colocation
providers are going to great lengths
in order to minimise their cooling
costs. Facilities are advised to run
at temperatures anywhere between
20-30°C to achieve an optimal
environment for the servers. With
the installation of high performance
computers however, their processing
power is significantly higher, so heat
management is of vital importance.
Some HPC providers have tried
to ensure consistent cooling by
deploying liquid cooling, larger fans or
conductive cooling methods. Typically
however, the rate at which heat is
produced is greater than the rate at
which cooling accelerants or fans
can dissipate this heat. It is therefore
important for centres to be built with
systems in place that far exceed
the maximum cooling requirements,
especially if there is the possibility in
JULY
the future that HPC systems will be
installed. For those that have systems
already in place and that wish to
install HPCs, again significant capex
spending will be needed to upgrade
data halls to meet the required needs.
When it comes to power HPCs
run at much higher processing powers
than regular servers. Measured in
floating-point operations per second,
or FLOPS, the fastest HPC as of
last year ran at 33.86 quadrillion
FLOPS. Directly tied into the first two
requirements for HPCs, space and
cooling, adequate processing power
is essential. The necessary power
infrastructure must be able to cope
with these demands in order to fulfil
the requirements of both the HPC
and the mid-range servers, depending
on the data halls configuration. Those
looking to install HPCs need to factor
E
U
S
IS
VIRTUALISATION
& CLOUD SERVICES
As well as its regular range of features and news items,
the July issue of Data Centre News will contain a
major feature on virtualisation and cloud services.
To make sure you don’t miss the opportunity to advertise
your products to this exclusive readership, call Francesca on
01634 673163 or email [email protected]
data centre news
in the provision of high density power
and how this has implications for
the cooling requirements and the
following environmental impact.
By having these necessary
capabilities, customers can be
reassured that the right technologies
are in place to grow their estates.
But in order for this to be successful
colocation facilities must not do this
at the expense of existing customer
needs that might not require HPC.
Having an entire site dedicated to
HPC will noticeably restrict your
customer base and therefore it is
essential that any investment is
still able to account for traditional
mission critical applications as well
as increased customer demand for
dense configurations, ultimately
enabling you to operate efficiency in
the future.