ?

But the electronics are magnets, too. They generate their own magnetic fields. Rather a lot of testing would be required to solve the problem, factoring in the flow of liquids as they interact with heat, possible entry points for the metal dust, etc.

[Martin-73]

Re: Magnetic dust a problem, how about this then ?

I suppose dumping the heat into the oil you're transferring is not possible?

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: Magnetic dust a problem, how about this then ?

The oil exists to accept the heat, then transfer it to the exchangers? Why else are we submerging computers in oil?

[Alan Brown]

"Sheds"

"They are basically a full depth 12U 19in rack bolted to the side of some steel monstrosity made up of nightmares and solar absorption. Inside the box sit 4U of server, 4U of networking and 4U of heating, ventilation and air conditioning."

Sunshade, or double skin (shed in a shed) with ventilation top and bottom.

Solar chimney tech works extremely well, something that we tend to forget in this age of electrical slaves.